When exactly do everyday fantasies go from ‘little white lies’ to a mental disorder?

Pinocchio, from the new Guillermo del Toro film, had to learn not to lie. Photograph: Netflix

Billy Liar, created in the 1950s, is a fantasist; a teller of tall tales who lives much of his time in the imaginary world of Ambrosia.

He is engaged to two girls and fancies a third. He is desperate to get out of the dead-end town of Stradhoughton where he lives with his working-class family and where he has secreted 211 “luxury” calendars under his bed that he should have posted nine months before, on behalf of his employers, Shadrack & Duxbury, “funeral furnishers”.