Why Let The Truth Get In The Way Of A Good Story?

Have you ever read the late great British actor David Niven’s autobiography, ‘The Moons A Balloon’?. No? Really? You’re having me on! Disgraceful behaviour. Now, go to your room and don’t come down until you’ve read it cover to cover. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, the best autobiography anyone in any field has ever written. It is hilarious, sad, tragic, comical, dramatic and pretty much any other epithet you could throw at it. It is also, at various times, either completely untrue or, at best, grossly exaggerated.

You see Niven was an excellent raconteur and story teller so, as a result, his stories were often exaggerated in order to make them more interesting and, generally, funny.

I am, I must admit, a firm believer in not letting the truth get in the way of a good story.

For example, I occasionally tell the tale of when I was caught in bed with a lorry drivers wife when he returned home unexpectedly and I had to shin naked down a drainpipe much to the amusement of my best pal below and several elderly ladies peering through their curtains to discover the sound of my pals raucous laughter.

This is a true story other than it was actually my best pal doing the naked drain pipe shinning rather than me. The first time I told the tale in a pub, whilst I found it hilarious, others merely smiled weakly or just continued drinking their beer obliviously.

Taking a leaf out of Niven’s book I embellished the story considerably at it’s second telling, replaced my pal with myself and it went down a storm.

A thought occurred to me the other day – don’t laugh I do have the odd thought you know – and it has left me slightly perplexed.

As I age and my memory is sometimes not entirely what it was, how many tales have I told in an embellished fashion to get more laughs that I have come to believe in as the truth? Apparently, according to old pals of David Niven’s, he sometimes came to believe his embellishments too.

Could it be that it wasn’t really me who was chased naked into a pub in the Lake District with an equally naked blond girl closely pursued by her boy friend and then a pal of mine wielding a chain saw in an effort to protect us from said boy friend. The landlord, quite understandably, shouted to my pal to ‘put it down!’ which he duly did forgetting to turn it off and it sawed through the bar.

Surely my mind couldn’t really believe that happened to me if it actually happened to someone else could it? Perhaps it wasn’t a chain saw at all but merely a hand drill – but I distinctly remember a chain saw cutting through the pub bar. I also distinctly remember, on the arrival of the police, the girl borrowing two police men’s helmets to cover her modesty.

What about the time I staggered drunk through Manchester in my police cadets uniform – having replaced the blue band with a stolen chequered band for authenticity as a genuine police officer – swinging a stolen truncheon around my finger, cap turned backwards on my head and doing a Charlie Chaplin walk.

There is no way in a million years that wasn’t me. I know that because, as a result, the police asked me to resign. Back in the mid 70’s they didn’t sack you but if they asked you, you resigned or your life was cadet hell!

Oddly, the Chief Superintendent who asked me to resign asked me to return at 18 as he thought I’d make a good copper. How odd.

So, old chums, could it be possible that, as I age, I’m starting to forget which stories are true, which have embellishments and which are merely fabrications or gross exaggerations?

Still, perhaps it doesn’t matter too much really.

I often regale my driving students with my little stories and they laugh out loud. This, in turn, calms them down and they learn more swiftly and are more relaxed. I often tell them a tale or two just before their test. Again, they relax and laugh and, as often as not, pass.

Perhaps it doesn’t really matter too much does it? It doesn’t really do any harm and, perhaps, it may even bring a little cheer at times a little cheer is needed.

Besides, I once told a driving student that I wrote for an internet magazine called Mad Mikes America and said magazine had hundreds of thousands of readers.

“Yeah! Right! Course you do!” said my student in disbelief.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story eh? 😉

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