Rolf Apilo
Chunnel trouble, 1990
If you're spoofing the building of a tunnel there's one enticing joke to play, and the News of the World went for it in 1990.
The paper reported that the Channel tunnel project, at long last under way after centuries of discussion, had run into yet another glitch, and a really bad one. Costs had already spiralled and labour troubles had added to engineering challenges to slow things down. Now, guess what, surveyors had realised that the two halves being built simultaneously from Britain and France would miss one another by 14ft.
The £10bn error - previously used as an April Fool on tunnels in the Alps, America and Japan - was blamed in proper tabloid style on French engineers who had insisted on using the metric system. The Brits had stuck loyally to miles and inches.
Other Chunnel spoofs over the long years of construction (1987-94) included a more original suggestion, in the Sunday Express, that work had stopped after the discovery of a gold seam at exactly halfway, which was being claimed by both Britain and France.
Motorway madness, 1991
It had the virtue of simplicity: in 1991, the Times revealed that the relatively new but already choked London orbital motorway the M25 was to follow an alternating one-way system.
On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, all six lanes in both directions would be used clockwise. On Tuesdays and Thursdays everyone would go the other way.
The idea was given credibility by the usual assortment of technical details, plus the fact that things would revert to normal at weekends.
Hoax protesters were soon joined by real ones as readers rang or wrote in. One suspect commuter from Swanley in Kent complained: "Villagers use the motorway to make shopping trips to Orpington. On some days this will be a journey of two miles, and on others a journey of 117 miles. The scheme is lunatic."
Congestion has since become so severe on the M25 that the apparently mad scheme may now seem like a bright idea.
Moscow underground, 1992
As the former Soviet Union thawed, its sense of humour warmed up. In 1992, the Moskovskaya Pravda newspaper guyed the country's increasingly passionate embrace of capitalism with news that the city was going to build a second underground system. The Moscow underground, built by Stalin to impress the rest of the world, is a genuine wonder, with marble floors, classical pillars and even chandeliers, but it does get crowded. The newspaper explained, however, that the new system was not intended to relieve the crush. It was ideologically necessary under capitalism to have at least two of everything, "to destroy monopolies in the interests of competition". Pravda is Russian for "truth", which this was not.
San Serriffe, 1977
"The Financial Times was always doing special reports on little countries I'd never heard of," says former Guardian advertising rep Philip Davies. "I was thinking about April Fool's Day 1977 and I thought, why don't we just make a country up?" Special reports editor Stuart St Clair Legge suggested the title that was to become a legend: San Serriffe, part typographic pun, part credible name for a tropical isle.
It also had the special appropriateness for the Guardian of challenging spelling. During its long relationship with San Serriffe, starting with the original supplement itself, the paper has printed the name with carefree inconsistency, using every possible variation of "r"s and "f"s, and, on one occasion, two "e"s.
Picking up Legge's theme, staffer Geoffrey Taylor designed a shrunken semicolon-shaped version of New Zealand's twin islands and based everything on the rich vocabulary of print. Leading islanders, such as the dictator General Pica, and places like the capital, Bodoni, were named after fonts of type and their measurements: he even got away with a wilderness area on the north island called Wodj of Type.
The islands were positioned off the Canaries and with just over three days to go, the final shape of the major, seven-broadsheet-page supplement was drawn up. Then, in the late afternoon of March 27, two jumbo jets collided at Tenerife airport, causing the worst aviation disaster in the world, in which 583 people died. The delicate web of April Fool fantasy suddenly seemed marginal. The editor, Peter Preston, teetered on the edge of pulling San Serriffe, but fortunately it was not abandoned. With a Herculean effort, the islands were relocated in the Indian Ocean, their history, flora and fauna completely revised.
So San Serriffe indelibly joined the map of the world. Next morning, the phone calls started early, the letters followed later. Thousands of readers were taken in; spin-offs soon included "I've been to San Serriffe" car stickers and a T-shirt from the islands, which sold a record 12,000 to readers.
The best for last ...
The spaghetti harvest, 1957
Cameraman Charles De Jaeger and producer David Wheeler "made their pitch to me," recalls the then Panorama editor Michael Peacock. "April 1 would be on a Monday that year, so this would be a rare opportunity to carry an April Fool. They outlined how the story of the spaghetti harvest would go. Charles, a freelance who'd worked for Panorama from the start, explained that he was going to be filming in Switzerland anyway. He knew a small village where the women would be happy to take part, and he was sure they could attach spaghetti to trees! So it wouldn't cost much to film.
"I couldn't say no. I gave Charles a budget of £100, and off he went. He did a splendid job of filming the harvest, but not enough credit has been given to David for the brilliant pastiche newsreel commentary he wrote for Richard Dimbleby." It was a masterly 350 words ("Many of you, I am sure, will have seen pictures of vast spaghetti plantations in the Po valley. For the Swiss, however, it tends to be more of a family affair . . ."), suited to the sonorous cadences of Dimbleby, who saw the script and fortunately agreed to join the prank.
The film ran for three minutes. Millions watched as yet another fascinating "window on the world" (Panorama's catchphrase) was opened for their information, education and entertainment. Then Dimbleby reappeared and gave them a whopper of a nudge. "Now we say goodnight," he signed off, "on this first day of April."
Most of the millions watching missed his clue. The spoof had scored an extraordinary bull's-eye. The BBC did its best to reassure critics - it would be a long time before April Fool's fell on a Monday again, said officials. They meanwhile took a playful line in following up the hoax. After a few days, anyone who rang up or wrote in about growing their own spaghetti was advised: place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.
Lifted from today's Guardian
If you're spoofing the building of a tunnel there's one enticing joke to play, and the News of the World went for it in 1990.
The paper reported that the Channel tunnel project, at long last under way after centuries of discussion, had run into yet another glitch, and a really bad one. Costs had already spiralled and labour troubles had added to engineering challenges to slow things down. Now, guess what, surveyors had realised that the two halves being built simultaneously from Britain and France would miss one another by 14ft.
The £10bn error - previously used as an April Fool on tunnels in the Alps, America and Japan - was blamed in proper tabloid style on French engineers who had insisted on using the metric system. The Brits had stuck loyally to miles and inches.
Other Chunnel spoofs over the long years of construction (1987-94) included a more original suggestion, in the Sunday Express, that work had stopped after the discovery of a gold seam at exactly halfway, which was being claimed by both Britain and France.
Motorway madness, 1991
It had the virtue of simplicity: in 1991, the Times revealed that the relatively new but already choked London orbital motorway the M25 was to follow an alternating one-way system.
On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, all six lanes in both directions would be used clockwise. On Tuesdays and Thursdays everyone would go the other way.
The idea was given credibility by the usual assortment of technical details, plus the fact that things would revert to normal at weekends.
Hoax protesters were soon joined by real ones as readers rang or wrote in. One suspect commuter from Swanley in Kent complained: "Villagers use the motorway to make shopping trips to Orpington. On some days this will be a journey of two miles, and on others a journey of 117 miles. The scheme is lunatic."
Congestion has since become so severe on the M25 that the apparently mad scheme may now seem like a bright idea.
Moscow underground, 1992
As the former Soviet Union thawed, its sense of humour warmed up. In 1992, the Moskovskaya Pravda newspaper guyed the country's increasingly passionate embrace of capitalism with news that the city was going to build a second underground system. The Moscow underground, built by Stalin to impress the rest of the world, is a genuine wonder, with marble floors, classical pillars and even chandeliers, but it does get crowded. The newspaper explained, however, that the new system was not intended to relieve the crush. It was ideologically necessary under capitalism to have at least two of everything, "to destroy monopolies in the interests of competition". Pravda is Russian for "truth", which this was not.
San Serriffe, 1977
"The Financial Times was always doing special reports on little countries I'd never heard of," says former Guardian advertising rep Philip Davies. "I was thinking about April Fool's Day 1977 and I thought, why don't we just make a country up?" Special reports editor Stuart St Clair Legge suggested the title that was to become a legend: San Serriffe, part typographic pun, part credible name for a tropical isle.
It also had the special appropriateness for the Guardian of challenging spelling. During its long relationship with San Serriffe, starting with the original supplement itself, the paper has printed the name with carefree inconsistency, using every possible variation of "r"s and "f"s, and, on one occasion, two "e"s.
Picking up Legge's theme, staffer Geoffrey Taylor designed a shrunken semicolon-shaped version of New Zealand's twin islands and based everything on the rich vocabulary of print. Leading islanders, such as the dictator General Pica, and places like the capital, Bodoni, were named after fonts of type and their measurements: he even got away with a wilderness area on the north island called Wodj of Type.
The islands were positioned off the Canaries and with just over three days to go, the final shape of the major, seven-broadsheet-page supplement was drawn up. Then, in the late afternoon of March 27, two jumbo jets collided at Tenerife airport, causing the worst aviation disaster in the world, in which 583 people died. The delicate web of April Fool fantasy suddenly seemed marginal. The editor, Peter Preston, teetered on the edge of pulling San Serriffe, but fortunately it was not abandoned. With a Herculean effort, the islands were relocated in the Indian Ocean, their history, flora and fauna completely revised.
So San Serriffe indelibly joined the map of the world. Next morning, the phone calls started early, the letters followed later. Thousands of readers were taken in; spin-offs soon included "I've been to San Serriffe" car stickers and a T-shirt from the islands, which sold a record 12,000 to readers.
The best for last ...
The spaghetti harvest, 1957
Cameraman Charles De Jaeger and producer David Wheeler "made their pitch to me," recalls the then Panorama editor Michael Peacock. "April 1 would be on a Monday that year, so this would be a rare opportunity to carry an April Fool. They outlined how the story of the spaghetti harvest would go. Charles, a freelance who'd worked for Panorama from the start, explained that he was going to be filming in Switzerland anyway. He knew a small village where the women would be happy to take part, and he was sure they could attach spaghetti to trees! So it wouldn't cost much to film.
"I couldn't say no. I gave Charles a budget of £100, and off he went. He did a splendid job of filming the harvest, but not enough credit has been given to David for the brilliant pastiche newsreel commentary he wrote for Richard Dimbleby." It was a masterly 350 words ("Many of you, I am sure, will have seen pictures of vast spaghetti plantations in the Po valley. For the Swiss, however, it tends to be more of a family affair . . ."), suited to the sonorous cadences of Dimbleby, who saw the script and fortunately agreed to join the prank.
The film ran for three minutes. Millions watched as yet another fascinating "window on the world" (Panorama's catchphrase) was opened for their information, education and entertainment. Then Dimbleby reappeared and gave them a whopper of a nudge. "Now we say goodnight," he signed off, "on this first day of April."
Most of the millions watching missed his clue. The spoof had scored an extraordinary bull's-eye. The BBC did its best to reassure critics - it would be a long time before April Fool's fell on a Monday again, said officials. They meanwhile took a playful line in following up the hoax. After a few days, anyone who rang up or wrote in about growing their own spaghetti was advised: place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.
Lifted from today's Guardian
posted by Damiel | 7:20 PM
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