Sunny april morning spaghetti tree harvest (7036208493)

The spaghetti-tree hoax was a three-minute

hoax A hoax is a widely publicized falsehood so fashioned as to invite reflexive, unthinking acceptance by the greatest number of people of the most varied social identities and of the highest possible social pretensions to gull its victims into pu ...

report broadcast on

April Fools' Day April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day is an annual custom on 1 April consisting of practical jokes and hoaxes. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting "April Fools!" at the recipient. Mass media can be involved in these pranks, which may ...

1957 by the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...

current-affairs programme ''

Panorama A panorama (formed from Greek πᾶν "all" + ὅραμα "view") is any wide-angle view or representation of a physical space, whether in painting, drawing, photography, film, seismic images, or 3D modeling. The word was originally coined in ...

'', purportedly showing a family in southern

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

harvesting

spaghetti Spaghetti () is a long, thin, solid, cylindrical pasta.spaghetti
Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridg ...

from the family "spaghetti tree". At the time spaghetti was relatively unknown in the UK, so many British people were unaware that it is made from

wheat flour Wheat flour is a powder made from the grinding of wheat used for human consumption. Wheat varieties are called "soft" or "weak" if gluten content is low, and are called "hard" or "strong" if they have high gluten content. Hard flour, or ''bread ...

and water; a number of viewers afterwards contacted the BBC for advice on growing their own spaghetti trees. Decades later,

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...

called this broadcast "the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled".

Broadcast

The news report was produced as an

joke in 1957, and presented a family in the canton of

Ticino Ticino (), sometimes Tessin (), officially the Republic and Canton of Ticino or less formally the Canton of Ticino,, informally ''Canton Ticino'' ; lmo, Canton Tesin ; german: Kanton Tessin ; french: Canton du Tessin ; rm, Chantun dal Tessin . ...

in southern Switzerland gathering a bumper spaghetti harvest after a mild winter and "virtual disappearance of the spaghetti

weevil Weevils are beetles belonging to the Taxonomic rank, superfamily Curculionoidea, known for their elongated snouts. They are usually small, less than in length, and Herbivore, herbivorous. Approximately 97,000 species of weevils are known. They b ...

". Footage of a traditional "Harvest Festival" was aired along with a discussion of the breeding necessary to develop a strain to produce the perfect spaghetti noodle length. Some scenes were filmed at the (now closed) Pasta Foods factory on London Road,

St Albans St Albans () is a cathedral city in Hertfordshire, England, east of Hemel Hempstead and west of Hatfield, Hertfordshire, Hatfield, north-west of London, south-west of Welwyn Garden City and south-east of Luton. St Albans was the first major ...

, in

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...

, and at a hotel in Castagnola,

. ''Panorama'' cameraman

Charles de Jaeger Charles Theophile de Jaeger (27 February 1911 – 19 May 2000) was a cameraman for the BBC. He is best known as one of the creators of a famous April Fools' Day joke from 1957: a three-minute spoof report on the Swiss spaghetti harvest beside Lak ...

dreamed up the story after remembering how teachers at his school in

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

teased his classmates for being so stupid that if they were told that spaghetti grew on trees, they would believe it. The editor of ''Panorama'', Michael Peacock, told the BBC in 2014 how he gave de Jaeger a budget of £100 and sent him off. The report was made more believable through its

voice-over Voice-over (also known as off-camera or off-stage commentary) is a production technique where a voice—that is not part of the narrative (non-Diegetic#Film sound and music, diegetic)—is used in a radio, television production, filmmaking, th ...

by respected broadcaster

Richard Dimbleby Frederick Richard Dimbleby (25 May 1913 – 22 December 1965) was an English journalist and broadcaster, who became the BBC's first war correspondent, and then its leading TV news commentator. As host of the long-running current affairs ...

. Peacock said Dimbleby knew they were using his authority to make the joke work, and that Dimbleby loved the idea and went at it eagerly. At the time, 7 million of the 15.8 million homes (about 44%) in Britain had television receivers. Pasta was not an everyday food in 1950s Britain, and it was known mainly from tinned spaghetti in tomato sauce and considered by many to be an exotic delicacy. An estimated eight million people watched the programme on 1 April 1957, and hundreds phoned in the following day to question the authenticity of the story or ask for more information about spaghetti cultivation and how they could grow their own spaghetti trees; the BBC told them to "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best".

References

External links

* * * Video link on that page is dead. * With transcript and background. * * * {{cite web , last=Elen , first=Richard G. , url=http://www.transdiffusion.org/emc/aspidistra/spaghetti_fool.php , title=Spaghetti Fool | Aspidistra , publisher=Transdiffusion.org , date=1 April 2007 , accessdate=29 December 2014 , url-status=dead , archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20120613042901/http://www.transdiffusion.org/emc/aspidistra/spaghetti_fool.php , archivedate=13 June 2012 April Fools' Day jokes Performance hoaxes BBC history Fictional trees 1957 in the United Kingdom Mockumentaries 1957 in British television Hoaxes in the United Kingdom Journalistic hoaxes 1950s hoaxes Spaghetti Practical jokes

Broadcast

See also

References

External links