Scientologists Open Heaton Branch

The Church Of Scientology has opened its first UK branch outside London in an unlikely location: Heaton's Meldon Working Men's Club.

The club, established in 1932 by the working men of Chillingham Road, has exchanged its beer taps for donation boxes, its newspaper rack for books about intergalactic ruler, Xenu, and its tatty sign-in book for a pile of billion-year binding contracts.

"It's great to expand our recruitment operations beyond London," said manager Kirstie Alley, a level three thetan. "We're so excited to be welcoming passers by into our friendly church. By which I mean forcibly devouring their souls."

The takeover, however, hasn't been to everybody's taste. Former regular Barry Cuthbert - a serial kitten strangler according to Scientologists - is leading calls for The Meldon to be returned to its previous owners and re-established as a working men's club.

"It's absurd," said Cuthbert. "The conversation is non-existent because most people in there are on the lookout for an accident outside. On the rare occasion one occurs, they all scarper out with their recruitment ganzies on."

Alley's decision to replace crisp selections with psychotropic drugs has also been met with a mixed response, as has the decision to reprogramme the quiz machine with a single game in which the player acts as L. Ron Hubbard stabbing his wife with a coat hanger. "Congratulations," announces the machine upon completion of the game. "Our reptilian overlords see fit to let you live."

Local sources indicate that although The Meldon now has creepy bar staff with forked tongues, a donation-determined heirarchy for toilet privileges and a critic-discrediting specialist eavesdropping at every table, it's still better than Echo.