Tom
Back in 1999 I worked in a bar with a loveable rogue from Sheffield named Tom. Tom was the incredible bullshitting man; he just couldn’t say something without embellishing it with a lie. This made basic conversation almost impossible, as what Tom said was usually the complete opposite of the truth. He would tell you that he had seen TV programmes and films that he hadn’t, he would tell you he was working the next day when he wasn’t and in his 33 years on the planet he claimed to have served in the army, been a lifeguard, travelled the world, cycled the length of Britain, been a prominent criminal gang member and spent time in prison. He was also married with two children.

After 3 months of working with Tom I had learnt to take everything he said with a truckload of salt. One day he told me that he had been in Strangeways prison during the riots and had spent a few days up on the roof with the other jailbirds. “Of course you did Tom” was my immediate thought. Soon afterwards Tom and I parted company when I started another job and Tom became a private investigator (or so he told me down the pub, astronaut or secret agent are just as likely).

About a year later I was watching a news report about the 10-year anniversary of the Strangeways riots and my jaw dropped, I could quite clearly see in the archive footage a much younger Tom, standing on the roof, grinning like a loon, lobbing slates at the screws below.
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Thu 29 Nov 2007, 15:18, 1 reply)

I last met Tom in Tokyo
He was working for one of those consulting companies who lied to everyone a few years back saying they were going to change their name to "Tuesday" or something. I met him in an English pub in Ropongii. We were served Boddingtons draft by a Manc. Landlord who had once been at a party with one of my ex's (which involved a swimming pool and a large rugby palying man of african desent, whom I'd met) - he might have embellished the tale, slightly, after I told him we had just split up). Anyway.

Said consultant (Tom) spun this tale of when he and some fellow revellers from said pub, had commandeered a JCB and took for a ride home through Yotsua San Chome. They ended up with motor cycle out riders and being blessed by the Sun Prince of Japan.

That has to be the most outrageous story I've ever been told*

Later that week, however, we were in another bar (this time in Yotsua San chome) owned by an Irish ex-Judo Champion.

When relating our experience the owner said. Tom? I know Tom he's that f*&cker from KPMGPwCMcAutherPark. It's all true. I know it because I was driving the JCB.

(no shadow of a lie)
(12 degrees of freedom and all that)
(more like 2 degrees of expat freedom in Japan)



*Until this week's QOTW that is.
( buffet_the_appetite_slayer ٩(●̮̃•)۶ jacked in to the ICE on, Thu 29 Nov 2007, 15:50, closed)