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“I’M NO CHEAT,” SAYS MAN WHO ADMITTED TO CHEATING—A LATERAL THINKING PUZZLE
Damon Blundy, September 20, 2011, Daily Herald Online

When I spoke up for disgraced sprinter Bryn Gilligan in my column two weeks ago, I expected to be set upon first by the Times’s Keiran Holland, Inspector Javert to Gilligan’s Jean Valjean, and then by all the Usual Cesspits. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The attack, when it came—the preposterous threat of legal action, no less—hailed from an unexpected quarter: Bryn Gilligan. Yes, that’s right: the same Bryn Gilligan I’d risked the opprobrium of decent folk like you in order to defend. Bryn Gilligan condemned me for expressing my support for Bryn Gilligan. (Warning: the rest of this story is the logical equivalent of a painting by Escher. I hope some of you can get your heads round it, because I can’t.)

Why is Gilligan so angry with his solitary supporter? Well, apparently because I called him a cheat and besmirched his good name, even though he no longer has one. In a letter to this newspaper that has to be read to be believed, he accuses me of trashing his character and claims that he is not and has never been a cheat—not even while he was cheating, apparently. On the contrary, he says, he is a principled man to whom professional propriety was, is and evermore shall be of the utmost importance. With specific reference to his “mistake” (and to clarify, he is here referring to his ingestion of prohibited performance-enhancing drugs over a period of at least five years) he asks us to believe that he was in some kind of fugue state each time he fucked up by guzzling the ’roids and illegally winning a race. In his own words, “I had become detached from myself. My actions no longer had any connection with the honorable man I know myself to be.”

You see how it works? Gilligan cheated, but he wasn’t a cheat when he cheated. He was a noncheat from whom some uncharacteristically devious behavior had emanated. He had great respect for the rules even while the detached unscrupulous bit of him was breaking them.

If you say so, Bryn. In fact, it was Keiran Holland, not me, who described Gilligan as a cheat and a liar, as I’m certain my column made clear. I don’t intend to withdraw my support simply because Gilligan is no admirer of mine. To remix Groucho Marx, I’d hate to speak up for any cause that would have me as an advocate. I still believe Gilligan has learned his lesson and that his ban should be revoked, however unconventionally he might express his regret. Who could fail to learn, and learn hard, from the experience of being a newsworthy pariah for an extended period of time?