Fooled by the media

Contemporary Review, April, 1999 by Geoffrey Humphrys

Geoffrey Humphrys

We should rub the sleep from our eyes quickly on Thursday, April 1, if there are schoolchildren in the home. They mainly keep the April fool customs alive today, but some adults never grow too old for practical jokes. So much so that with the media entering into the spirit of the day, British newspaper, radio and television pranks have produced April fools by the million.

The classic form of April fool hoax is to present some improbable situation in such a convincing manner that people fall for it on the spur of the moment, then later cannot understand why they did so.

April fooling was launched into the mass media age in 1957 by the BBC's normally reliable TV current affairs programme Panorama. On April 1, viewers watched Richard Dimbleby walk between trees festooned with spaghetti which workers were gathering into baskets. (Pasta was a rather exotic food in the fifties.) This resulted from cameramen on location hanging pounds of spaghetti over trees in a little Swiss village.

To obtain a sequence for April the First viewing, the camera crews persuaded puzzled villagers to climb ladders and gather in the 'harvest'. Within minutes of the showing, the BBC's switchboard was inundated with calls. Some people had seen through the hoax, but the majority either wanted to know where they could see a spaghetti harvest, or obtain information to start a spaghetti farm.

Radio and newspaper stunts highlighted April 1, 1972, in Europe as well as Britain. A Dutch radio programme referred to a newspaper report that a budget surplus was to be shared out among tax-payers. A French radio announcer requested motorists to start driving on the left side of the road to help British drivers when they joined the Common Market.

On the same day, The Times published a headline of 'Around the World for 210 guineas' ([pounds]220.5) above an article detailing a world trip by Thomas Cook at 1872 prices, to mark the centenary of the firm's first world tour. The concession was restricted to 1000 tourists. Applications had to be addressed to 'Miss Avril Foley', but even this did not arouse suspicion. Thomas Cook's received so many applications and telephone inquiries that an answerphone had to be used to explain the hoax. The following day The Times published an apology. Travel editor John Carter wrote the article as an office joke before going abroad, never dreaming it would be published.

On April 1, 1973, Westward Television produced an item featuring the village of Spiggot, which had refused to adopt the new decimal currency. Local officials were interviewed, and much support received from the public. When announced that Spiggot did not exist, many were disappointed that the resistance was only a hoax.

The BBC kept up its April fool pranks when a doctor, barely recognisable as Spike Milligan, explained how people with red hair were particularly prone to Dutch elm disease. On April 1, 1975, David Attenborough gave a report on the musendrophilus - a singing mouse. Another prank of recent years was calling eminent historians to Banbury, Oxfordshire, on April 1, to examine an inscription thought to be a clue to a past civilisation. It read: "s sorcy rub nabot es rohk co caed ir." Which experts soon deciphered as the age old children's verse: 'Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross' - spelt backwards.

In 1976, The Guardian published a spoof report on San Serife, which also turned out to be a non-existent country. As many top people took part in the holiday advertising, telephones were ringing all day for further information.

Another flood of calls on the same morning resulted from fun-loving astronomer, Patrick Moore, making a BBC Radio 2 announcement that at 9.47 am, the planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, creating a stronger gravitational pull which could make people on earth feel lighter. Soon after the designated time the calls began. One woman reported that she and her eleven friends seated round a large table rose from the ground and floated around the room. Another complained that she had been jerked off her feet and hit her head on the ceiling.

London's Capitol Radio announced the implementation of Operation Parallax on 1 April, 1979. This was explained as a 48-hour adjustment, to bring Britain back in line as a result of switching our clocks back and forth since the Second World War. Although regretting the inconvenience, the commentator announced that 5 April and 12 April were to be omitted from the calendar of that year.

Numerous queries were received concerning the possible consequences. One employer questioned whether she had to pay her staff for the missing days, another woman wanted to know what would happen about the birthday she would lose, and yet another about her position regarding a house purchase due to be completed on one of the days to be eliminated.

Thousands of bald men flocked to James Coatsworth's farm at Rothbury, Northumberland, after seeing an April the First BBC television programme. The feature stated that the water from a well situated on the farm had miraculous hair-restoring properties.