I wish I had the strength of character to be a liar

It’s wrong, I know, but there’s something thrilling about a really humungous lie.

It’s wrong, I know, but there’s something thrilling about a really humungous lie. Consider, for example, the sheer brass neck of Alan McIlwraith — or Captain Sir Alan McIlwraith KBE, DSO, MC, as he prefers to be known. This mysterious young war hero was pictured recently in the celebrity magazine No. 1 sipping champagne at a charity function. He was dressed in full military regalia, his breast clattering with medals, accompanied by a woman described as his wife, ‘Lady Shona’.

Sir Alan’s decorations were, he claimed, won on the battlefields of Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Northern Ireland and Kosovo. His acts of derring-do included rescuing a young woman from an angry mob with nothing but his bare fists. He had served as an adviser to General Wesley Clark, formerly Nato’s Supreme Allied Commander of Europe. His entry in Wikipedia — the online encyclopaedia to which anyone can contribute — was breathless in its praise. ‘Capt McIlwraith is known throughout the military world as a man that can get things done and is thought of as such a hero that the UN and Nato can look to in times of trouble,’ it swooned.

In case suspicious minds should wonder why this mighty warrior, this latter-day Hector, was not better known to the public, Wikipedia provided an explanatory quote, apparently from General Sir Mike Jackson, head of the army: ‘Very few photographs of Capt McIlwraith are in circulation as he is camera shy but a splendid soldier.’

It turns out, however, that there is a simpler explanation. Alan McIlwraith is not a hero, or even a soldier, but a call-centre worker from Glasgow. He was rumbled when his colleagues at Dell — where he earns £16,000 a year answering phones to firms who need their computers fixed — spotted his picture in No.