Five years after it became a massive bestseller, a book based on a 6-year-old’s experience of visiting angels in Heaven while he was in a coma has been pulled from the shelves… after the young man in question admitted he made it all up.

Alex Malarkey (what an apt surname) was involved in a car crash in 2004 that put him in a coma for two months, and in 2010 his memoir ‘The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven’ (written by Alex and his dad) told the story of his trip to heaven during that time.

He even described detailed conversations with Jesus Christ and even the Devil, who he says blamed him for the accident (as if the Devil didn’t have a bad enough rep already without this kid’s lies).

However he took it all back with this open letter to publishers, buyers and marketers the other day:

I did not die. I did not go to Heaven. I said I went to heaven because I thought it would get me attention. When I made the claims that I did, I had never read the Bible. People have profited from lies, and continue to. They should read the Bible, which is enough. The Bible is the only sourch of truth. Anything written by man cannot be infallible.

Sounds like a barrel of laughs this kid. Anyway, the book’s publisher Tyndale House has withdrawn all copies from sale, while Alex’s dad and co-author has yet to comment (possibly because he’s too busy putting the Homer Simpson stranglehold on Alex). His mum, who is separated from his dad, did however come out and say she was always troubled by the book and the fact no one questioned it.

So yeah, who are you supposed to blame really? If you’ve got nephews or cousins that age you’ll know that 6-year-olds talk so much crap it’s unbelievable. You just have to take everything they say with a pinch of salt. So it’s no surprise that this kid woke up from his coma saying he went to Heaven and met all the angles because that’s what 6-year-olds do — they tells porky pies.

Do you blame dad? After all he’s the one who took his kid’s lie and went all the way with it. Sounds like he’s an ultra-religious type who genuinely believed every word of it though, and of course any other religious type reading the book would have been only too happy to see ‘proof’ that God exists, or whatever. It’s those people who bough it, read it and believed every word that are the biggest fools in all this.

Into Science Vs Religion debates? Here’s the best one you’ll ever watch.