Conversation between John Graham, Anna Best, Nina Pope, Simon Poulter & Karen Guthrie following on from the letter that Anna sent to John.

Silloth, Cumbria

Anna: I just ramble on too long really, but what I wrote down were a series of images...
Simon: I think it was an outline, really...like some bits of information that could be threaded together... to make a story...?
John: Yeah, I could understand that...but I couldn't understand whether you wanted it... err... sort of... exaggerated...or ...and how you wanted it put together ...But you see, you did say summat in there about... you wanted summat that you could possibly act? But the lies I've told, I mean .. the stories I've told ...are outrageous ...they'd be impossible to act ... y'know?
Anna: No... I don't think it was acting... we've heard about the Lying Competition, and people basically stand up, don't they?... and tell a story. All the things that we've done since we got here at the beginning of December, they've all been true, so that led to trying to turn Ð or include them - into a lie. So the end result would be a lie that you'd made up, including some of those ingredients, really... and then it would be told by you... possibly... including us, I suppose, as subject, somehow in the story...

Simon: Why do you think you're good at it... ? We spoke to Cliff Atkinson,and he said you're fantastic ... why are you so good at lying?
John: Well, I think .. when you go, you've got to go with the intention of gripping the audience, y'know ..And every time I go, I tell 'em I haven't got one , I just make it up as I go along
Simon: Is that true?
John: No... I've gone through it fifty times or more at home before I go, y'know... I know how to emphasise it... I've never told anyone else before mind, and I've never writ it down at all ... the one I'm gonna tell on the night...Its very competitive ... but there's various people come once and twice but then they disappear and they maybe come back the year after or two year after ...
Nina: Is everyone local... ?
John: No... no there's a chap from Manchester or somewhere down that area comes up in an areoplane ... there's three of 'em comes up... We've had chaps from all over, we've had some from Australia and China, and some from Germany...
Anna: It's really local, and really international ...
Simon: What makes a good liar do you think? What's the essence of it?
John: Well, I always base 'em on the truth ... always, every one of my lies, that I've told, is something what's happened and exaggerated. I'm always talking about myself, yeh, but I bring other people in. But I got into trouble this time - well, not really - but the Lady Mayor of Allerdale, she comes from Silloth, you see, and I know her very well, eh, and she's a strong Labour supporter, and I took the mick out of her, and then she's been done for parking, the mayor's limousine, in a no parking zone - fined for it you see - and so I got that in, and things like that ... I told it at a 'do' in Silloth, and one or two people took offence... cos I'd poked fun at her ...
Simon: Is it right that lawyers and politicians come?
John: Well I reckon that they tell lies anyway, eh?!
Nina: Yeh, so they're 'professionals'...
Simon: Is it clear what we'd do from the letter... ?
John: Yeh, I'm thinking - what type of artists are they? I imagined you walking round Grizedale with a brush, y'know..... So are you actually people who perform plays... or things like that ... ?
Karen: No, no, we're visual artists
Simon: Well, I'm a conceptual artist, myself ...
John: No, you've got me lost now ...
Simon: It's about ideas, but it's very similar to what you do, really .

John: Come on then, how are you funding yourselves ?
Karen: We get paid to do this, this is our job ...we came to Grizedale, and we looked around to find what we wanted to be the subject of our art - we don't make things, we deal with situations and people and ideas, that's what Simon said... we thought one of the most interesting things was this lying ...
John: And how did you come on with Jimmy?
Anna: By phoning Whitehaven Council. We did research to find the others... 'cos we wanted to find one liar to work with each artist 'cos there are four of us.We found Cliff Atkinson via word of mouth.
Nina: I've got Howard
John: he's only competed once. But he won ... I was judging that year...I went to talk to him afterwards and he said that it had taken him ten years to put it together... he didn't even class himself as a competitor he classed himself as more telling about what a lying contest was about ... which is what he did ... because it'd originated from the pub, his inn, you see, years and years ago... and I don't know how much longer I'm going to be entering in because I've now made stories up, I've been to it ten or eleven times.And I find it more and more difficult of something to try and find a story about..
Nina: Well, here we are! (laughter) We're not local, though ...

Anna: Do you think that the subject matter that I put in the letter to you Ð I mean, do you think you could make that interesting to an audience here in Cumbria?...
John: Well, I think it would be difficult ...
Nina: Is it believable? Could it be made believable... maybe you ought to try and make it sound believable...
Karen: As an example, we're not going to tell you what Jimmy told us that he might write in his lie. But he looked at this, (I did a version of what Anna sent you) and he immediately changed us into four scientists who had come to Grizedale .... a kind of skeleton of truth.
John: Well, thing is, I will come up with summat... now that I've met yer ... and talked to yer ... you see, talking to someone over the phone ... you could be taking to somebody eighty or ninety... what could be pullin' your leg, eh? And you don't really know if they're meaning it or they don't? I don't mind telling yer, I've had one or two people who've wound us up over the phone ... When you first did ring up I began to think - 'Is this just somebody havin' me on...
Nina: Especially when we started talking about the limo ride!
John: Then when I got all this information... it sorta said ... this is real like, y'know...you'll give us a few ideas, anyhow... But it's still difficult and it still won't be easy... short-time thing, it might take a week or two to get summat put together but, when I do something ... no matter what it is, I like it to be right.....