Curious Questions: What is the greatest April Fool's prank ever played?

The origins of April Fool's Day pranks is desperately murky — despite a plethora of plausible theories.

Does it owe its origins to the Roman festival of Hilaria, celebrated on March 25 in honour of the goddess Cybele, during which all kinds of games and amusements, including masquerades, were allowed? Participants were given licence to imitate whoever they chose, including those in authority.

Or was it linked to the pagan belief that following the vernal equinox which heralds in spring, Mother Nature plays tricks by bringing changeable and unpredictable weather?

Or were its roots a hangover of the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in France in 1582? The new calendar moved the start of the year from April 1 to the beginning of January, but not everyone caught on to or accepted the seismic change at first. Those who persisted with the old ways were the butt of jokes and pranks around April 1. One particular trick was to pin a paper fish on people’s backs and calling them poisson d’avril, a term is still used in France to denote a gullible person who has fallen for an April fool’s joke.

Huntigowk Day and Tallie Day

Whatever its origins by the 18^th century the British were enthusiastic participants in the pranks and japes on April Fool’s Day, none more so than the Scottish who extended the fun over two days. The first, April 1, was known as Huntigowk Day or, in Gaelioc, La na Gocaireachd, a 'gowk' being a cuckoo, a synonym for a foolish person.

The most common prank was to ask the victim to deliver a sealed letter to someone supposedly asking for the recipient’s help, although what it said was: 'Dinna laugh, dinna smile, hunt the gowk another mile'. The recipient would claim that they could only help if the victim secured the assistance of another person and they were sent off with another sealed letter carrying the self-same message. The fun would continue until the victim realised that they had been taken for a ride, sometimes even literally.

The second day was known as Tallie Day. Here the pranks were less convoluted, often simply consisting of pinning fake tails on backs or signs inviting passers-by to kick the posterior of the victims, not unlike the French custom of poisson d’avril.

By the early 20^th century there was a very clear structure imposed on the playing of April Fool jokes in Britain. The golden rule was that the trick had to be played by midday on April 1 otherwise the trick would rebound on the would-be prankster and they would be declared the April Fool.

How television upped the ante for April Fool's Day

The pace of change after the Second World War bewildered many, leaving them grappling to understand the new range of gadgets and foodstuffs that were becoming an increasing part of their daily life. For mischievous pranksters with the reach of the mass media at hand, this naiveté presented too good an opportunity to miss.

Take television, for instance. Television sets were becoming a fixture of many living rooms but, disappointingly, they only offered a monochrome window into our technicolour world. That is until April Fool’s Day 1962 when Sweden’s only television channel broadcast a po-faced technical expert bringing news of an exciting discovery. If viewers were to stretch a pair of nylon tights over their sets, they would immediately transform the black and white images into glorious colour. Of course, all they got was a fuzzy screen and a pair of misshapen tights but, astonishingly, many are reported to have tried it out.

The most famous televisual April Fool’s joke, though, was perpetrated in Britain in 1957. Panorama, broadcast on Monday evenings, was a jewel in the crown of the British Broadcasting Corporation, featuring documentaries on newsworthy stories and current affairs, and hosted by one of the most revered public figures of the time, Richard Dimbleby.

By then Britain had emerged from over a decade of food rationing. While the majority of the population were grateful to return to the wholesome and traditional — if somewhat stodgy — British favourites, more adventurous souls were willing to try the exotic foodstuffs flowing in from the continent. Spaghetti was a perfect example: it's now a staple of many of our diets, but in 1950s Britain it was a rarity. Very few people knew where it came from or how it was produced.

April Fool’s Day fell on a Monday and one of Panorama’s cameramen, Charles de Jaeger, a notorious practical joker, proposed to the producer, Michael Peacock, that they do a short piece based on the English idiom, 'x does not grow on trees', showing spaghetti being harvested from trees. Peacock agreed, gave him a budget of £100 and allowed him to extend his trip to Switzerland — where he had been working — to film the piece.

Finding his perfect location — a hotel in Castiglione by Lake Lugano, surrounded by laurel trees — de Jaeger bought twenty pounds of fresh, uncooked, home-made spaghetti to hang from the branches of some of the trees. The problem, though, was that the strips of spaghetti quickly dried out and would not hang on the branches. Cooking it only made it slippery, and the strips would slide inelegantly off the branches on to the ground.

The resourceful de Jaeger finally came up with a solution, wrapping the pasta up in a damp cloth to keep it sufficiently moist until it was needed to be hung on the trees. He then hired some local girls, dressed in national costume and carrying wicker baskets, to climb ladders and 'harvest' the pasta, which was then laid out in the sun. After it was cooked, de Jaeger shot some footage of the locals tucking into the fruits of their harvest.

The piece was the last item on the show, following a feature on wine production, and Dimbleby introduced it by saying, 'And now from wine to food. We end Panorama tonight with a special report from the Swiss Alps'. When the report was over, Dimbleby signed off with particular emphasis on the final phrase, 'Now we say goodnight, on this first day of April'.

BBC: Spaghetti-Harvest in Ticino | Switzerland Tourism - YouTube

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Such was the piece’s impact that the BBC was inundated with telephone calls from viewers, some congratulating the broadcasters for a delicious joke, others asking for assistance in settling arguments between those who accepted de Jaeger’s explanation and those who believed it was made from flour and water.

That Dimbleby had done the voiceover encouraged many to take the hoax as gospel. Even the BBC's Director-General, Sir Ian Jacob, was taken in and sought the answer from the internet of the time — the Encyclopaedia Britannica — only to be thwarted because spaghetti did not even merit an entry.

The BBC were forced to issue a statement before the close of that night’s transmission, but some cried foul over its timing as it was broadcast after the traditional April Fool’s deadline of noon. Panorama never broadcast another hoax story, but the spaghetti tree story spawned a number of imitators, including pasta manufacturers, San Giorgio, who in 1978 ran an advert featuring a spaghetti farm where the pasta grew with the strap line 'nobody grows spaghetti like San Giorgio'.

And was an April Fool’s Day joke responsible for the rise of Euro-scepticism? On April Fool’s Day, 1995, Nestlé Rowntree’s marketeers announced that ‘in accordance with EEC Council Regulations (EC) 631/95’ they would no longer be producing Polo mints with holes. The outrage that ensued allowed them to suggest the following April 1^st that they were launching Polo Holes, described as ‘the hole with the mint’. And they did!