We watched a rather fascinating episode of Panorama on BBC1 last night. The episode was called "Scientology and Me" and the reporter attempted to find out if Scientology really is a religion or just another cult.

Well, lets just say they don't like the word cult, and you certainly don't want to get on the wrong side of these people. They spied on, followed, filmed and shouted at the reporter during his time in the US and even started invading his private life back in the UK. This is apparently quite tame and is part of their "noisy investigations" used to make you fear them.

The reporter interviewed a guy in the US who helps those who have left Scientology (called "heretics") deal with what is called "fair gaming" (the Scientologists deny this still occurs) which is essentially harassment using your own past against you. Anyway, apparently the Scientologists dug so deep and far back into this guy's life that they tracked his life back to when he was a troubled 8 year old, and then tried to use it to make him out to be a big bad guy.

What was also quite remarkable was the fact that Scientologists believe psychiatrists are evil and should be "obliterated" and have pretty much hijacked the atrocities of the Holocaust to convey this message.

Now if that's not sinister, I don't know what is.

John Sweeney, the BBC reporter sums it up beautifully:

Scientology has two faces - nice and smiley, and sinister and dark.

Check out the report by John Sweeney. If you have a nice fast internet connection, you can even watch the whole episode from the BBC Panorama website - it's definitely worth the 30 mins. A real eye opener.

One thing comes to mind - good luck to Katie Holmes if she decides to divorce Tom Cruise. She'll be in for one hell of a rough ride.