Tomfoolery in News Articles Is a Proud April 1 Tradition Among the Media in Britain

New York Times ^ | 4/2/05 | Sarah Lyall

[LibWhacker]

LONDON, April 1 - The article certainly looked normal, sitting innocently on the front page of The Guardian newspaper on Friday. Under the headline "New Labor Lines up Countryside Role for Charles," it reported that the Labor government wanted to enlist the Prince of Wales as its liaison to rural Britain, giving him "some hands-on experience of running something."

O.K., but does the government also want to make fox hunting legal again and make it more socially inclusive, to provide "kids on housing estates the same opportunity to hunt as posh children," as the article also reported? Does it want to rebrand Camilla Parker Bowles "as a jam maker rather than a home breaker"? And does the prince really employ a polling firm called "Yo, Guv!"?

Er, no. April Fool!

The fake April 1 article is a fine British newspaper tradition, befitting a country where the news media revel in not taking themselves too seriously.

"British newspapers are less serious than American newspapers," said Jonathan Brown, a reporter at The Independent, which ran an article on Friday claiming that the Conservative Party was pinning its hopes on a candidate for Parliament, the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. Referring to one of the least-serious papers, he added, "If you see some of our papers, like the Sunday Sport, half the stuff isn't true anyway."

Friday's Evening Standard reported that pigeons in Trafalgar Square were being fitted with knitted cardigans to lower their sperm counts. Meanwhile, a Daily Mirror article claimed that a flock of sheep dyed with England's colors would be installed at the new Wembley Stadium to spread nonallergenic fertilizer on the soccer field.

The articles can also be political. Friday's Sun - a populist tabloid that likes neither Gypsies nor Britain's human rights laws - reported that a huge group of Gypsies had set up camp in front of Windsor Castle, claiming their right to do so under a law enacted in 1359.

Even the BBC got into the act, running a spoof spot on its "Today" radio program. According to "an obscure law, which most people in this country have never heard of," it reported, Camilla's louche socialite son could well become the second in line to the British throne - replacing Prince William, who is, alas, younger - when Charles and Camilla marry next Friday.

Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian (and the man behind the Charles-in-the-countryside article), said hoax articles "work best if they're plausible enough that you believe them when you're half-asleep." The Guardian, one of the more sober of Britain's newspapers, once produced a celebrity magazine for intellectuals that featured people like the philosopher Jacques Derrida posing fashionably in their gracious homes.

In 1977, the newspaper printed a supplement extolling the virtues of San Serriffe, an obscure semicolon-shaped country in the Indian Ocean comprising two islands, Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse. Its capital was Bodoni; its leader was the authoritarian General Pica, and many readers, missing the printers' terminology that informed every aspect of the hoax, telephoned The Guardian to ask how they might get there.

But the most famous fake news report took place on television, in 1957. That was when eight million viewers watched a BBC documentary showing a family in Ticino, Switzerland, harvesting spaghetti by carefully plucking cooked strands from a tree and laying them to dry in the sun.

It was a good year for spaghetti, the BBC's Jonathan Dimbleby reported, because of the mild weather and the success of the Swiss spaghetti weevil eradication program. The BBC was deluged with calls.

[Capriole]

I'll never forget the spaghetti hoax. I must have been ten when I saw it replayed years later on Johnny Carson. It was superbly done, with classic BBC production values--the stuffy British announcer doing the voice-over, a pleasantly patronizing tone toward the simple Italian-Swiss villagers, the typically unimaginative shots of the spaghetti growing on spaghetti bushes, friendly smiling natives in their traditional costumes, etc. Wonderful stuff. We just shrieked with laughter. When the British are funny there's no one like them.

[saquin]

Who could forget Sports Illustrated's "Sidd Finch" hoax by George Plimpton. That was a classic.

The NY Times had an article about it today.

An Old Baseball April Fools' Hoax

Sidd Finch pitched wearing one work boot and one bare foot.

[LibWhacker]

Lol, thanks for that!

[LibWhacker]

When the British are funny there's no one like them.

I love their sense of humor when it's dry and subtle and almost over my head. But I get the sneaky suspicion a lot of times that it really is over my head. Then I'm not such a big fan, lol!