'My head feels like a pig's shat in it!' - Withnail, Withnail and I

Well, I've just watched 'that' Panorama video.

I can understand the premise of the programme was just to find out something about this rather secretive organisation to understand it better, but it turned out that John Sweeney was facing a brick wall. Whilst he tried to ask fairly 'hot potato' questions which were vitally important to understand it better, like 'Why do people believe you're a cult, and what are your feelings?' and instead ended up being constantly tailed by Scientologists just trying to discredit everyone he talked to and following him.

They even tried to close him down after he did what happens at most celebrity interviews: he asked the same questions to each person. For that, they pulled all the interviews saying that the BBC could not show their responses.

I also watched the Church of Scientology's 'BBC Panorama Exposed' to try and get an unbiased opinion of the situation. Turns out, the Scientology video actually suffers from that terrible fate that falls on most American-based journalism: the edit. Frustratingly, their video did exactly what it claimed the BBC were doing, which was telling non-factual information and not showing everything clear as day, unlike the Panorama report that avoided any falsehoods for the sake of fulfilment. Even their website is full of half-truths and 'spin'.

It has, however, made me immensely curious as to how those stress-test machines work.

If you're interested, the Panorama documentary is available here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/programmes/panorama/default.stm

and the Church of Scientology 'Panorama Exposed' video is here:
http://www.bbcpanorama-exposed.org/watch-the-video-documentary.php

...and the title? Oh, I finally got around to watching 'Withnail and I', and if you haven't watched it already I recommend you do.