Will and Guy's Hoaxes. Spaghetti Bushes BBC April 1st Hoax

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Will and Guy's Hoaxes - April Fools Day Hoaxes

Where does Spaghetti come from? Back in 1957, no lesser source than the BBC, informed us that Spaghetti came from bushes.

Now my guess is that you could resurrect this April Fools day stunt for the next April Fools day. Today's children are more sophisticated in many ways, for example, they would not believe that a radio programme purporting that Martians had landed in America was true. However, today children are notoriously ignorant on the sources of food. All they know is that if they want food, they just open a ready meal or raid the fridge.

My favoured method to trick older children is to recreate the hoax, but to substitute Tagliatelle for Spaghetti. While, for younger children the idea of a plain pasta tree may capture their imagination. Classic Spagetti Bush Hoax

The original 1957 BBC hoax succeed because it was shown on the prestigious Panorama Programme. In true reverential, BBC documentary tone, Richard Dimbleby explained how Spaghetti was harvested from bushes, dried, and then processed into strands of spaghetti.

Will remembers the Spaghetti Saga and believed it himself, as he didn't know any better!! Will recalls, 'We didn't have a TV and I had to rely on friends repeating the tale; whether they had stayed up to watch I know not. I was 10 years old' .

Also, the audience lapped it up, a few people even phoned in asking where they could buy a Spaghetti bush.

As an aside, what I like about a good spoof is that it not only fools people, but also someone else gets mad, in this case staff in the BBC got upset because they felt that the BBC had wasted a Panorama slot on a mere hoax.

Well this Programme went out on April 1st 1957. It would three months before Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was to tell us: 'most of our people have never had it so good'. I leave it to you decide if he was talking about Spaghetti bushes or Tagliatelle Trees!

2) April Fools Day Tales from the Classroom

When I was a green horn teacher I was slightly shocked by some of the strokes that older teachers pulled on their students. One episode that opened my eyes was Ned's photography stunt. Because of cut-backs, old Ned Foreman had to run his 3rd year photography class (now called Year 9?) with no money for film. Camera Hoax

What Ned did was to assure his pupils that there was film in the cameras. He then send them around and about to take pictures for their projects. When it came to printing the non-existent photographs, Ned had a myriad of excuses; he seemed to invent a different excuse for every class. If he was in a bad mood, Ned would stage an event where the class duffer opened the cameras. Ned then lambasted the stooge for accidentally exposing some old film he that he secreted in the cameras between lessons.

If he was in a good mood, Ned would take partial responsibility himself, I remember him spellbinding my class with a dramatic tale of how a bird flew into the photography dark room (aka his kitchen) and caused a shaft of light to expose the film. On another occasion it was a long saga about how a rabid dog ate the film.

As a greenhorn, I was the reverse of Ned. I remember devising a bold project whereby the class made yogurt out of sour milk. It would be illegal now of course, but rules were lax 25 years ago. Far from giving the class reasons why the sour milk did not turn into yogurt, I spent my own money and bought a dozen real cartons of plain yogurt and claimed that their experiment was a great success.

Years later when I was an older and wiser teacher, I pulled a stunt on my class. The project for the Easter term was cactus. I invested some of the departmental budget in some nice cactus plants for the pupils to take cuttings, we even had proper pots and a greenhouse to keep them warm.

Next, I arranged for a class outing to visit a local expert and admire his collection of cacti. When they returned to the lab, the class were impressed, but they now wanted to grow their own cactus from seed. Have you ever seen cactus seeds? They look just like gravel. Today is March 31st, what shall I do for tomorrow's lesson?

Time for an April Fools joke. I could hardly keep a straight face as I told them that I managed to get some Cactus seed at great expense. In fact I was giving them gravel that I picked up on the way to the lesson. My pupils dutifully planted the 'seeds' in their pots. Finally, we formed a crocodile and deferentially stored the 'seeds' in the greenhouse to germinate over Easter. At this point the bell went for the end of the lesson, so I dismissed them with the words, 'You know those Cactus seeds you just planted - April Fool' .

Spaghetti Bushes - April Fools Day 1957

Will and Guy's Hoaxes - April Fools Day Hoaxes

1) Swiss Spaghetti Bushes

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2) April Fools Day Tales from the Classroom

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