Fringe theatre

The Dog House is only a memory now, but for many years it was tucked into the northeast corner of Cathedral Square in Christchurch.

- Russell Brown

When I was a teenager, it offered the latest arcade games and thickshakes that came with optional raw egg and whipped cream. It was open 24 hours a day, which made it notorious for a range of reasons.

On one of those days, I was waiting for a thickshake and picked up a book that had been left on one of the tables. Its title, None Dare Call It Conspiracy, seemed exciting. I didn't know at the time that it was an anti-Semitic conspiracy tract from the farright John Birch Society - or that its presence at the burger bar was no accident.

The Dog House was owned at the time by members of Zenith Applied Philosophy (ZAP), a capitalism cult founded in 1974 by John Dalhoff (aka John Ultimate), who was expelled from the Church of Scientology but had taken the methods of its "training courses" with him. Dalhoff loathed trade unions and taxes (apart from those he imposed on his adherents) and boasted of godlike magical powers.