Bogus CVS, the day my tiny son fell into a priceless Pompeii wine jar and why I’m proud of my duff exam results

THERE are two ways of lying on a CV, and the first is well illustrated by an impressive document drawn up by our eldest son when he first entered the jobs market, telling a life story almost wholly unrecognisable as his.

As I may have mentioned before, I came across it when he carelessly left it in the printer at home.

Under the heading ‘Advertising Industry’, for example, he claimed to have held a high-powered job ‘ liaising between a theatrical production company and the general public’.

In the course of his duties, he had apparently ‘developed keen social interaction skills’ and ‘acquired deep insights into sharp- end promotion and marketing techniques’.

It took me a good few minutes to work out that this must refer to a summer job he’d had, earning beer-money by handing out flyers to passers-by on the streets of Edinburgh, advertising shows on the Festival fringe.

In the section headed ‘Interests’, if my memory serves me, he described how his ‘extensive travels in Italy’ had stimulated ‘an early interest in classical antiquity’.

This could only refer to a fortnight’s package tour we’d taken, staying in Rome and Ravello, when he was three years old.

My most vivid memory of that holiday was of a day trip to Pompeii, where we perched the boy on top of a large terracotta wine jar of the 1st Century AD, to take a breather in the blistering heat.

To our horror, he fell in, bottom first, with only the top of his head and the soles of his feet visible above the neck of the jar.

Agonising

For an agonising few minutes, as we pulled and prised and heaved, it looked as if the only way we would ever get him out alive would be to smash this ancient relic.

It may have survived the eruption of Vesuvius and more than 1,900 years since — but could it outlast a visit from the threeyear-old Master Utley? It did, thank God, but it was a damned close-run thing.

Oh, well, perhaps I am harsh to call the lad a liar. An ‘embellisher’ might be nearer the mark.

At least he can truthfully claim to have had more in-depth, hands-on (or rather bottom-in) experience of the artefacts of classical antiquity than most of us.

But then there’s the second way of jazzing up a CV — and in this case, I’m afraid there’s no other word for it than lying.

Though it grieves me to report it, this was the method adopted by one of our other sons (no names, no pack-drill) after he’d approached his eldest brother for advice.

Instead of taking big bro’s impressive CV as a model of layout and presentation, he simply cut and pasted the sections on work experience and interests — advertising industry, extensive travels in Italy and all — and passed off his brother’s muche mbellished life history as his own.

If I had to put the case for the defence (and I admit it’s a pretty feeble one) I would say that: (a) he was applying only for casual work as a barman, where almost any CV will do as long as it doesn’t include a spell in jail; and (b) whopping though his whoppers were, at least they were considerably more modest than those of Dr Dennis Thomas Delcaron O’Riordan ‘LLB (Hons) BCL DPhil (Oxon) MA’.

He is the 51-year- old top City lawyer reported yesterday as having been forced to quit after he was exposed as a fantasist who fabricated just about everything on his dazzling CV, including all the letters after his name listed above.

He claimed to have won a first- class undergraduate degree at Balliol College, Oxford, followed by a doctorate.

According to his CV, he was then made an Eldon Scholar by the university, before going on to take a master’s degree at Harvard and being admitted to both the New York and Irish bars.

This little exercise in creative writing appears to have paid off handsomely, taking him to partnerships at two City law firms. But when he applied to join an unnamed barristers’ chambers, somebody smelled a rat and reported him to the Bar Standards Board, which suspended him from practice for three years.

The tribunal’s conclusions couldn’t be more comprehensively damning.

Splendour

Finding O’Riordan guilty of ‘ conduct which was dishonest or otherwise discreditable to a barrister’, it declared: ‘He did not attend Oxford University as an undergraduate and was not awarded a BA or BCL or a DPhil or an Eldon Scholarship by that university.

‘He was not awarded a master’s degree by the Faculty of Law at Harvard University. Further, he is not, and never has been, a member of either the New York or Irish Bars.’ Collapse of stout party.

Of course, it should go without saying that O’Riordan’s behaviour (I’m assuming he’s not lying about his name) was wholly disgraceful — and contemptibly unfair to the genuinely gifted, who put in the hard work needed to scoop the glittering prizes and accumulate all those letters after their names. So I know I’ll bring the wrath of cyberspace crashing down on me when I confess that I feel, if not admiration exactly, then at least the tiniest twinge of awe over this monster of mendacity.

For if you’re going to lie, isn’t there a sort of crazy splendour in telling the most gigantic whoppers you can dream up — i nstead of, s ay, exaggerating t he importance of a job handing out flyers at the Edinburgh Festival?

I have to admit that in my early days of job-hunting, I was often sorely tempted to lie about my less-than-sensational academic qualifications (five O-levels, A-levels graded B, C and D and a lower second-class degree in history, since you ask).

I’d like to claim it was my natural honesty that kept me on the straight and narrow, but I’m afraid it may have had more to do with my fear of being found out.

As our four boys grew up, my temptation to lie became all but overpowering, as one after another they accumulated a string of As, A*s and highly respectable degrees that left mine in the shade.

My only comfort, in my humiliation, was repeating the mantra that exams were much tougher in my day. But there was always that niggling worry in my mind that this might not be quite true.

What if Labour politicians were right when they claimed today’s youngsters had more and higher qualifications simply because they were brighter, harder working and better educated than my generation?

Disaster

But now we oldies can hold our heads a little higher and worry no more.

For this week, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has put the matter beyond doubt: exams really were tougher in my day.

After testing 166,000 people i n 24 education systems, the OECD has discovered not only that England’s young adults — festooned though they are with the most impressive paper qualifications in history — are among the least literate and numerate in the industrialised world.

The huge survey, which for reasons unknown does not include Scotland, birthplace of the Enlightenment, suggests that Britain is the only country where 16 to 24-year-olds perform no better than their parents’ generation.

Indeed, when factors such as social background are taken into account, attainment has actually gone into reverse.

Of course, this spells total disaster for our hopes of competing in an increasingly globalised economy, where the skills of the workforce count for so much.

Indeed, today’s report by 300 businesses and 24 academics on the STEM subjects of science, technology, engineering and maths suggests it will take a decade for us to close the skills gap with our competitors (and that’s assuming the rest of the world stands still).

May I humbly suggest that we won’t begin to close that gap until we abandon the catastrophic comprehensive experiment, bring back selection — and restore true rigour to exams?

Until that day comes, even the most honest youngster’s CV, listing endless top grades, will contain more than a hint of a politician’s lie.