Truth is people lie to save their own skins

NOT THE first husband in history to have committed adultery, the first colleague to have misled another nor the first employee to have swerved dismissal for a misdemeanour not technically a sackable offence, Phillip Schofield has gone down for admitting he told lies.

Jump before you are pushed is the shrewd move in such circumstances. ITV have expressed deep disappointment at the “admission of deceit”. “Unwise but not illegal” has become the catchphrase du jour, encapsulating the former daytime TV host’s “inappropriate relationship”.

Are not the majority of workplace carryings-on unwise? Might not most of them be legal? Extramarital liaisons breach matrimonial vows but are not, between consenting adults of any gender or persuasion, a criminal offence.

Who hasn’t experienced or been aware of them? The head of department and his secretary, the airline pilot and her steward, the consultant and their nurse are the clichés.

So why the fuss? Because lying is always wrong. It leads to greater problems for the liar and fallout for the lied-to than if he’d simply owned it and told the truth in the first place.

A wounded spouse will say it wasn’t the thirdparty sex they found shocking. It was the dawning that they had been taken for a fool. Their trust was slapped in their faces, and their life with their beloved was exposed as a sham.

I like to think I was a tolerant mother. My three children have always known, however, that I would never put up with dishonesty. You lied to avoid hurting me? You were afraid of losing my love? Because you didn’t want a row, or you were scared of what I might do? Pull this one instead.

TALK to me. Face it. You lied to save your own skin. Only a child fibs to conceal wrongdoing. If you need to hide something, you already know that it was bad.

I used to say I could forgive the first lie. That everyone deserves a second chance. No longer. Because dishonesty is like cancer. It erodes and destroys at a cellular level. Casual disregard for the truth has brought down prime ministers and presidents, governments and even countries, never mind disposable television presenters. Once they have shown what they are capable of, how can they ever be trusted again?

There are three sides to every story: his, hers and the truth. We dismiss truth as a frivolous irrelevance at our peril. Few things in life are so unequivocal. There is no room for interpretation or perception. It may even be key to our survival. For the simple reason that the lie with which we insult someone else is the lie that we tell ourselves.