In response to a statement I received from the then Chairman of The Rennes Group during the 1990s – that I once said I was raised as a strict Roman Catholic – yes, that's true. I received Holy Communion, had to go to Confession and received the Ceremony of Confirmation. But that was only up to the age of about 14 or 15, when I began to think for myself – and began walking out of church services half way through – getting really fed up with what I always felt was a man-made invention.

Whenever I made comments about the alleged Rennes-le-Château “mystery” it was always to prove Abbé Saunière's position – that he was in reality a French Roman Catholic Traditionalist priest opposed to the continuing secularization of French Society – and he was not some treasure hunter or a Mystic Wizard representing some form of Freemasonry. (I am still looking for any evidence of those latter claims.)

David Aaronovitch correctly described me as a skeptic in his book “Voodoo Histories” (page 216, 2010 Edition).

My objective interest in Christianity was quite accidental. When I was about 17, I read the novels by John Wyndham from the local bookshop. On the same shelf were found the pseudo-scientific books by Erich Von Däniken, John Michell and W. Raymond Drake. This in turn led me to the skeptical works of Carl Sagan, and I began to be a regular reader of “Omni” magazine. In turn, I began reading about the true origins of civilizations by Leonard Woolley, etc and translations of ancient Near Eastern texts.

But this was still only the beginning. Of course, during this time I had watched the BBC 2 “Chronicle” documentaries about Rennes-le-Château. The subject matter always stuck in my mind and I kept going back to it because it was presented as an authentic historical mystery. And it was after all by the BBC.

It was also during that time that I began developing another interest in anthropological matters of early history – I got interested in the works of R. G. Wasson, Albert Hofmann and Richard Evans Schultes. Of course, I had to brush-up on the romantic nonsense of Terence McKenna, Carlos Castaneda, Timothy Leary, José Argüelles, and the like.

To every skeptic there are 10,000 believers in pseudo-history and pseudo-science who make all the noise.

But they can never provide the evidence to back up their beliefs. Because they are all addicted to the Quest For The Unreal rather than holding the disciplined world of Sober Reality.

I have to be thankful to Rennes-le-Château for sharpening my tools of scepticism.