The cheat-reveal is always shocking and delicious, but rarely quite as shocking and delicious as the footage from the Lake Erie Walleye Trail, a fishing tournament held in Ohio at the beginning of October. The video shows a judge weighing the fish that contestants have presented, before deciding to cut the fish caught by two men called Runyan and Cominsky open. He stands up, with a certain amount of piratical fury, and shouts, “We’ve got weights in fish!” The crowd erupts, a sea of branded sweatshirts and waterproof trousers. “We’ve got weights in fish!” One of the cheating fisherman remains quite still as his peers, who appear to have long suspected foul play, scream. And, from the gutted fish, the judge now produces… a fillet of a different fish, stuffed inside among the weights. It’s gorgeous: low stakes, high drama, Midwesterners hurling swearwords at a fisherman across the wet ground. It ushered in the season of the cheats, and I for one am loving it.
This week the world of Irish dancing was rocked by cheating allegations, too, with the Irish Independent saying in one case a teacher and a competition judge “appeared to be exchanging sexual favours for higher scores”. It’s in the air, a little treat for the civilians after Covid. After two years of living under strict rules, rules with clauses and fines, and fear, and the kind of confusion and pressure that led to paranoia in the streets, the urge to cheat appears to have grown.
