Spaghetti tree hoax

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Photograph of a woman harvesting spaghetti in the BBC programme

The spaghetti tree hoax was a three-minute hoax report broadcast on April Fools' Day 1957 by the BBC current-affairs programme Panorama, purportedly showing a family in southern Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from the family "spaghetti tree". At the time spaghetti was relatively little-known in the UK, so that many Britons were unaware that spaghetti is made from wheat flour and water; a number of viewers afterwards contacted the BBC for advice on growing their own spaghetti trees. Decades later CNN called this broadcast "the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled."[1]

Broadcast

Panorama cameraman Charles de Jaeger dreamed up the story after remembering how teachers at his school in Austria teased his classmates for being so stupid that if they were told that spaghetti grew on trees, they would believe it.

The report was produced as an April Fools' Day joke in 1957, showing a family in the canton of Ticino in southern Switzerland as they gathered a bumper spaghetti harvest after a mild winter and "virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil". Footage of a traditional "Harvest Festival" was aired along with a discussion of the breeding necessary to develop a strain to produce the perfect length. Some scenes were filmed at the (now closed) Pasta Foods factory on London Road, St Albans in Hertfordshire and at a hotel in Castagnola, Switzerland.

The report was made more believable through its voiceover by respected broadcaster Richard Dimbleby. Pasta was not an everyday food in 1950s Britain, known mainly from tinned spaghetti in tomato sauce and considered by many to be an exotic delicacy.[2]

At the time, seven million of the 15.8 million homes in Britain had television sets.[3] An estimated eight million people watched the programme on 1 April 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 reportedly told them to "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best".[4]

Similar hoaxes

In the 1939 Soviet novel The Adventures of Captain Vrungel, a similar gag is present when the crew is arrested by Mussolini's forces. Fux manages to convince the soldiers he can make spaghetti grow, and even demonstrates (though in his case, they grew out of the ground like cereals, instead of on trees). Then he states that the spaghetti will only grow properly if watered with alcohol. The alcohol allotted for the purpose is naturally all drunk by the soldiers, causing a drop in security sufficient for the heroes to escape. Once safe, Fux explains he planted oats along with the spaghetti.

See also

References

  1. ↑ By Saeed Ahmed CNN. "A nod and a link: April Fools' Day pranks abound in the news". CNN.com. Retrieved 2010-01-25. 
  2. ↑ "BBC ON THIS DAY | 1 | 1957: BBC fools the nation". BBC News. 1957-04-01. Retrieved 2010-01-25. 
  3. ↑ "Television Ownership in Private Domestic Households 1956-2009 (Millions)". Barb.co.uk. Retrieved 2010-01-25. 
  4. ↑ McLennan, Louisa (10 September 2004). "Fool's gold". Times Online. Retrieved 2010-01-25. 

External links

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