To get so irritated when people pretend things happened to them that clearly didn't?

[CalamityKate]

I was watching This Morning earlier and they had an email from a woman who trotted out the whole "Dug Up Rabbit" story. Of course Colleen and Ruth and Eammon had a right old laugh about it.

Which is lovely, but it didn't happen. It's an urban myth that's been repeated and repeated and repeated - often by celebrities on chat shows.

Snopes

It REALLY irritates me when people do this. Why lie? What on earth is the point of emailing a programme, pretending that something happened to you when it didn't?

I've seen it on forums too - people tell a story that is either clearly a lie (as in the Snopes example) or it just doesn't ring true and you just KNOW it's either completely made up or VERY heavily embellished.

I was actually tempted to email This Morning

I've had someone tell me that story about someone getting an STD you only get from dead bodies (which doesn't even make sense!) to my face. I find it hard to listen to bullshit like that- actually I start to get a bit angry that they think I'm so stupid I'd believe it.

Oh! And the "My friend went to a Chippendales show and one of the dancers threw his G-String into the audience and it hit her in the eye and later on she noticed her eye was sore and went to the GP and it turned out she had crabs in her eye/eyebrow" one

Anyone heard that?

Oh I have done Calamity, but she is so delusional that she refused to accept it.
She is the kind of person that will swear the pen is blue, even when you hit her in the face with a red pen, she will still swear that it is blue.

She is also one of those mothers who's DS was walking/talking/potty trained/doing algabra at 4 months old.

In the 70s/80s everyone used to do the 'gave an old lady a lift at a bus stop, reached for a cigarette, realised it was a man's hand, kicked her out car, found axe and rope in her shopping bag'

My own mother swore blind it had happened to her friend Gloria and even at the age of 8 I knew it was bullcrap.

Yy to the Chippendales one - with added 'scratched the red bump and hundreds of crab babies came out'

I see it on here sometimes and all the time in phone-ins/letters to the papers. I agree OP - why? Just for something to say?
Odd.

YY Brian I've heard that one too and got totally taken in

In terms of appropriating stories though, I go in another direction. I have a really bad memory, so when friends tell me a story about their friends - ie people I don't know - I often 'attach' it to the teller.

So a girl I didn't know very well once told me about her friend who'd been brought up by naturists and spent most of her free time in a nudist colony. FF 5 year and the girl who told me the story is a very close friend. In front of lots of other people she mentions being quite prudish and I declaim (loudly) 'small wonder after being brought up by naturists'.

Cue very long silence and friend looking at me as though I was completely insane

Two different teachers told me the "sunbathing on front of a fire" one, each claiming it had happened to them.

I did not feel annoyed, but viewed everything else said by them as possible bullshit.

but I've I'd not had it by email years ago, I'd have believed the first story, and would probably have found it so funny I'd have passed it on as "happened to a friend" sincerely believing that it had happened to someone I knew

Someone asked why the baby named chlamydia is racist, explanation here

What's the sunbathing/fire one??

I thought the stamp/gynie one happened in the book after the old girls network? catherine alliott wrote it well so I always assumed it was hers...like douglas adams and the biscuits. I really hate seeing those stories on mumsnet etc as true stories... Someone claimed the glittery flannel one in here a few months back and I just thought ' how sad'.

'And top marks for the teacher who contained her mirth at primary two "news time" in one of the Capital?s schools when a boy announced that he had come downstairs for a drink of water late at night and reported that he saw "mum and dad sunbathing in front of the living room fire". '
www.allscottishteachers.co.uk/story/58.php

thing is, I bet it really has happened to a teacher somewhere :)

Things is- - there are a few of these which could have happened more than once. Especially the ones which are really practical jokes (the mini on the roof/ the students changing the bedroom/etc). In the days when tents weren't actually connected to the groundsheet I was once present when a tent got "turned around" on top of a sleepingperson, sop it was facing the other way the next morning. It was very funny, but it could well have been something someone had "heard" about happening somewhere else and decided to mimic it.

I do occasionally tell this sort of story - although I do preface with "I once read about..." rather than pretending it happened to me.

And I first read the glittery fanjo one in a mother and baby type magazine in about 1997....

The eating someone else's crisps on train also pops up in Solar, by Ian McEwan. The character then retells story and is accused of lying.

McEwan's point is that it is SUCH a believable story that the chances are it does actually happen to people every now and again. And no one should be really very surprised.

I feel a bit like that about the glittery tissue anecdote. I bet it does actually happen a lot

£100k for giving Posh and Becks your hotel room though, maybe not

Oakmaiden - Of course some of them could have happened - and to more than one person in some cases! :-)

The "Sunbathing in front of the fire" is a good example of the more plausible ones.

I used to be taken in by the more outlandish ones but like you, I always, ALWAYS told it in a "I read in a magazine/I heard...." way. I've never pretended it happened to a friend of mine, much less pretended it happened to me.

X post with Oakmaiden

See, the same thing can happen to 2 different people.

Aah the irony

Let us not forget that Honeydragon found a whole spider in her fanjo. So a stamp is not beyond possibility.

a story doesn't haven to be be strictly true to be told, have you poetry in your soul? Yarn spinning, story telling, its an art form when done properly....the point is to entertain and amuse, not tonelessly recount exact truths.

In addition, who the fuck cares about an email to "this morning" of all things? Its nonsense from start to finish anyway.

• no poetry.

When i was at uni, my flatmate's bedroom got moved item by item into the lounge, so that when we got back from the pub, her own room was completely empty.
she just slept in it, because it was late and she was drunk and couldn't be bothered.

not an urban legend, though. not meant for jumping out of windows.

it is true, the best story tellers simplify the story, give it a clearer narrative, doesn't really matter how big the kernel of truth is or whether it really happened to a friend's Mum's cousin's uncle

mummytokatie flyingspaghettimonster I have read the glittery flannel story in a later Catherine Alliott, not TOGN (was the stamp version in there too?) It's also in a Tess Stimpson novel so at least one of them, and probably both, has, ahem, taken inspiration from the same source. legal -disclaimer-- Shame as it made me think less of CA whose books I like.

A variation on the food one actually happened to me when I was at Uni. I'd bought a coffee & a mars bar and had gone to sit down on a bench. A boy about my age was sitting nearby. I went to pick up my mars bar from where I thought I'd left it, beside me on the bench, next to my coffee. It wasn't there but the boy was eating a mars bar, which I immediately assumed to be mine. I think I said something very ineffectual and pathetic, before walking off, muttering to myself about the cheek of it. A few minutes later I found the mars bar in my bag. I can imagine this sort of thing probably happens reasonably often.

My aunts neighbour glitterised her fanjo before a smear. She grabbed what she thought was deodorant and sprayed her undercarriage (that part is the worst for me) but it was glitter hairspray. I don't see why variations of this couldn't have happened to more than one person.

Equally, another aunt did end up with "robin good, robin hood riding thru the glen" at her wedding instea of the Bryan Adams robin hood theme. I've seen that dismissed as urban legend on here before but most of my family were there - it definitely happened!