Congratulations on having read this far. Reading anything whatsoever is apparently a dying art. According to a survey released last week to help promote World Book Day, 65% of respondents admitted lying about which novels they'd read in a desperate bid to impress people. The news was accompanied by a top 10 rundown of the least-read and most-lied-about books. Top of the list: George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Presumably people don't feel the need to actually read it because they can see the film adaptation taking place all around them every day, yeah? Yeah. In your FACE, Jack Straw.
Nineteen Eighty-Four is the only entry on the list I have actually read. The others include War and Peace, Ulysses, and the Bible. Apparently people lie about having read all these books because they think it'll make them appear sexier. Which begs the question: who the hell earnestly believes that claiming to have read the Bible from beginning to end is going to get them laid? Mention your love of the New Testament on a date and you might as well stick a fork in your face and start screaming about ghosts. Potential partners who genuinely adore reading the Bible on a daily basis traditionally don't mention it until later, when they've invited you back to their place to unexpectedly nailgun your hand to the wall while loudly reciting a selection of their favourite parables from memory.
Still, the most tragic aspect of the survey is the sheer number of people who lie about the same things. If you assume the respondents are at least vaguely representative of the nation as a whole, almost half of us have pretended to read Nineteen Eighty-Four, which means when you're lying about it to impress someone, there's a very good chance they haven't read it either. Both of you are hiding your true selves in order to avoid recrimination, which, ironically enough, is precisely what the citizens in Nineteen Eighty-Four wind up doing, not that you'd know. My favourite sequence in the book, incidentally, is the bit where the monkey drives the car.
Of course, whenever two people meet, literary fibs are just the tip of the iceberg. As potential partners initially circle one another, a full 98% of their conversation consists of out-and-out falsehood. The remaining 26% is wild exaggeration. It's an unnecessary game of bluff in which you both claim to be into the same bands, hold the same political viewpoints, harbour the same dark secrets and so on. Assuming it works and the pair of you get together, the rest of the relationship consists of either a) both of you slowly discovering what the other one's actually like, or b) one of you grimly maintaining the fiction that, hey, you're really into Bruce Springsteen, fell-walking or sex parties too, until the facade finally crumbles or you die of sheer despair.
The secret, then, is simply to let go: to not give a toss about what anyone else wants or likes or thinks in the first place. That way you won't paint yourself into a corner trying to impress them. In fact, the best strategy of all would be to actively put them off: confess to all your worst traits and guiltiest pleasures at the earliest opportunity. Tell them you don't know about that James Joop and his Ulyssesso pop-up book thingy, but you reckon James Herbert's Nazi-zombie thriller '48 is one of the most exciting books you've ever read (which it is, actually). Not only will this make them feel cleverer than you, and therefore good about themselves - which, let's face it, is a nice present to give to anyone on this cold and awful planet - you'll have set the bar so low there'll be no need to impress them later by packing Midnight's Children (number seven on the list) in your carry-on luggage when you eventually zoom off on honeymoon together. Instead you can spend the flight playing Super Mario Shoe Factory on your Nintendo DS. Everyone's happy.
The other irony is that while people lie about having read highbrow novels in order to impress each other, a massive percentage of highbrow novels aren't worth reading anyway because the authors are too busy trying to impress the reader (who, we now know, probably hasn't bothered turning up). That's why so many contemporary novels seem to largely consist of a thinly veiled version of the author discussing politics and art and quantum theory over a carefully selected bottle of wine with the devastatingly beautiful mixed-race wife of an impotent international statesman and/or gangster (delete where applicable) before whisking her off to a swish hotel room to have expert animal sex with her all weekend until a pigeon symbolising the unions or something crashes into the window and blah blah blah blah BLAH. I mean, really, who cares? Mr Tickle had 20 times the raw entertainment value - and it came with pictures - so if you can't beat that, don't bother.
In summary: reading is more trouble than it's worth, and lying about reading is even more pointless. Far better to glance at the cover and skip to the end every time. In fact, if you'd done that with this article, you could've got on with your day a bit quicker without listening to me burble on. Sorry about that. Now go away.
This week Charlie developed an irritating cold, which sat in his sinuses turning his nose on and off like a tap: "It was kind of like the ectoplasm equivalent of diarrhoea." Charlie watched the documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil: "Go and see it now, everybody, it's absolutely brilliant."
