Just Williams

Simon’s guide to telling lies

CONSIDERING I’M AN ACTOR and lying is pretty much what I do for a living, you might find it surprising that I’m not much good at it. As a child I was taught that lies come in either black or white – so I always have to check which colour I’m telling. Is it black to save my skin and white to save someone’s feelings, or the other way round? A white porky for, ‘Do you really think I’ve lost weight?’ And black for, ‘Granny’s beautiful Ming vase didn’t break itself, did it, Simon?’ As a child I was the go-to suspect; always helping my parents with their enquiries. When they said, ‘I won’t be cross, darling, I just want you to tell me the truth,’ I knew not to trust them – they laughed at my poltergeist theory. Likewise with, ‘Have you been riding my bike?’ The primary fib was easy – ‘No!’ But the follow-up question undid me: ‘Then why has the seat been lowered?’ ‘Er... I was just practising with the spanner.’

A good lie needs rehearsal and steely eye contact. A grain of truth in the mix can work wonders too – the Oxo cube in the gravy; ‘based on a true story’ is all the rage. If I’d been George Washington caught near the cherry tree with a hatchet in my hand, I’d have improvised, ‘He got away, Pop, this massive bloke... [Panting for breath.] Look, here’s his hatchet – poor tree, huh?’

My mother said she always knew when I was lying – but could I believe her? And what was my word of honour anyway, was it like a password or a pin code? My children tell me my nostrils

A grain of truth in the mix can work wonders – the Oxo cube in the gravy

are the giveaway – they flare when I’m fibbing, apparently.

When quizzed about poor Monica Lewinsky, Clinton pleaded memory loss. Really, Bill? A bloke might forget his keys or his mum’s birthday, but as Barbara Bush commented, ‘He never forgets oral sex.’ The story went that Jeremy Thorpe did a nifty soft-shoe shuffle with the paparazzi: when asked if he’d ever had a homosexual relationship, he answered, ‘No, but I’ve slept with a man who has.’

My son-in-law pulled a ‘sickie’ telling his boss he’d snapped a tendon in his knee – silly fellow had to use crutches for a month. Not long ago I heard a man on his mobile at Gatwick, ‘Darling, I am stuck in effing Glasgow – I can’t get back till tomorrow.’ Fellow travellers gathered round – it was a bad line and he had to repeat his lousy whopper over our heckling. Tee-hee. I like the story of a drunk in the dock taking the oath, ‘I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truthity truth-truth.’

Simon plays Justin Elliott in The Archers