Thing 336 Oprah/Multiple Personalities

This is one of the rare occassions where I'm not terrible fussed if you're judging me or not, but I did spend a full half a day watching daytime TV. It's not like I've never seen daytime TV before, I've seen loads of it, but I've never spent six hours watching it on the couch before. Also, I've never seen Oprah before. Sure I knew who she was, it's not like you can escape the woman anywhere on this planet, I'd just never taken the time to watch her show before - exception being the time I found a YouTube clip of Tom Cruise apparently losing his mind and jumping on here couch.

Like I say, I don't really mind if you're judging. When having a day of being sick/terribly sorry for yourself, inspiration and motivation are hard to come by. Thankfully these days are few and far between enough for me to never have subjected myself to this terrifying ordeal before. And let's not row about this - daytime TV is a truly frightening experience. At times it's a little intriguing, like the moments when you find yourself trying to decipher exactly what Daithí O' Sé is saying to Claire Byrne. Other times it's enlightening, like that moment when you realise that Claire Byrne is going through the same thing you're dealing with. You can almost see it in here eyes: "What the hell did he just say...?".

Other times it's outrageous, like the moments when you find that you're laughing along to Ellen. That's the moment when you enter your shame spiral and hate yourself a little...

So I watched Oprah. If I'm being honest with myself, I can actually see the appeal. She's a pretty cool woman for someone who could actually declare herself the Empress of Humanity. As a Thing though, I worried that it wasn't enough.

So I did what any right-minded person would do in my shoes... I hit the town running.

After the productive members of the household arrived home from work, I realised exactly what I'd achieved with my day so far. Nada. So, I decided I'd get out, stretch the legs and try on a few different identities.

I hope you've all seen "How I Met Your Mother"? I'm going to assume so. If not, take a quick break from reading, get downloading/buying a DVD and get on it. Finish reading this later.

The Barney character, played by Neil Patrick Harris, routinely lies on his never ending quest for more sex. He's a hilarious character, and I'm sure that there's no one reading this who's never told a little white lie on a night out before, but what I was going for was not small fibs. I wanted to see if I could convince people to believe the most outrageous lies in the world.

Straight face is something I can do. And do well. It should also be mentioned that I wasn't trying to get laid, I was just trying to see how far I could push the line. Turns out very far, or not far at all, with little way of distinguishing between the two.

I told lies to men, women and bouncers. I told them I was a footballer playing for Sunderland, at home because of a knee injury. I told them I was a British Airways pilot from Glasgow who had a stopover in Shannon. I told them I was an American researching the family tree of the billionaire that I worked for in the hope of finding an heir. Not one person called me a liar. Some of them asked me questions, but I think I fielded them pretty well, and actually managed to convince them that I was who I claimed to be.

Problems: Limerick is tiny, and I know lots of people. Also, since I didn't bother to remember the names I'd given to people, I wasn't sure if people were calling "me" or not. Then there was times when I'd bump into people I knew, and people "I'd" just met.

Then there was the aftermath. Outside the club, everyone was congregating (I do love the word congregating by the way) and it became a minefield. I just pretended I was on my phone till I'd navigated my way through.

Goes to show though, if you're going to lie, you better be good at it, because otherwise, you're going to get caught, or make a giant tool of yourself. Not that that's anything new to me eh?