(Rael’s childhood friend, Excerpts from Le Progres de Lyon on 16 Jan 2003)
“The Extra-Terrestrials, we invented them one evening in 1973 when we had good drinks with meal close to the place Gaillard in downtown of Clemont-Ferrand. We were three, and Claude Vorilhon was very impressed when Franck Messegue told him how his father made a fortune. He had just his journal Autopop, which was agony.”
“At that time, I was twenty years old. We were band of fifty to go out in Clemont-Ferrand. We were hanging out to the same pubs, the same clubs connected of the moment. The evening of good drinks with meal, we had passed the night to be delirious on a hoax that we could launch. The idea of the Extra-Terrestrials came from Franck. The tranquil place close to Puy de Dome I suggested him, between Puy de la Vache and that of Lassolas, in remembering that I went out on a motocycle.”
“For us, it was for laughing. Not for Claude. The next day he went to the editorial of La Montagne, to tell ‘his’ story. He was dismissed. When things didn’t work out as planned (Des que la mayonnaise a pris), he left Clemont-Ferrand, and the people who knew. I remember that he was fascinated by the success of Maurice Messegue, who made a fortune with the herbs. His son explained, dissected the method of his father, and Vorilhon hadn’t lost crumbs.”
Note: La Montagne is the same journal that the conference was held by and given by Jean Sendy in Clemont-Ferrand on 4th March 1974.
