So, how many lies have you told today?

So bang goes the Ninth Commandment then (or the Eighth, if you're of Papist extraction). Apparently thou shalt bear false witness against thy neighbour after all. No less an authority than Vienna University has established that telling lies, far from being morally reprehensible, is now "an essential part of survival in everyday life" without which we couldn't function properly as social beings.

So bang goes the Ninth Commandment then (or the Eighth, if you're of Papist extraction). Apparently thou shalt bear false witness against thy neighbour after all. No less an authority than Vienna University has established that telling lies, far from being morally reprehensible, is now "an essential part of survival in everyday life" without which we couldn't function properly as social beings.

"Society is tougher for men, especially now they have to face competition from women," says Professor Peter Stiegnitz, of the university's Pants On Fire Research Dept. "They lie out of weakness and fear. Everybody lies and anyone who says they don't lie is a liar. Lying is as essential to life as air and water."

It's not a point of view that's complete news to us raddled and yawning cynics, but the Viennese scientists have come up with some new findings. One, that men lie more than women, just to "cope" with their lives. Two, that we start telling lies at the age of six. And three, that really compulsive, two-packs-before-breakfast liars tell about 200 porky pies a day.

Two hundred a day! Let's see. I'm writing this at lunchtime, so in theory I should already have left a trail of mendacity - a hundred fibs - behind me, like slug-slime, since I got up. I don't remember doing that many.

Okay, I told my tiny daughter that The Grinch would be out on video next week, which isn't strictly true, but I simply could not bear to see it one more time, and yes, I told my accountant that of course the self-assessment form would be completed by 31 January, but failed to add "in my dreams", and I promised the son he could have Nike Air Zoom football boots for getting into the A team, but secretly vowed to get the slightly cheaper Soccer Plimsolls from the Why Pay More sporting goods shop in Ealing, and I told the eagle-eyed cop that my new tax disc was awaiting collection at West Dulwich Post Office, which doesn't exist, and I e-mailed three replies to invitations saying, not entirely truthfully, that I'd be in Guatemala that week, and...

Hang on a minute. I'm already up to 38.

The Viennese boffins claim that liars divide on gender lines - that women most often lie about shopping, while men "mainly" utter falsehoods "about their prowess with cars or gadgets". That's Austrians for you, I suppose. Only a nation that strides around in green overcoats saying "If you permit..." could think of bragging about their driving skill or their suavely efficient way with the dishwasher (whether true or not).

British men, by contrast, don't lie about their prowess with anything. They lie to stay out of trouble, to stop their wives whining, their children pestering, to placate creditors, to explain themselves to policemen, to keep their noses clean, to avert confrontation. They lie in order to lie low.

The idea that women mostly lie about shopping is pretty bizarre too. The totality of British female lies can be reduced to four utterances: 1) "I can get into this if I lose three pounds because I'm secretly a Size 12"; 2) "It doesn't matter - we can try again later"; 3) "No, go ahead, I find metallurgy really fascinating"; and 4) "Forty this spring, actually..." In other words, women are fantastically good at lying to themselves, to make the life before their eyes seem rosier.

So okay, Herr Professor, everybody tells lies as easily as breathing today, but from different motives. The Teutonic race produced such liars as Baron Münchhausen, with his elaborate cathedrals of bullshit. The Anglo-Saxons produced truth-benders in search of a quiet life - the Archers, Aitkens, Hamiltons, the Alan Clarks and Robin Butlers. We're as good at lying as everybody else; but we lie on behalf of the status quo. We're nice like that. No, honest.

j.walsh@independent.co.uk

More from John Walsh