Liars' League

The Greatest Tiddlywinks Player in the Galaxy by Adam Lewis Smith

The Greatest Tiddlywinks Player MP3

Read by Gloria Sanders

As loud as the words on the poster were, it was his face that grabbed me: that of a plump-chinned, red-cheeked wizard with an open-tooth grin supporting a floor-brush moustache and eyes so wide and white they only needed wolves howling at them.

Beneath this expanse of face, two tiny hands sprayed a flurry of coloured discs while a pair of silhouetted spectators watched in Munch-esque disbelief. In tomato-red capitals, above the menagerie:

THE GREATEST TIDDLYWINK PLAYER IN THE GALAXY!

£2 A MATCH, £5 FOR BEST OF THREE!!

A Rearguard Action by Colin Adams

A Rearguard Action MP3

Read by Peter Doolan

My secondary school was a small Christian Brothers school in a suburb of South Dublin. There were two Irish teachers there. Mr Edward Lowry was a pugnacious, portly, pustulous git of a man.  Years of disillusionment and disappointment squatted on his shoulders slowing his gait to a malevolent saunter, like burger van on a drive-by.  He had hands like the blades of spades and under his oxter he routinely carried a rolled-up tabloid newspaper. The black ink from the paper and the pale white dust of the chalk formed demented yin-yang symbols on his palms. These palms we saw often- raised in anger slapping desks, students and books on tables.  Every inch of him carried the threat of violence and even though hitting students was banned in Ireland in 1982, Lowry had decided to take it under advisement.  Rumour had it that his brother was head of the union and so he was impossible to sack. 

Prince Harry's Last Hurrah by Quintin Forrest

Prince Harry's Last Hurrah MP3

Read by Alex Woodhall

On the morning of the wedding, I woke up in Claridge’s. Good old Claridge’s, they look after you there. Hopefully. Today, I was going to be on telly in front of an audience of millions. My biggest crowd since Mother's funeral. That unforgettable day, seared into the hard-drive, however much I tried to blot it out. Often, admittedly, with some success, but it was looming back now. The trek on foot, halfway across London, as the Gen Pop followed, both in town and at home, the horse-drawn progress of a doomed princess. At least this time I'd be in the carriage, I supposed.

If I made it. Was I so mired in sin that I was going to disappoint? It seemed a distinct possibility. Where was everything? On Sky News, the Great British Public were queuing up outside the chapel - why? What were they hoping for? La Markle to arrive looking totally doable, in a long white dress. And for the H-Meister to show up minus his strides? Would the loathed public get their wish? Where were my trousers? The old soup and fish was laid out somewhere, surely, but where? Had I given it a test-run the night before, in front of the guys and the ... specialist courtesans Rafe knew from Babes of Mayfair? I had a horrible feeling that I probably had.

Literally having an existential crisis by Rushiv Nayee

Literally having an existential crisis MP3

Read by Nicholas Delvalle

I won’t take you back to the beginning. I don’t have the time. However, I will begin with some background – some insight into how things used to be, during what I, and others around me, considered my artistic apex.

I essentially found myself in the centre of things. A fundamental component. Not like AND or OR, though. I was different. I had spark. Edge. I frequented dinner parties in Chelsea, rooftop bars in Manhattan. I spent time backstage at fashion shows in Tokyo. You’d find me nestled snugly between sharp punchlines and popping up in fierce intellectual debate. I had it all.

I’d previously been relatively content in the background, just pottering about for a few hundred years. I’d watch from afar as every now and then colleagues would experience a surge in popularity and burst into the limelight. I never dreamt it would happen to me.  

Schmiedeleut's Play by Han Stickings Smith

Schmiedeleut's Play MP3

Read by Tony Bell

Schmiedeleut wrote a play, and I read it, and I copied it out for myself twelve times in a total of twenty-seven of my notebooks. Then I saw it performed on stage, and in the final act I jumped over the brass rail and I cracked my skull and my ribs when I hit and that’s why I’ve been plastered down here, I suppose.

The attendants, admittedly, are pleasant enough. The nurses bring me cake, which I can’t eat, and tea, which I never drank anyway. When their crests of smiling and chatter have rolled on, they clear the way for the doctors’ own rituals. These tend to involve a cold tube, my shaven nostrils, and a heavy liquid that may or may not contain the same recycled remnants of the surplus cake and tea. It smells the same, certainly, but then everything always does. The principal difficulty regarding the doctors and nurses is that they change in their faces every time they come, and, what’s more, that they all appear in essentially identical uniform. This brings a fresh ordeal each newly risen morning: that of calculating whether the bright-clad figure approaching is after my lips or my nose. (I can no longer count on waking in time to benefit from the rule that the nurses precede the doctors, unfortunately.)

A Beer in the Interval by Frances Salter

A Beer in the Interval MP3

Read by Louisa Gummer

It was the height of summer when the curate Gordon E. E. Garside unlocked the chancel safe of St Mark’s, Gloucestershire, and wrapped the communion silver in an anorak. He placed it in his backpack alongside a spare pair of underpants and a toothbrush. During the cycle from Berkshire to the Oxfordshire village of Adderbury, he stopped three times at local pubs to enjoy an ale, bought with small change from the parish collection box.

By the time he rang the bell of her house, his shirt and trousers were soaked. She spotted his red face through the keyhole with the sort of excitement that is close to fear.

“Gordon!” She wanted to put her arms around him, but found she could not.

“Hello! I would have rung ahead, but no idea where my phone has got to.”

“How did you know I’d be in?”

“A happy accident.”