Coutts Woman

April Fool’s

It may seem hard to believe today when pasta is as commonplace as toothache, but it was exactly fifty years ago that Panorama convinced millions of viewers that Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper crop of spaghetti strands following a mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil.

The feature was accompanied by a broadcast of Swiss peasants picking uniform length spaghetti strands, described as the result of years of cultivation by the presenters, from the branches of trees. Viewers flooded the BBC switchboard for advice on growing their own spaghetti, and one of the world’s best April Fool’s Day pranks was pronounced a huge success.

April Fools is the day when students wake and immediately ensure that both their eyebrows are in tact. Teachers check for ‘Kick Me’ signs on their backs. And parents keep a watchful eye out for false dog poo and whoopee cushions.

Viewers flooded the BBC switchboard for advice on growing their own spaghetti.

But, for all the pranks, hoaxes and practical jokes, the origin of April Fool’s Day is unknown. Some historians suggest it dates back to the sixteenth century when Pope Gregory introduced a new calendar for the Christian world that moved the date of the New Year from April 1 to January 1. Those people who ignored or forgot the change were called April Fools.

Other theories attribute it to the arrival of spring when, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannia, nature ‘fools’ people with fickle weather. Some believe it relates to the Vernal Equinox, while The Country Diary of Garden Lore claims it commemorates the fruitless mission of the rook, who was sent out in search of land from Noah’s ark.

And even the very provenance of April Fool’s Day has proved to be a hoax when, in 1983, Associated Press published research by a Boston University professor that proved the festivities dated back to the Roman Empire. A court jester apparently boasted to Emperor Constantine that the court fools could run the empire better than he, which prompted the emperor to decree one day a year when fools would be in charge. Sadly for Associated Press, and all the news agencies around the world that published the findings, it was a joke.

They should have consulted with The Guardian, which published a special supplement in 1977 in honour of the tenth anniversary of San Serriffe, a small republic located in the Indian Ocean. The supplement waxed lyrically about the two islands, Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse, which were shaped curiously like a semi-colon; the capital Bodoni; and its leader General Pica.

Readers were desperate for further information about this apparently idyllic island, completely missing the fact that everything about the island was named after printer’s terminology.

At least they were harmless. Unlike hundreds of outraged American citizens who called up the National Historic Park in Philadelphia to lodge their disgust at the April 1 news from the Taco Bell Corporation that it had bought the Liberty Bell, and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell.

Still, it could have been worse. They could have been among the thousands of customers who requested the Left-Handed Whopper, promoted by Burger King in a full-page advertisement as a specially designed burger for 32 million left-handed Americans. Apparently the ingredients remained the same as a normal Whopper, but the condiments rotated 180 degrees.

Virgin has also toyed with customer appetites. It announced that, as a result of health and safety issues, new technology had been introduced into Virgin Cola cans which meant that when the drink passed its sell-by date, the liquid reacted with the metal and turned the can bright blue. Of course, the April Fool’s Day stunt had nothing to do with the launch of rival Pepsi’s newly designed cans. They were bright blue

And who can forget 1990 when the News of the World reported that the Chunnel project was facing another massive cost overrun following a huge engineering blunder. Both halves of the tunnel, being built simultaneously from England and France, would miss each other by 14 feet – and all because the French engineers insisted on using metric specifications. Sadly for millions of British readers, with every day bringing a new story of haemorrhaging costs, it was all too believable.