Once upon a time, when I was wet behind the ears about scriptwriting and many other things, I had a friend. C was only my age, but seemed to have done pretty much everything, and could do it well. Her singing voice was amazing, she was a skilled pianist, could paint well, create decent electronic music, and she’d written a novel (albeit an unpublished one: I read and enjoyed it). To say she was an influence on me would be an understatement.

Anyway, she lived next door to a place where I was going for scriptwriting classes, and went to some herself. And I’d often end up at hers for a cuppa, where she would beguile me with tales of all the creative endeavours she’d been involved with. It would be fair to say that she was as much muse as friend.

I had been invited to work with some actors to write a short play, and threw myself into making that happen. It was a hectic and sometimes stressful time, everything new to me and the actors too, and the script unfinished as the rehearsals started, but we managed to pull together and do some performances of the piece.

The production happened and there were a few technical glitches that got me stressed, and I went over to C’s for guidance. She was kind and supportive, and in her role as mentor inspired me with the story of how she’d taken a play up to Edinburgh one year, even showing me a newspaper clipping about the show. I was impressed, and knowing that C could do it, carried on moving forward.

The play was called Probably A Robbery, and it was about a 24 hour garage that was home to a pirate radio station, where a robbery took place. Really, it was a homage to the culture of dole, dope, and DJs that I was part of at the time, and it was written for the people I knew who were part of that world, and not mainstream theatre goers, who I was much less concerned with.

Then I wrote a film treatment based on the play. Or at least something I thought would pass as a film treatment, my knowledge of such things being woeful at the time. And the treatment won a competition with 2000 entrants that, if you’ve read the ‘About Me’ bit here, you’ll know secured me a meeting with Working Title’s Tim Bevan.

I came back from London full of beans that night, and popped in to see C. Only, she wouldn’t let me in. Instead, I got a mouthful of abuse and was told to go away. That hurt, and it became clear when I met her again at a mutual friend’s place that she meant it, and also meant that she wanted nothing more to do with me again. I wondered what I’d done wrong, and tortured myself about the whole situation.

And then I saw another reference to the play that C had shown me the newspaper clipping about. And realised it hadn’t been written by her, but by someone with an almost identical name. And recalled some of the other things that C had alluded to which seemed perhaps unlikely. And realised, as other mutual friends started to, that C was a compulsive liar.

If you’ll go back to the first paragraph, you’ll see I say a number of things about C’s talents. All of them are true, because I had evidence of her doing them in one form or another. Other claims, about doing stand-up comedy or doing backing vocals for cultish bands, or studying at the electronic music centre IRCAM in Paris, remain in the realm of uncertainty.

At the time I didn’t join the dots between my success and C not wanting anything to do with me. In retrospect the connection is clear. She always had to be the brightest and bestest, and for an apprentice to surpass her in some way was intolerable. Though she may have been a messed-up bullshit artist, she was also prodigiously talented, and a real inspiration to me. And her lies helped me at a time when I needed guidance: even if she hadn’t actually taken a play up to Edinburgh, her story about doing so assisted me to find the strength to notch my own writing up a gear or two.