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Across the UK today, fearful editors and terrified journalists are picking apart every story that comes across their desks with a fine-tooth comb.
What’s brought on this sudden bout of editorial diligence? Well, it’s April Fool’s Day, also known as the worst day to be a journalist.
I’ve not even been in work for two hours today, and I’ve been tricked into thinking there was going to be a Devil Wears Prada 3 (thanks, ITV) and that Dec has a beard.
Still, as embarrassing as it can be to yell across the newsroom about a made-up story (apologies again, to the movie team), at least I can hold my head up high and say I was never tricked into thinking pasta grows on trees.
Who’d fall for a trick like that, you may wonder? Well, back in 1957, it turned out, a lot of the television-viewing British public.
You see, 69 years ago, the BBC show Panorama decided to play an April Fool’s prank on the country, and it left egg (or pasta sauce) on a lot of people’s faces.
Known as the ‘Spaghetti-Tree hoax’, Panorama broadcast a roughly three-minute film which appeared to show a family in southern Switzerland harvesting ‘an exceptionally heavy spaghetti crop’ from a tree.
Yes, really.
The report included footage of a traditional spaghetti harvest festival, warnings that a late frost can spoil flavour, and comparisons between Italian and Swiss crop yields.
They even included a chat about the ‘disappearance of the spaghetti weevil’, which has apparently ruined harvests in the past.
Now, while you and I know that spaghetti doesn’t grow on trees (you did know that, right?), this was a simpler time.
In fact, if you can believe it, spaghetti was apparently relatively unknown in Blighty back then, so the eight million people who tuned in just trusted the BBC’s report.
Indeed, the BBC received hundreds of calls from interested viewers wondering how they could care for a spaghetti tree.
Supposedly, the Beeb told callers all they need to do is ‘place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best’.
The prank was conceived by cameraman Charles de Jaeger and cost just £100.
According to Jaeger, he was inspired by his time as a kid growing up in Austria, where teachers would regularly tease his classmates for being so dumb they’d believe that spaghetti grew on trees.
What really sold the prank, however, was the voice-over by respected broadcaster Richard Dimbleby, who lent the ridiculous idea some credibility.
Infamous April Fool's Day Pranks
The colour television hack: In 1962, people in Sweden were told they could turn their black and white TV’s into a colour TV by stretching a pair of nylon stockings over their screen. Needless to say, a lot of tights were ruined that day.
Jovian-Plutonian effect: Sky at Night presenter Patrick Moore tricked people in the UK into believing that the alignment of Pluto and Jupiter would allow them to briefly float. Miraculously, people reported this really happened!
Flying penguins: The BBC once shared miraculous footage of Adélie penguins taking flight as they made their annual migration from Antarctica to the South American rainforest. There was just one problem… penguins can’t fly.
Even now, nearly seven decades later, the Spaghetti-Tree Hoax remains one of the most infamous April Fool’s jokes in history, with CNN even once branding it ‘the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled’.
It’s not just news organisations that remember the prank. On YouTube, @catherinepansey shared her memories of the joke.
‘I saw this on TV as a child, on a rare afternoon, while alone watching TV,’ she explained.
‘It seemed so real. I never forgot it; it haunted me for years and years. Then came the internet, and I typed in spaghetti growing on trees, one day. AND THERE IT WAS! I showed all my now adult siblings. JUSTIFICATION. I was not MAD….. Best April Fool’s prank EVER!!!!’
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