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Thursday 27 August 2015 6:02 pm

Meeting friends in London? Don’t bank on it – Londoners are terrible at keeping plans and lie about why they’re cancelling

By: Lynsey Barber

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If it feels like it's impossible to stick to a date to meet up with friends anywhere in London, then you're right – but you're probably just as bad at cancelling plans as they are.

Londoners are truly terrible at bailing out of meeting up with their nearest and dearest – and we lie about why we're cancelling, too.

In London, 87 per cent of us admit to calling up our mates to get out of plans (and don't even tell the truth as to why we can't make it), compared with 81 per cent across the rest of the country, according to a new survey by Doodle.

Read more: Here's what Londoners buy the most, and where, according to Amazon

The most common reason we give for pulling out of plans is that we're ill, when actually the real reason we most often cancel is that we're simply just too knackered to put in the effort.

Other terrible lies we tell for not turning up are that it's our "grandmother's birthday" – or that we just forgot about the whole thing, when it's actually down to the fact that we might be completely broke or that we'd rather spend time with our significant other. One in 10 Londoners even said they'd prefer to binge-watch Netflix than see friends.

Here are the most common lies we tell and the real reasons we cancel on our mates.

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