James Frey is still desperately trying to make some cash and generate headlines over three years after it came out that his much-lauded Oprah-endorsed memoir, A Million Little Pieces, was almost completely fabricated. Frey’s latest book, Bright Shiny Morning, is a series of vignettes with separate characters that’s billed as fiction but contains enough passages that sound as if they’re lifted, and likely heavily embellished, from his life and friends. At least this time he’s not billing it like it’s true.

There was a lot of speculation over a new section in the paperback edition in which a character tapes a phone call from a talk show host who has “turned on him.” The host reveals an embarrassing secret meant to make him feel better about his plight, and the guy keeps the tape of the conversation as insurance in case he ever wants to use it against her. Some people wondered if Oprah told Frey she considered suicide in the past, as he writes that the “talk show host” wanted to make sure the guy wasn’t going to kill himself. Others thought that Oprah might have talked about her past drug use, something that she’s publicly admitted to. If Frey isn’t completely bluffing about this phone call, and given the guys record it’s likely, Oprah’s massive secret could be over a seemingly benign but potentially more damning issue.

The National Enquirer says that Oprah may have tried to make Frey feel better about lying to the public by admitting that she had lied too. When Oprah revealed her new skinny body in 1988 and hauled out that wheelbarrow full of fat to represent the weight she had lost, she was a size 12, not a 10. This sounds like speculation on what Oprah told Frey, and I hope for her sake this didn’t happen and that he’s making all this up to sell books:

“Oprah loves telling stories about herself, and she may have said some things to James that could make her look bad now,” a close source told The Enquirer.

“It’s likely she told James how she fooled viewers when she walked out on stage wearing a pair of size 10 years. But the jeans were really a size 12!

“Oprah tried her best to lose enough weight to get into a size 10, but she just couldn’t do it, so she put on a size 12 jeans instead. Then she went on stage, pulling a wagon with 67 pounds of ‘fat that she’d lost.

“It was just a little technicality and besides, within a couple of weeks she made her goal weight, so no big deal, right?”

But publicizing Oprah’s little white lie about one of the most-renowned moments in the history of her show could be just the revenge that Frey is seeking, sources say.

In pictures of that famous 1988 episode of Oprah in skinny jeans, she looks like a 10 or an 8 to me, but sizes have gotten bigger over the last 20 years and it’s possible she was really a 12. Does it really matter? She shouldn’t have made such a big deal out of it, but she makes a living out of sharing her personal life in very calculated ways. Her viewers rely on her to be honest though, and if she fibbed about her size it could make people wonder what else she hasn’t been truthful about.