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Notes -
I speculate what happened was that, before becoming somewhat famous, he told Alice a relatively mild version of one lie ("I had a cancer scare a few weeks before my PhD viva, it was pretty stressful"), a mild version of a different lie to Bob ("I injured myself running a marathon"), a mild version of yet another lie to Carol ("I was actually non-verbal for the first few years of primary school") and so on. Each of these lies sounds plausible enough in isolation, although Alice, Bob or Carol would probably raise an eyebrow if they were aware of all of the lies. Having gotten away with it (successfully curried sympathy), he tells an embellished version of each lie to Dave, Ewan and Frederick, none of whom are aware of any of the lies told to the others. On and on it goes, Arday upping the ante each time, until eventually the lies have become so heavily embroidered that telling someone just one of them causes people to raise an eyebrow, at which point they start comparing notes and realising how preposterous the whole edifice is.
He's also obviously someone not bright enough to realise that being a Baron von Munchausen is no longer compatible with being a public figure. If he'd lived a couple of hundred years ago when there were no TV cameras and most people were illiterate, he could have happily told his tall tales as long as he pleased. If the listener noticed discrepancies or inconsistencies with earlier tales, they would probably have just shrugged them off or assumed that they (the listener) were remembering the details of the earlier tale wrong. But nowadays, any tall tale told via the Internet is there forever, as is any told verbally during a television appearance. Under these circumstances, being honest is the only viable option: you will eventually be caught in a lie and face the consequences. (Unless you're Donald Trump.)
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