The Topper- been there done that.

It's called, I believe, the "Alright Everyone - Attention Back To Me, Me, Me!" syndrome......

when i was first married all those years ago [1969 if i remember right] my next door neighbour was a topper. yes, every ailment my family or friends had was topped by one of her family or friends. if i had a cold then this friend had pneumonia - if my husband had a cough then this friend had bronchitis.
if i remember rightly this neighbour had three children and a henpecked husband. the two older children left home and, finally, so did the husband! leaving her with the youngest child who was a bit of a mummy's boy.
she moved not long afterwards so i never found out what happened to her. but i'll never forget rita!!

A neighbours' new girlfriend was trying to tell me what I should do to improve my kitchen to sell the house. I said that I was happy to listen to all her ideas as long as she backed it up with giving me the money to do it. I think she got the idea that her poking her nose wasn't welcome. If I want advice, I'll ask for it.

My late MIL had me climbing up the wall.She had the nack of putting a damper on everything myself and hubby were planning to do.She always knew someone who had been there done it read the book bought the teeshirt.

The last straw was when we were able to afford our first continental holiday.She had us convinced although never having been there herself we would come back with every disease known to man as Mrs so and so down the street had when she went abroad.

I suppose you could class the Toppers as being in the same mould as the 'Belittlers'. My late husband was a belittler - if I cooked a nice meal, he would poke his fork in it, and laugh in a scornful way, he was the same with almost everything.
Looking back, I think he was affected by NPD. Narcissists are very difficult people to live with.

Oh yes, I've got a friend like that, if she can't go one better herself then she knows someone who can. Failing that she changes the subject abruptly. It's as though I'm not allowed to be happy, sad , ill, etc . I sometimes think it's a form of jealousy

I have a friend like yours HG15. She never stops talking and it is always about herself, what she's been doing, her wonderful daughters and grandchildren etc. When she starts to speak she hangs on to the conversation and doesn't let it go. She doesn't listen if you try to respond. It's a great pity because she loves socialising and she is a generous person but people avoid her because she is a selfish conversationalist. The funny thing is she often says she talks too much.

My ex and I had a Topper par excellence when we worked in the film industry. He had to know how much we paid for our house so he could top that - I banned my exH to tell him and annoyed him hugely by refusing to tell him, only that it was within our budget. He kept asking me if it was more than what he had just paid for his, and took delight in telling us how much he had paid.

He was wary of me - we came from the same town and when he realised that I had gone to the top school in that town and that I knew the school he went to was a very minor public school he couldn't top that!!

He even asked why the wheels on his BMW was shinier that the ones on ours. on our wedding day he said his navy and white two tone brogues were much better that the tan and white ones that exH was wearing! He was always pointing to well known logos on his clothes, we used to call him Lacoste!

He was once hosting a beach party at Cannes for his company which was publicising a dire film about Ronnie Biggs the Great Train Robber. He always asked what I would be wearing to any event we attended together, to make sure his wife could upstage me! this particular day he was very anxious that she would be noticeably better dressed than me, I told him a silk dress by a particular designer. He went and bought his wife a dress by the same designer, but couldn't get a silk one but that polyester was much better as it could be machine washed!! What I didn't tell him was that mine was bought in a sale in Hong Kong!

At this party I was horrified when out of a large cardboard box filled with promotional T-shirts jumped the 12 year old son of said criminal!! He had flown him from Brazil to promote the film. His wife and I were then told to look after this child for the next few days, who was being hounded by the press, and Special Branch were hovering. I have to say the son was a lovely boy, and when I later heard him on TV as his father's carer I could see he had grown into a charming, caring young man despite his flaky upbringing.

Sorry, off thread and not trying to upstage anyone with name dropping! This Topper was one of the most vile people I have ever met and I could wax lyrical with dreadful anecdotes about him.

Yes indeed, my dear late husband used to work with a 'topper' and once he and his colleagues ganged up together to see just how outrageous they could become before topper stopped topping them. A bit cruel but it added to the fun.
A conversation was started about space exploration and they all waited with baited breath (also gritted teeth and strained straight faces) to see if topper would come out with, "When I was an astronaut..." They looked at him, he looked at them and it might have been on the tip of his tongue but then he thought better of it and just walked away. I'm not sure if it was a permanent cure.

Some topping occurs with one friend, but there is more stealing of intellectual property, i.e. telling an anecdote or experience of mine as if theirs, even when I'm there!

Two of the Television Toppers were old girls from my school
(but much older than me of course!!)

Yes, we have a 'friend' who is a topper, it gets very boring.
And someone else we knew was one too; however he died and is probably topping everyone's stories in heaven.

I have a friend who does this with the achievements of her children & grandchildren, they always have better jobs, more A* and Uni offers. Sadly I found myself falling into the trap and competing. I limit myself in emails now and just say everyone is well.
I remember the Topper comic as well, don't remember when it was published though.

My husband worked with a'Topper' for 35 years .

He always had to go one better and whilst everyone KNEW his stories were 99% fantasy there was always a chance it could be true .

Things like....

He went to buy new tools and they gave him a discount of 50% for being such a good customer but it was the last set and on his way out someone offered him twice what he paid so he sold the tools to him.

Or

He found some old coins in his pocket and one of them was amazingly valuable and when he took it to a coin shop to sell they bought the coin and sent a security guard home with him with the money .

Or
He went to some work for an old lady and she offered him her husband's old classic car at a knock down price and when he went to collect it he found a Rolex watch in the car and the old lady said keep it.

And he always had bigger and better whatever you had.

We used to joke if you had a black cat his would be blacker !!

What a good thread. Had never thought of the topper idea before but it applies so exactly to a friend whose exploits were so over the top that we used to count and number them. He ran in the Olympics at 16, then was smitten by some dire disease that caused him to be inactive for 2 years. He made a boat out of an old kitchen table and taught his children to sail..... up to #67
As he seemed to believe he had done all these things and each event held some small grain of truth we just wondered, counted and saw them frequently as his' inventions' were great fun

All very interesting BUT I have a friend who boasts far more often than any of your friends do........(only joking!!)

Seriously I think people who are prone to Topping actually have an inferiority complex and need to do it to make themselves feel better about their lives.

Forgot to say gilly I'll be your friend and Roses your story about the spanners was hilarious - thank you!

My son just popped in and I told him about this thread as I am finding it amusing. His response was "Oh yes, you mean the sort who go on holiday to elevenarife". Made me chuckle!!

I have a friend who decides the fact that like Sainsbury's Reisling when Aldi is soooo much nicer and cheaper. The thing is that I like mine because it's sweeter than the others which proves that I am really unsophisticated - unlike her.

Phoenix!!! . . . . .my DH was EXACTLY the same . . . . but never managed a hysterectomy!!!

We did have a friend like that, sadly now deceased. We used to place bets when we went to meet up with him as to what his top trumps victories were going to be, depending on what topics we introduced to the conversation. We NEVER came out on top once lol

Another friend used to say of people like that - if you've been to Tenerife, they've been to Eleven-erife !!

We have a "copier" our neighbour, we moved here three years ago, and since then they have built a conservatory, after we built ours, in fact a few neighbours have done the same, I often wonder what would they have done had we not moved here, obviously they have the same good taste! One annoying thing here in the country where I live is; when we have been on holiday, people ask how was our holiday, and we start to tell them but they arent interested in hearing any more,they talk about something else, nobody bothers about what others have done,on holiday, I used to love being able to share holiday memories with neighbours when I lived in the UK, ah well I suppose different countries have their own way of being interested.

If I tell a certain friend that I have something wrong with me immediately comes down with exactly the same thing, only a bit worse. If I have a cold she has a cold and a sore throat and a cough. If my arthritis is troublesome, hers is agonising. I find it quite amusing at times, and invent things just to see what she says. I'm sure that if I said the doctor had told me I was going to die tomorrow, she would say her doc. has told her she would pop off today.

shysal.

I would not now be bothered with such a companion.

Congratulatins on being so tolerant

How horrible for you.If I knew a Topper they wouldn't be a friend.

Monty Python's 'Four Yorkshiremen' sketch (sorry, can't link it) is an example of the "Reverse Topper".