What links Nazi UFOs, extreme yoga practices and James Joyce’s Ulysses?

They were all topics discussed with passion and humour at the Catalyst Club on Thursday. Brighton’s talking club is an old-style monthly salon offering short talks about subjects the speakers love, attended by an eclectic audience with enquiring minds.

First was Dave Robinson, whose talk Nazis In Space questioned whether there was any truth behind claims the German Army developed flying saucers in the Second World War.

Yoga teacher Sue Bradley enthralled with tales of yogic cleansing techniques such as how to clean your nose (Jala Neti) by pouring warm salt water in one nostril and out the other. She explained how important urine is to the pharmaceutical industry and how the current trend to drink your own is from an ancient tradition to abolish old age.

Finally Tony Gill, who left school with one O-level, tried to persuade us to read Ulysses by James Joyce. Heralded as the greatest modern work of literature, it is a notoriously difficult read. Tony advised us to “treat it like a CD, play the bits you like. It doesn’t matter where you start”. The Catalyst Club is an entertaining and surprising evening and with its open speaker policy, why not have a go yourself?