Ring, ring, ring … and the excuse is ready

Just when we thought the mobile phone had gone as far as it is possible for any device to go, it sneaks up and surprises us with a new party trick.

You can forget all your Bluetooth, your WAP, your GPRS, your TFT 65,536 colour display and your polywollydoodle ring tones. The most significant advance in the history of telephonic communication took place during the past week, and went largely unsung.

Not since Alexander Graham Bell first started shouting into a biscuit tin with a wire attached to it or whatever, has there been such an advance in human relations as this …

Your mobile phone can now lie for you.

A mobile phone provider in Australia has introduced a system to get people out of embarrassing dates. The idea is that you tell the phone to call you at a predetermined time with an excuse just in case your date turns out to be disappointing and you want out.

So when your date is busy relating his great passion for collecting newts, lizards, boa constrictors, and waxing at length on the captivating lifestyle of reptiles, your phone races to the rescue …

Ring, ring goes the phone. (I use the phrase "ring, ring" simply as a generic term it is more likely to be Beethoven's Ninth Symphony performed by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert Von Karajan and featuring the Vienna Chorale with Anna Tomowa-Sintow, soprano, and Peter Schreier, tenor)

Ring, ring.

"Oh dear," you tell your date, "That was my mother calling. My sister's been run over by a bus … must run, thanks for a lovely evening."

Just consider the implications of this innovation for all of us. Especially politicians who find themselves awkwardly put on the spot …

"Mr President, can you tell the Press if there is any truth in the allegations of a relationship between yourself and a certain female White House aide?"

Ring ring or Home on the Range sung by Roy Rogers. "Sorry folks, must dash, my goldfish has been taken sick."

It would certainly have got George Washington out of an impasse when his father demanded: "Tell me the truth, George was it you who chopped down my cherry tree?"

Ring Ring (or the first chorus of Yankee Doodle Dandy).

"I'd love to stay and chat with you Pa, but they're starting a revolution and if I'm going to be President some day I'd better get in on the act."

It would have avoided his having to make this famous reply, a rather constricting one for anyone considering running for office: "I cannot tell a lie, Pa. I cut it down with my hatchet."

Incidentally, some historians claim that this conversation between young George and his father never took place, and that Washington's biographer, M.L. Weems, concocted it just to sex up the story and inject some interest into an otherwise uneventful childhood.

Ironic, is it not, that one of the most memorable exhortations to telling the truth should itself be based on a lie?

Nevertheless, it has served as a beacon to inspire other presidential incumbents down through the ages, such as … er, Richard Nixon.

As Benjamin Disraeli might have said: There are lies, damned lies and Nokia.