My 10 favourite celebrity 'liars'

Someone’s in trouble ummmmmmm.

I can’t deny I’m thrilled when someone of profile gets publicly caught out in a lie.

Well, usually I am.

Professor Jason Arday, the youngest black professor in Cambridge University’s history, currently stands accused of plagiarism in his PhD and a whole host of other allegedly dubious claims, some of which I assume will be included in his forthcoming memoir, Great and Unfortunate Things.

Usually, I’d be gleefully scrolling through the many articles about his alleged porky pies with my morning toast, privately feasting on his disgrace where no one can see me, but those speaking out in support of him say that this is part of a broader attack on black people in academia and I’m definitely against that, so now I don’t know what to think.

This week, he resigned and has started cancelling book events for later this month when his memoir is due to launch. Meanwhile, the press have gone whack-a-doodle describing him as “the Lance Armstrong of academia” and a “genius” depending on who you read.

With no instantly identifiable baddie here (although the story changes every hour at the moment), I scroll on having read compelling accounts from both sides and given up, glum not to have had my delicious dose of schadenfreude.

I know, I’m horrible.

But it’s Monday, there’s another heatwave coming and I’m desperate for some light relief from the most miserable summer (weather) I can remember.

An ugly little part of me craves schadenfreude when there’s even the potential of it on the horizon. I clear my mental shelves for all of the new information I’m going to need to accumulate when a new scandal breaks, stretching my scrolling thumb ready for the coming tit-bit onslaught.

But my need for this buzz comes with strict moral rules. The subject of the story must be caught doing wrong. I cannot enjoy humiliation for its own sake, it has to be consequential and born of righteous justice.

An example:

During my 1980s childhood, my mum would often come back from dinner parties at friends’ houses, glowing with a sheen of schadenfreude, bubbling over with stories about how the chicken was dry or how the gelatin hadn’t fully set in Jan’s salmon mousse.

I was quite old before I realised it wasn’t normal or kind to go to someone’s house for dinner and see it purely as an opportunity to take apart their cooking ability, looking closely for the flaws to comfirm that, yes, my mother was in fact the greatest cook of them all.

A few years ago, I told her about Come Dine With Me, a show in which four strangers take turns to competitively entertain one other with a dinner party before snarkily scoring each other out of ten in the cab home. It was practically made for her.

She didn’t understand why I thought she’d like it.

What I’m saying is, this habit of delighting in another’s misfortune was ingrained in me from birth but misdirected to included ‘everyone who isn’t me’ back then. My deep discomfort at my mother’s excoriating restaurant reviews now makes a lot more sense and means I don’t just throw a ghoolish watch party every time something juicy hits the headlines.

I don’t need to know what makes killers kill, because that knowledge is almost always at the expense of seeing the victims as rounded humans with lives and friends and agency.

I don’t watch or listen to true crime in the same way I’ve never enjoyed an episode of You’ve Been Framed. Not because I’m better or above such things. It just makes me feel like shit.

Grown-ups caught lying is my true cime. They make my morality matrix fizz and flash like a catherine wheel. I can’t get enough.

When a middle-aged woman falls off the table where she’s been dancing at a wedding reception and sends the cake splattering into a nearby child, all I can think of is the humiliation of the child now covered in butter cream and how much they were probably looking forward to the cake. Even typing this completely made up scenario is making me feel awful for that kid.

My true crime tastes extend exclusively to stories of con artists and cult leaders because they usually focus on the victims and their efforts to bring down the people who tricked them. Feel good stuff.

Basically, any grown-ups caught lying is my true cime ideal. They make my morality matrix fizz and flash like a catherine wheel. I can’t get enough.

Here are ten of the finest pop cultural transgressions (with varying degrees of severity) that have given me immense joy in recent times: