To pay tribute to the four Cumbrian liars who contributed so generously to our Festival of Lying, we slowly realised what we must do: enter the World's Greatest Liar Competition ourselves with a collaborative lie.

Anna, Karen & Nina set off from London on Thursday 16th November 2000, headed for the Santon Bridge Inn, Cumbria, where the annual competition takes place.

Arriving only minutes before the contest begins, we are unprepared but game. The function suite at the pub is packed, and, very unnervingly,the order of contestants is drawn from a hat as the evening progresses.

Luckily, we're on before too long.

And here are the brief notes we embroidered our lie from:

"Intro to who we are: Simon dropped us off at the other end of the lake

Intro to who they are: the love that dare not speak its name James Mason doesn't live up to his name Cliff.... Howard...... John........

Show how we love them: We all fell in love with our liars... Anna has started wearing glasses to match John Grahams. Nina takes to a kilt in sympathy with Howard, Karen is changing her name to that of a film star e.g james Mason

"What happened next: After we paid them to take part on the lying festival which was such a great commercial success they have decided to become artists, professionally, and to take that to its inevitable conclusion by coming to live in london. In fact we decide to do a sort of life swap, we are all dissillusioned by being professional artists,

What happened In London to them: When the liars are in london John sells all his cows and guinea pigs, like many farmers before him, it is a difficult goodbye, but he happily relishes the idea of a new cosmopolitan lifestyle. Jimmy simply leaves home in Whitehaven one evening, leaving no info of his whereabout.s Howard floats wasdale.com on the stock exchange Cliff..

....." In London the liars start eating vegetarian food and drinking only vegan soya milk. Like all Londoners they have to have special diets, they sit in traffic jams for a while on various vehicles, tractors then take to the streets by bicycle or on foot.

The tube becomes a favorite haunt..... dome and whee.... john spends absolutely hours in the department stores, harrods, selfridges etc, mooning around just looking at the stuff. Cliff joins him and cant stop himself buying

"What happened in Cumbria to us:

Meanwhile, as the commercial disaster of the lying festival showed, they'd need to come up with something better to earn a living - like 99% of Lake District folk, they open a B&B in the wilds.

They find a really remote place, so remote there are no roads at all going there. transport...stags etc the recent floods have doubled the number of Lakes, and we thought there were too many already but at least it draws more windsurfers to our B & B.

 

"The artists meanwhile are floundering quite badly in the wilds, and have started to try and get other work .... What happened In London to them - continued: Howard is fascinated by the terrorist attacks on various buildings, recently a missile was launched from anna's local park at the secret service HQ,

H meets Tony Blair one day by chance as he's strolling up whitehall to have a look at Nelson in Trafalgar sq??? Cliff..zoo - animals.....

"Jimmy discovers Soho and starts to hang out in Raymonds Revue Bar and the groucho club - lap dancing joke....he/ they meets Mr Saatchi as he's finished his meal Saatchi offers him a drink and they willingly accept, the drinks are on him, the london prices of £3 a pint have left them below budget saatchi sells plate? £ joke

End: We realise we failed , but they've succeeded - we give them their artistic licenses. Applause..."

We were given a warm reception by the audience - there was even some realistic-sounding laughter.We made our way triumphantly off the tiny stage and enjoyed the rest of the evening.

Next up was James 'Jimmy' Mason from Whitehaven (left)

After deliberation by the judging panel. which included the mayoress of Whitehaven, John Graham once again was voted 'The World's Greatest Liar'.