THEY say that if you remember the Sixties, you weren't really there.

But researchers have found that the hazy memories of the flower power generation may not always be due to a dalliance with mind-altering substances.

Academics at Salford University discovered that people who grew up in the 1960s are far more likely to be showing off by exaggerating or lying about their youthful experiences.

Their study found that around 390,000 people claim to have been present at Wembley when England won the World Cup in 1966 - which is four times the capacity of the stadium.

Around one in ten surveyed admitted that they had also lied about being in the audience at legendary sixties music concerts when they had really only watched them on TV.

An even higher proportion, one in five, admitted telling tall tales about the drugs they had taken in their youth.


Meanwhile, nine per cent owned up to bragging that they had been invited to a "love in" when they had only read about them in newspapers.

The research was led by Britain's first Professor of Pop, Sheila Whiteley, from Salford University, and has uncovered the new phenomenon of "generational gazumping".

This is described as the practice of exaggerating your experiences in the decade of your youth to gain kudos with family and younger generations and is rife with those who grew up in the sixties.

Her study found that those who grew up in the Sixties are three times more likely to lie about their youthful experiences than those who were raised in the Seventies or Eighties.

For the Seventies children, the overwhelming reason for lying about their past experiences was ill-advised fashion decisions, associations with famous people and a misguided love of brown and orange décor.

The Eighties set were most likely to fib about wearing shoulder pads, voting Tory and attending Live Aid.

Prof Whiteley said that it was common for people to look back on their younger, rock and roll days through "rose-tinted glasses".

She added: "It would seem that people growing up in the Sixties would be more akin to Cliff Richard than Keith Richards!" Her research was for a week-long TV series, The Beatles Decade, from Monday on UKTV History at 9pm.