Giant Hoaxes

- ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Annemarie Schäfer

SPAGHETTI HARVEST IN SWITZERLAND On 1 April 1957, the BBC news show Panorama announced that, thanks to a mild winter and the elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. The programme, narrated by distinguished broadcaster Richard Dimbleby, featured a family from Ticino in Switzerland carrying out their annual spaghetti harvest. It showed women carefully plucking strands of spaghetti from a tree and laying them in the sun to dry.

Dimbleby explained how each year the end of March is a very anxious time for spaghetti harvesters all over Europe as severe frost can impair the flavour of the spaghetti. He also explained how each strand of spaghetti always grows to the same length thanks to years of hard work by generations of growers.

A large number of viewers were taken in. Many called the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. The BBC diplomatically replied: “Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.”

Even the director-general of the BBC later admitted that after seeing the news show he checked in an encyclopaedia to find out if that was how spaghetti actually grew.

CHOIR USES HELIUM

First of April 2014: The renowned British King’s College Choir released a video announcing that complex regulations had made it impractical to continue featuring young boys in the choir. Therefore they had been forced to find other ways to replicate the high pitch of the boys’ pre-adolescent voices.