By BRIAN TILLEY

Published at 15:10, Thursday, 20 November 2008

brian.tilley@hexham-courant.co.ukMENDACIOUS mixer of medicines, Martin Merriman, is Tynedale’s top twister of the truth.

The bearded blusterer from behind the counter at Boots at Haltwhistle out-yarned a very talented field of fibbers at the inaugural Tynedale Tall Tale Telling competition at Whitley Chapel on Friday night.

His tale of intrigue, murder and mayhem involving the invention of the self-wiping dipstick enthralled and hugely entertained a packed village hall on a wild and windy night.

The competition was staged by Hexham Rotary Club, on the lines of a long established lying contest in Cumbria.

Event organiser Collette Drifte was delighted with the turn-out, and with the quality of the whoppers spun by the eight-strong field of purveyors of porkies.

While the profits are still being finalised, the Smile Train charity, which provides a mobile surgery to correct incidences of cleft lips and cleft palates in the Third World will have benefited to the tune of several hundred pounds.

The quality of the entrants posed a stiff task for the three-strong panel of judges – BBC Look North newsreader Colin Briggs, Scots Gap based raconteur and Northumbrian humorist Ernie Coe, and Hexham Courant deputy editor and Hextol columnist Brian Tilley.

However, they were unanimous that Martin’s Ananias impression was the cream of the crop.

His was a tale of a farmer, Geordie Reed, and his wife, Maisie, who ran a farm in the West Allen Valley “way up in the hills above Mohope, just below the snout of the Carrshield Glacier, at round 13,000 feet.”

This was a place where sheep give birth to lambs with their front legs shorter than the back ones, to help them up the slopes to the high pastures where they wander around wondering how they are going to get back down again.

You can also spot that rare breed of cattle, the Sparty Lea Longhorn, which in turn have their two left legs shorter than those on the right, to help them lean against the wind.

Martin revealed that Geordie was a stotty farmer, with a lucrative contract supplying Gregg’s in Hexham with particularly small but perfectly formed stotties, spending many hours laying traps for them at their regular watering holes near the Gin Gang Hush.

He also used to scour mud from the dyke backs, mixing it with water from the Winney Syke to form a slurry, before exporting it down the valley to a well-known mud wrestling club in Priestpopple, Hexham.

His invention came about because wife Maisie became fed up of his habit of wiping the dipstick on the sleeve of his overalls after checking out his grey Fergie before setting out for TVO and oil.

Marital harmony was only restored when he invented the self-wiping dipstick.

Foolishly, Geordie shared his blueprint with Martin over a pint in the Carts Bog Inn.

Martin revealed: “He’d heard that I’d got a degree in slurry maintenance from the University of Nenthead and he thought I’d be the ideal man to help him develop the invention.”

The upshot was that Martin sabotaged the brakes of Geordie’s car, so that he came to a sticky end on Staward Bends, and people from as far away as Catton and Ninebanks came to pay their respects at his funeral.

Martin registered the invention as his own at Acomb Patents’ Office, and after having saturated the market in Tynedale with dipsticks, he expanded into the Nissan plant at Washington.

He claimed: “Within a week, a helicopter landed in the stackyard and a couple of Oriental fellas got out and offered to buy me out, there and then.”

Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone was soon involved, he collected £100,000 from Dragon’s Den and received a hero’s welcome every time he touched down on the fifth runway at Slaley International Airport.

Eventually though, the widowed Maisie twigged George’s demise on the Cupola Bridge was no accident – so Martin was obliged to run her through with one of his dipsticks, after lulling her into a false sense of security with a couple of bottles of Chateau Slaley Hall, and then sliding her body beneath the dark waters of Langley Dam.

Of course, cheats never prosper, Martin was found out, and lost everything.

And he reported from his prison cell: “I had had it all – success, fame, riches, fortune, (I even had Maisie) but instead, through my own devilish greed, lust and covetousness I had lost everything.

“What a dipstick!”

Setting the tall tale telling competition rolling with his unfortunate brush with a Latvian taxi driver in Newcastle, was financial adviser Mike Saxon – and he set the bar really high.

He was followed by Bob Hull, whose report of the two Victorian blowhards trying to out-do each other in tales of derring-do was performed entirely in verse.

Soon it was the turn of retired classics schoolmaster and Mayor of Hexham J.B. Jonas, whose tale of coach driver Artie’s descent into a drink and drugs hell ended with his being offered £1 to strangle two customers in a local supermarket.

The headline in the papers the next day read: “Artie chokes two for a pound in Tesco.”

Rotary president Roy Dallison spoke eloquently of condoms, ladies’ underwear and other contraband going through Russian customs, while David Pringle told of the perils of being a writer in a remote part of Scotland, where company was in short supply.

There was more rib-tickling from Ian Graves, who read out a letter from an Archers-obsessed little old lady living in sheltered accommodation in Corbridge, and her unlikely response to a neighbour’s request to be allowed to listen in.

Rounding things off was Philip Cooper of Hadrian’s Orators Speakers’ Club, with his yarn about being well over 150 years old, and the risk of marrying one’s own great granddaughter!

Inspired by the pies and peas provided by the ladies of Whitley Chapel Women’s Institute, judge Colin Briggs then provided the audience with an additional tall tale about his own place on the judging panel.

This involved having to break off from deer stalking with the Duke of Edinburgh at Balmoral, and being airlifted from a berth in the Round the World yacht race by an RAF Chinook helicopter in order to get to Whitley Chapel!

He announced that the minor placings behind Martin were Mike Saxon's Latvian cabbie in second spot, with Ian Graves’s little old lady, third.

It is hoped that the competition will now become an annual one – and that’s no lie!

Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk