A famous man of Stockett: The four-time Lying Champion (Banned)
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It is hard to know what to write about Galloway without this article turning into a novel of epic proportion, such are the talents, accomplishments, notorieties, rumours and outright myths of the great man, a hero of Stockett who would perhaps one day be successor-in-waiting to our beloved Parish Priest, if he could only sober up for long enough. Across our great country and throughout much of the world, Galloway’s novels are amongst the most read and most loved. Any man woman or child with just the slightest literary pretension will easily quote entire passages from his greatest work, Twenty Eight Penguins of Paris. Or indeed from a corpus of eight novels in the Shambolic tradition, three books of commentary, three of short stories, and two autobiographies that entirely contradict one another. But it is not just his writing of prose of course, for the man is a poetic giant, a songwriter who embodies the spirit of the Martyrs of Stockett, and a man who can sing with the voice of a drunken angel, though we of course do not believe in such things.
A parish descended of scoundrels, pirates and idealists, we of Stockett embrace and venerate the art of lying, and every year, in our near-Welsh frontier village, thousands flock to the annual Festival of Liars, where the greatest liars of the day come to do battle with the word, the idea, the narrative, and the poker face. Doctor James Sunshine himself was a one-time champion. It is a testament to his art that Galloway won the competition four times in succession and had to be banned from taking part for fear that no-one could match him. Indeed, he was banned after the first three competitions, and came back for his fourth in such cunning disguise that not a single person there recognised him, and his lies were so good that the Lying Committee agreed not to take his win away when they found out it was him. In the fifth year, despite the lifetime ban, he came back as himself, with no disguise, but attempted to pass himself off as a lookalike. He got to the semifinal before Father Sidney Charette, who always attends the Festival, intervened and appealed for him to stand down if he really was Galloway. Even he could not deny the beloved Priest.
To add to the confusion, however, Galloway has since denied it was him, and that a lookalike really did enter, and that he – Galloway – was away exploring at the time.
And he has since denied this too, so that now, no-one knows the truth of it, except Galloway himself. And as the greatest liar of the Stockettites, we might never know.
