Impressive liars? (In a fun way!)

Sharing an office temporarily with a guy who has come out with some corkers already.

He see’s me coming in on my bike this morning, then proceeds to tell me he once had a ‘top of the range MTB’ with ’21 gears and everything’ and he was on the local dual carriageway doing 52mph (it’s pancake flat, he smokes like a chimney and exists on haggis and cheese pannini)

I remember his son from School, so I asked him what he does with himself now ‘He used to be the worlds number 1 DJ, but he got a bit fed up, he’s working in a filling station now’ 😆

Another guy I used to work with (pattern forming here, I must possess a magnet) who used to tell some peaches, like the time he was on holiday with his wife, she’s at the pool, he goes for a stroll down the wee spanish harbour, meets a skipper who asks him if he wants to go fishing for a wee while. Aye, our hero did. He was away for a week. 8)

Legends the pair of them, proper Kenny Senior types.

Give us your tales of Forrest Gump wannabes.

He see’s me coming in on his bike this morning, then proceeds to tell me he once had a ‘top of the range MTB’ with ’21 gears and everything’ and he was on the local dual carriageway doing 52mph

What speed were you doing on HIS bike?

Oops! 😆

Worked with an English bloke who used to inform whoever would listen that he was actually a gunner on the Huwies during the Vietnam War…..Although when quizzed whether he actually had Merican citizenship, or any photos from his time there would always go a bit quiet.

We knew someone who would drop any story so we played the best BS story with a straight face, just escalate until he makes a dick of himself

Did a local charity ride, was chatting to a fella before we set off who proceeded to tell me and anyone who would listen that he was a professional racer back in South Africa. At the first significant corner, he just carries on in a straight line straight off the road and into a big mess of brambles. He was a bit less gobby for the rest of the day.

I used to know a guy who was a serial BSer. It got to a point where we were feeding him stories, then a week later he’d forgotten who’d told him and regurgitate them back to us, only with himself being the subject of the yarn.

One of his favourite topics was around how he used to be in the army before we knew him. Handy for him as it was utterly unprovable. To hear him talk you’d think he’d been in charge of the SAS, knowing him he’d probably spent a week in the TA (or knew someone who had). He couldn’t go into detail though because he “wasn’t allowed to talk about it.”

For context, this was mid-90s so he’d have been in his early- to mid-20s when we knew him. One night, we’d had a get-together and I was sleeping on a couch at a friend’s. Earlier that day his then-girlfriend had propositioned me (being the stud-muffin that I am) and I went, “er, no, because you’re going out with him.” For reasons I can’t quite fathom, once the party was over and everyone had turned in for the night she confessed to him what she’d done.

The first I knew about this was when I was confronted in the middle of the night by a very angry thick-set dwarf. Why he was angry at me god only knows, she’d ask me out and I’d said no, she said “ok then” and that was that.

Purple of face and spitting with rage, he came out with the immortal line, “I’ve fought in two wars for the likes of you!!” Needless to say, me bursting out laughing didn’t help diffuse the situation any.

Oh yeah, same guy, used to carry around a photo of his squad from his time in the army.

It was a still from Platoon.

A Liverpool fan mate of mine once claimed to be on a private helicopter on his way to a game that had been organised for him by Ian Rush. He was actually on his phone in his bedroom as we had phoned him from downstairs..
He was know as Bullshit-boy..

One of rocket jr’s friends had a dad who was a bodyguard/mercenary of some sort. Rarely turned up for parents night (too risky) and when he did he was always looking around for snipers/escape routes etc. Never shared any of the taxiing duties he was always ‘away’. One night I dropped his kid off and he answered the door in the full Man From Milk Tray outfit + Action Man realistic hair but looked kind of well fed for a trained assassin. While I returning his sprog he looked straight through me and kept looking up and down the street

Turns out he worked in admin for G3

exists on haggis and cheese pannini

Hold the phone, haggis and cheese pannini sounds inspired!

We had a war hero here for a while as a contractor. Used to be able to drive up to Glasgow from Exeter in 3 hours….

He was going to get a house extension, but the builder wanted £80k (or thereabouts), he did it himself in three months for £50k. To be next person he spoke to he did it with his teenage sons in 2 months for £30k, and by the end of the week he’d got it down to 4 weeks and £10k.

This highly experienced and skilled individual then went to create more rework than any of the 16y/o apprentices we had through the dept.

The only truth we got from him is that he did actually appear to have his leg blown off in the Falklands…… but was easily able to stay cool enough to spark a fag as he was getting winched into the helicopter

Legend, I am not for one minute doubting his taste in Pannini fillings!.

The forces guys I’ve worked with have quite often been like our heroes above too, one who when stationed in Germany claimed he had a fireblade and an Escort Cosworth at the same time, and he played rugby for the British Army side. Which was quite unfortunate, as another fellow who started soon after actually did, at the same time as the nutter, and had no recollection of him.

Oh how we laughed.

I work with a software tool/product called X – the name could be considered a generic term, if you try, but it’s actually a product that is not very well known.

Interviewed a chap the other day to work with this product. I was suspicious because it’s not mentioned on his CV but the agent assured us he has experience. I asked him about his experience in X, and when I got into more detail I realise he’s talking about the generic concept actually implemented in Y. After loads more bolx I finally manage to make the point that X is actually a specific product, and he doesn’t believe me, and then starts to contradict me telling me it’s not.

a) it’s my job and b) we’re at the end of a project implementing it. I think I’d know if it didn’t exist.

We had a brilliant walt on sv650.org forum for a while, I think essentially nothing he ever said was true… But the fun part was, you could feed him info or lines and watch him build them into his myth. Frexample, I showed him how to do a wee fix on his bike, 2 weeks later he was posting about how he’d invented this fix and done it to 30 bikes over the years. He was always off fighting terrorists, or being let off by a judge for doing 150mph (on a bike that could only do 130mph) because of his heroic service. Some of it I’m sure he’d read in Warlord.

I think it was about 50/50 between people played him along because it was funny, and people who swallowed it whole. Eventually he faked his own heroic death in action and finally a bunch of the actual ex-services dudes got fed up and outed him. A really strange chap. I was never really sure if it was cruel to play him along or if it made him happy.

maybe you been lied to molgrips?

There was a friend of a friend when I was around 20 who would regularly come out with howlers. One was the story of how he got a trial to play for AC Milan when he was 16 – the only evidence any of us had seen of his football skills was the time he went to kick a discarded can of Irn Bru on the pavement and managed to spray himself with juice as it was half full.

Had a lab manager years and years ago who had a reputation as a bit of a slimy guy. He was apparently walking through one of the labs on the phone up to his ear saying “Oh no, that’s no good – I wouldn’t get out of bed for anything less than 60 grand!”. Then his phone started ringing in his hand!

I remember a few years back on one of the forums I frequented at the time. A guy who appeared to be a normal and likeable chap was posting as two people,one male and one female.
After months of flirting they finally got it together – so we thought.
I can’t remember how it all unraveled, but it was Fail at epic levels.

Legends the pair of them, proper Kenny Senior types.

Cheers OP

Chap who used to occupy the office opposite mine (law firm, everyone had an office) would regularly have his feet in the desk, bellowing some bullshit at an uninterested client at the other end of the speakerphone. His prodigious – “I sail you know” – fake tan lead us to nickname him Ron Seal. The partner he worked for preferred to call him Turd. From several offices away….

As well as being keen on a fake bake, our Ron was also legendary in his inability ever to be seen with a girl on his arm. Mainly because it was evident he hadn’t yet come out. Not least to the very out gay chap at the end of the corridor (we’ll call him Dave).

At the time Facebook took off, Ron whispered from one end of the corridor to the other to Dave to come and have a look at photos of Ron’s girlfriend on Facebook.

There, on the screen, is a picture of four people. Two guys, two girls. “There, that’s Claire,” says Ron, pointing to the blonde.

It initially struck Dave as odd that the photo wasn’t of Ron and Claire. Until he looked closer and instantly realised that “Claire” was in fact “Sarah”, one of Dave’s university friends. She was with her husband. Dave had taken the photo….

I suspect Ron’s still fabricating women as we speak, poor chap.

I asked him about his experience in X, and when I got into more detail I realise he’s talking about the generic concept actually implemented in Y.

Your algebraic anecdote reminds me of another.

Years ago, I was part of the interview process for technical staff. I had a few standard questions, and a few I’d make up on the fly based on what they’d claimed on their CV.

Had one guy in, claimed to have years of extensive Novell Netware experience. This was a problem for me as I knew little about it. I trawled the building in a flap trying to find a network bod, eventually tracked down a Novell guru and he agreed to be on standby.

Interviewee turned up and it transpired that his many years of Netware experience boiled down to, in his previous job when he logged in to his computer the little login dialogue box had “Novell Netware” written across the top.

I have a “mate” who’s known as Eleven-erife. Because if you’ve been to Tenerife he’s been to Eleven-erife.

The stories are endless.

worked with a guy who was adamnant he had a sierra cosworth engine in his mk5 escort… but occludent show me as the bonnet was welded shut? (ignoring the whole front/rear wheel drive issues!

Another guy who taught the SAS/ Paras first aid (none of the ex regiment/SF guys had heard of him)

I knew a Billy Liar a few years ago who reckoned his mate had a MTB with 72 gears. On questioning him about what make it was & which components were on it he said his mate had made it himself.

Cougar – Moderator

Interviewee turned up and it transpired that his many years of Netware experience boiled down to, in his previous job when he logged in to his computer the little login dialogue box had “Novell Netware” written across the top.

In my last job, I accidentally told a massive lie in my application and interview, due to jargon- we used the same word for 2 totally different processes and it turned out I had no relevant experience at all for about 50% of the daily work 😆

mate had a MTB with 72 gears

Easy-peasy! Sturmey Archer CS-RK3 with 8 speed cassette and triple up front! Imagine that with 11sp cass and Schlumpf bottom bracket 😈

I knew a bloke who claimed his old-man was a Marine, works abroad on special missions all the time and he hardly ever sees him.
Fast forward two years and his father started to pick him up from the school. Big chap, scars and lots of tats. Turned out he was serving a sentence.

Another serial one upper here.

We we discussing what exotic foods/meats we had eaten, and we had the usual ones, croc, kangaroo, snake etc then our hero pipes up with….

‘I’ve ‘et lion.’
‘Really? Where?’
‘On holiday’
‘But where?’
‘This right weird restaurant in Lanzarote’
‘What did it taste like’
‘Can’t really remember, it was ages ago’

Etc etc

(I have checked to see if you could even buy lion meat, turns out you can, in the U.S. 16oz of stewing meat is $1200 online. I’d remember what a twelve hundred dollar stew tastes like.)

He was clearly lion about it…

can we include bullshitting kids when you were at school? one poor sod was never allowed to forget his claims (bear in mind this is now >30 years ago) that his dad wheelied up Mt Everest and worked in a conker factory. He wasn’t the brightest, that one.

Mate and I on holiday in a sleepy village somewhere in South Wales got chatting to a lass one night. It quickly transpired that this prospective “date” was mad as a box of frogs, and try as we might we couldn’t get rid of her. We took it upon ourselves to lie outrageously to her about our various lives.

Cue a series of one-upmanships from us both involving being test motorcycle riders for prototype superbikes and causing an International incident with the French President, and culminating in telling her that we were both astronauts for the European Space Agency.

She invited us back to her place for some ungodly reason, so we agreed so long as we could send a SWAT team round ahead of us to scan her pad for bugs and install panic buttons throughout her house. She agreed. We said we’d meet up later, and then ran like hell in the opposite direction.

Easy-peasy! Sturmey Archer CS-RK3 with 8 speed cassette and triple up front! Imagine that with 11sp cass and Schlumpf bottom bracket[/quote]

Disappointingly, Sheldon Brown’s only had 63
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/org/otb.html

Easy-peasy! Sturmey Archer CS-RK3 with 8 speed cassette and triple up front! Imagine that with 11sp cass and Schlumpf bottom bracket

So he may have been telling the truth!

Apart from the bit about his mate making it himself. This was in about 1994, was that stuff around then?

During University summer holidays I had a 2 day temp job working at a milk bottling plant whilst waiting to start a summer job with an engineering firm. Was asked on day 1 kick out if I could give a lift home to another lad who lived nearby – no probs at all.

We were chatting on the way back and I asked what he did outside of bottling milk. Apparently he was a police special constable. Fair enough I thought – good on him. He was apparently in the traffic division of the special constables. Hmmm, not sure there is one I was thinking (correct me if I’m wrong on that assumption). Apparently the car he drove for it was a Vauxhall Vectra. With a 1000hp engine. And – in his words- “two times F1 chips” installed on the engine. It could do 200mph.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that may not be entirely true…

By contrast my niece lives in Leeds with a bloke whose legs were blown off by the Taliban and you couldn’t hope to meet a more modest, discrete guy.

The forces guys I’ve worked with have quite often been like our heroes above too

Just in case you missed it GT.

I used to lie to a colleague (because she was so gullible). She would simply believe anything I said. The only two I can remember were that I told her that I was a renowned opera singer and that I was a former gold medalist high diving champion.

A friend used to for a large videogames studio. Around 2009 he was looking to outsource some 3D modelling, so took a trip abroad to meet a load of companies. One launched into a slideshow of their very impressive looking portfolio… and pitched some of his own studio’s previous work to him as their own.

We had a genuine modern day Walter Mitty at my work.

Cpt Sir Alan McIlwraith was the title he gave for himself. This guy had basically invented a double life for himself as a Capt in the army. He used to regularly turn up to work in full uniform (completed with “medals”) and say he needed the day off to attend lunch with a general somewhere.

His wikipedia page, which he wrote naturally, claimed he was awarded a DSO for fighting off an enemy battallion single handedly.

Loads of people were taken in by him, he got coverage for his “charity work” and “heroic deeds” in some celebrity magazines. He persuaded the Captain of a cruise ship to stop in the Med as he was going to be uplifted by helicopter to go on an important mission! When the helicopter didn’t turn up he apologised and said there had bee a change of plans.

A couple of genuine ex-forces guys that worked in the office grew suspicious. Bits of his uniform weren’t right and his “medals” looked fake.

The Daily Record got hold of his story and he made the front page.

He didn’t turn up for work and was fired

Here is his wikipedia page:
link

Apparently he’s resurfaced a couple of times trying on new identities as a magician and a property tycoon.

A genuinely messed up character

Is that bloke Hora?

I have a strict rule for women – if one asks you back to hers after midnight, always say no – you’ll be too drunk and she’ll turn out to be a minger.

…This guy had basically invented a double life for himself as a Capt in the army.

Although given his Real Life was “a former call centre worker from Glasgow, Scotland” you can excuse the guy for living out a fantasy surely

I remember this one, richmtb- a sad, sad case.

hilldodger – Member
Although given his Real Life was “a former call centre worker from Glasgow, Scotland” you can excuse the guy for living out a fantasy surely

I think richmtb worked with him, hilldodger. I’m sure you didn’t mean to insult him.