Tom Cruise flies into our market town every year but we are sick of it: Residents say Mission: Impossible star’s annual jaunt to Scientology bash causes chaos
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Having Tom Cruise fly in on a helicopter and land in a quaint British market town would ordinarily send locals into a fevered frenzy.
But people living in East Grinstead have had enough. When the Mission: Impossible star, 63, arrived in October, he wasn’t greeted with the flashing of bulbs and the clamber for an autograph.
Instead, the Hollywood actor sparked outrage with his ‘low’ flying entry and was met by chanting protesters holding placards.
Cruise was there, of course, as the Church of Scientology’s ‘poster child’ for the org’s red carpet Patrons Ball at its sprawling British headquarters at Saint Hill Manor.
The annual three-day glitzy fundraising bash saw 7,000 people descend on the small West Sussex town, according to the church.
It saw Scientologists blasting out bagpipe music in an attempt to drown out the protesters. The antic led to one local complaining to Mid Sussex District Council, which could see the church lose its booze and events permits.
The application for the review claims the fundraising event causes ‘considerable disruption’ to the local community by causing congestion and excessively loud noise.
It asks the council to consider limiting the scale of events held on the property and proposes measures to safeguard vulnerable people.
The organisation said residents and ‘town and district councillors’ were on the guest list alongside Cruise. It was lauded as a ‘resounding success’, but not for locals who have grown fed up with East Grinstead being dubbed Britain’s ‘Twin Peaks’.
The town’s relationship with Scientology has been a fractious one since science fiction writer and the church’s founder L Ron Hubbard bought the Grade II-listed manor home in 1959.
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