Doug
For some reason I am "blessed" with having known several epic bullshitters of Blair-esque proportions. I will recount the tales here no doubt, but I'll start with the most deserving recipient of public humiliation first. Ladies and gentlemen I give you Douglas. A man with a pathological aversion to reality. A bullshitter par excellence.

During my first year of A Levels I used to frequent the Colchester Town House to while away the free periods and lunchbreaks by playing pool and watching MTV with a group of about seven of eight of us. One afternoon, one of the chaps brought a new mate along called Doug who was apparently an ex college student studying an "inbetween-A-Levels-and-degree-type-course" at the Colchester Institute. Doug seemed like a funny guy, a great storyteller and seemingly knew everyone.

Wierd thing was that I'd been at college a year already resitting and had no memory of the guy whatsoever. No matter, my sixth form was a large college of some 1700 students and it was impossible to know everyone. He apparently knew my face, so I didn't give it a second thought.

Anyway, Doug had led a very colourful life, having moved to our town some three years before after some nasty business with a dead girlfriend and moving back in with his parents and doing his A Levels in a year etc. All very tragic, but in his words he didn't let it get to him. Kinda inspirational I suppose. Anyway, he still seemed like a nice guy so we enjoyed hanging out with him.

We'd sit and console him when the nasty dead girlfriend business seemed to be getting him down and offer a comforting cigarette. He'd respond with many gushing tributes in return about how we were all really decent people and that he was eternally in our debt.

He even took to meeting up with us in the college, as being an ex student he knew his way around and was familiar with many of his ex tutors - always a perennial topic of discussion. He would join in the banter of how Geoff Floydd played the guitar on the last day of term, how John Edwards kept students rapt during Physics with his melodic Welsh diction and how Tim Harrison was always to be found in his cupboard playing "Dungeon Master" instead of teaching Computing.

However, the moment one of us reached into our pocket, ostensibly to retrieve a cigarette, Doug's eyes would be darting around like a rabbits. "Would you like a cigarette?" would always be followed with "Yes please! Will sort you out in a couple of days when I get paid".

Being half-Danish he had apparently gotten himself a driving license after spending a summer in Copenhagen with family friends known as the "Mullers". Doug kindly offered to drive us all to an out of town flea pit for late night drinking and had gone so far as to phone around priming folk.

However, Doug was beginning to cause some controversy. His stories were repetitious, despite supposedly getting paid, his refunds at the tobacco account were not forthcoming. Nor were the mythical lifts to pubs on nights out. As a friend he was failing to deliver and starting to sponge.

Morevoer, any group discussion on any given subject would result in Doug responding with "Ah that reminds me of the time I..." followed by the sudden death of conversation.

Then there was the sudden realisation amongst all my friends that none of us recognised Doug from college the previous year. Someone piped up "Well, Doug was in the year below me at school!". Hmm. I took Doug to one side and challenged him outright. Apparently, Doug was badly dyslexic and this kept back a couple of years. However, by late 1989 he'd made sufficient progress to be accepted into college to study his A Levels. Which he'd passed, grade As all round of course.

After hearing a lengthy tribute to Doug's lamented Mini Cooper S (in which his girlfriend was supposed to have died, Marc Bolan style). We sat down and did the maths... Started college in '89... Sat A Levels in '91... Nineteen years old... Owned three cars... Lived "Up North" for a while... Spent a summer in Copenhagen learning to drive... Hmm....

More concerning was the incident when a drunken Doug (who naturally posessed the alcohol tolerance of an elephant) fell flat on his face in an nightclub. This was put down to an epileptic fit, as Doug apparently suffered epilepsy for years. He was all right though and apparently safe to drive us all home from the party he was throwing the following weekend.

Then it all started to fall apart for Doug. He started to date one of the girls we knew and the balloon of bollocks was burst. She liked him, but refused to cover up for his monumental shit talking. Thing is, Doug was a nice guy, he really was okay and accepted by all until he started to talk through his arse. She sat him down and explained this to him, told him to be straight with everyone and own up. But he just couldn't help himself. His girlfriend's announcement that Doug was in fact only 17 was met with a wall of bullshit when we challenged him. He was desperate to impress and his lies had snowballed to the extent where they had taken over his life.

He was also an accomplished martial artist, being a second dan holding blackbelt Judoka and former runner up in the nationals. This was of particular interest to my best mate Clive, who was in fact a first dan blackbelt and runner up in regional competitions. Clive's response was "Douglas who?". One of the guys took Doug along to their karate class and was somewhat surprised to witness Doug turn up in his Judo Ghi, but wearing a very tattered green belt. Apparently the black one was only brought out for special occasions and green was his "lucky colour". Neither would he spar with Clive, for they were both members of "different Judo associations".


Hell, we owed him the opportunity to redeem himself and were upfront with our skepticism and reassured him that it didn't matter.

But no dice. The reason he was absent from the 1991 college leaving photo was because he was ill on the day it was taken. The fact that he was nineteen and having posessed a Danish driving license for three years was explained by virtue of it being legal in Denmark to drive at sixteen and therefore could legally do so in Britain. Having met up with a few of us in the college, he even walked up to the college principal - who proclaimed no recollection of Doug - and asked if he remembered teaching Doug physics the previous year. His "Danish driving license" was unearthed and upon inspection entitled him to drive an electric buggy around Legoland. His failure to drive anyone home from his house party was due to his parent's car having a flat battery (Doug had even gone to the trouble of wiring the battery charger in prior to folks turning up) and also the fact that his older brother decided not to leave his Golf GTi at the family home.

At this point, Doug was on the verge of becoming a social pariah. However, his ability to inspire loyalty in people around him ensured that he was still tolerated.

Then one day he announced he was joining the Army. But this wasn't enough for Doug, oh no. He couldn't bear the thought of being considered second rate in any way so he followed this bombshell with the assertion that he was off to Sandhurst for officer training. Yep, he'd be rubbing shoulders with public schoolboys and minor royalty.

And thus Doug fell off the social radar for a couple of years. I briefly bumped into him in a club around 1993 when he told me that he was on £17k a year and owned a brand new Vitara. That was his conversation opener.

As an epilogue, I was at a party in 1995 and a familiar face appeared. Doug! He showed me the photos from Sandhurst, where he was dressed in his military olive greens - but for reasons of not wanting to be a potential assasination target for IRA hitmen he was ordered to remove all rank insignia from his uniform.

But he didn't stop there... Oh no... Apparently he was honorably discharged from the Army. The reason being that he'd been posted to Bosnia and been involved in a firefight which resulted in him being seriously wounded. He would be in a wheelchair within a couple of years, but would be receiving a substantial amount of cash in compensation. He suffered from horrible nightmares about the battle in which he'd been involved and could still hear the noise of the chopper which had been sent to evacuate him.

It was obvious that he had been working on this particular fantasy for some time. For he finished with the assertion that the £250k of compensation would set him up for life. He would buy a flat and best of all, he'd like us to give him a lift to the local Jaguar dealer in the morning as he was going to inspect an XK8...

Since then there have been sightings of the mythical Doug. He's been spotted serving beers behind the bar of a local pub (he was apparently brought in to manage the bar). He's also been seen locomoting without the aid of a wheelchair (or indeed a Jaguar XK8), some eleven years after his crippling altercation with Bosnian Serb militiamen.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Thu 29 Nov 2007, 17:02, 4 replies)

holy fuck
Tim Harrison? Doesn't that mean you went to colchester sixth form too?
( Barry Chuckle III - the troll with a soul., Thu 29 Nov 2007, 19:18, closed)

Busted!
Yep, sure did!

Just keep it between us two, okay?

[edit - Tim Harrison actually taught Computing very well, I gots me a C thanks to him]
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Thu 29 Nov 2007, 19:28, closed)

*click*
For the localness :)
( mr_wicksy is.... old., Fri 30 Nov 2007, 7:47, closed)

He sounds mental
What is it about pathological liars and stories about the army, I wonder? Everyone seems to know someone who tells similar crap.
(pharmatron Death or Scunthorpe? CHOOSE!!, Fri 30 Nov 2007, 10:45, closed)