1957: The respected BBC news show Panorama announced that thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. It accompanied this announcement with footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti down from trees. Huge numbers of viewers were taken in. Many called the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this the BBC diplomatically replied, "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best."
Comments
Listed in chronological order. Newest comments at the end.

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A delightful site, which I've bookmarked.

Reading the item about the Swiss spaghetti reminded me of a similar story that was broadcast by our ABC TV (http://www.abc.net.au) when I was a kid. Unfortunately there's nothing on their website about it so I'm forced to rely on memory. I recall the footage was in black & white (colour TV started here in 1975), and it was broadcast by the ABC's current affairs show of the time. Probably late '60s or early '70s timeframe?

Anyway, the ABC version described the devastation of that year's Australian spaghetti crop by the "spaghetti worm", a ravenous creature
which ate the unripe spaghetti from the inside, rendering it worthless. Application of pesticides was said to be ineffective, because anything
powerful enough to kill the worm also rendered the spaghetti unfit for eating.

The report included dramatic footage of infested spaghetti bushes being cleared & burned in an effort to contain the outbreak, interviews with distraught spaghetti farmers facing financial ruin, etc. And as was (and still is) common practice for these types of stories, the report
concluded with an appeal for donations from the public.

It was one of the best April Fool's ever done by the Australian media. Apparently thousands of people went to post offices & banks all over the country during the following days, trying to hand over wads of money to "those poor spaghetti farmers". About the only people not taken in were (obviously) those who actually lived in the supposed "spaghetti-growing heartland" some of whom had helped pull off the prank.

The following week's show admitted the hoax, and described how it was done. Unfortunately this confession provoked a backlash about how public funds (the ABC is govt-owned) had been wasted on this prank; and since then the ABC news & current affairs have never done an April Fool's of their own. Of course you only needed to look at the date the story aired and the ingredients label on any spaghetti to realize it was a joke!
Posted by Fraser  on  Fri Jul 06, 2001  at  09:14 PM

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This site is one of the best. Thank you, in particular, for reminding me of the Swiss spaghetti harvest, which I recall as the biggest childhood laugh I ever had from anything not involving the Marx Brothers. And for San Serriffe, which I'd never heard of, and had me
laughing so loud my neighbors complained. And on and on...
Posted by Tom, Boston, MA  on  Sun Mar 17, 2002  at  11:24 PM

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In 1958 or 1959, we were shown the BBC spaghetti harvest hoax as a film in grammar school. This was presented as a real film to us. Just shows you how bad the Chicago schools were 30 years before Bill Bennett said they were the worst in the country.
Posted by Anonymous  on  Wed Apr 03, 2002  at  08:24 PM

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I was in London on 4/1/57 when BBC ran the "Spaghetti Harvest" Documentary. I could not for the life of me figure out why everyone was laughing so hard. I was about eight or, nine at the time. That's how I found your site. Google helped.
Posted by Lloyd  on  Mon Apr 08, 2002  at  07:20 AM

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The spaghetti hoax was also broadcast on the Jack Paar show. The studio audience laughed heartily. A few weeks later Jack announced that there were so many enquiries asking what was so funny that he had to show it again. Which he did. However, he never did explain what was so funny!
Posted by Paul  on  Mon May 27, 2002  at  10:20 AM

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I learned about your site from the Scout Report and have enjoyed poking around in it. Great stuff, nicely laid out. Thanks, especially, for the story about the homegrown spaghetti and the link to the original BBC film. It may interest you to know that some time in the 1960s or 1970s, Johnny Carson showed the same film on The Tonight Show. A week or so later, he had to respond to irate letters of people who took it seriously and thought he was making fun of the simple farmers. I remember him holding up a box of spaghetti and reading off the list of ingredients to prove that spaghetti is made, not born. And gullible Americans at the time didn't have the excuse that some Britons had in the 1950s that spaghetti wasn't a familiar dish. Thanks for the site.
Posted by Alan  on  Fri Jan 10, 2003  at  09:20 PM

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Greetings From a Very Cold And Snowy Montreal, Do you have any mpeg or quicktime clips of the spaghetti hoax ? Alternatively,any pictures of the farce?
Posted by Andre  on  Sat Jan 11, 2003  at  09:30 PM

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Hi Andre, Sorry I don't have any quicktime clips of the hoax. The BBC controls all pictures of the show, so you need to go through them to get any stuff: the BBC TV archive http://www.bbcresearchcentral.com/tv.html.
Posted by Alex  on  Tue Jan 14, 2003  at  10:30 PM

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I haven't read all of your stories but in the April Fools section you may care to tell people of the famous BBC April Fools hoax when they produced a 30 minute TV documentary on Italian farmers, sweating in the hot sun, harvesting the ripened spaghetti from their trees in Tuscany. (I am sure the BBC would provide you with fuller details).
Posted by Anonymous  on  Sun Jan 26, 2003  at  10:30 PM

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Sorry - it's I again. I finally unearthed on your site the full story of the BBC spaghetti spoof - (far more imaginative than I remembered it being).
Posted by Anonymous  on  Sun Jan 26, 2003  at  11:30 PM

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Alex, Excellent! I must thank you, too, for exorcising a childhood hobgoblin about "spaghetti harvesting". It stuck with me all my life and anyone I told it had never heard of it... until now. It wasn't just a dream. I just ordered two of your books from Amazon. I look forward to reading them.
Posted by CLiFF  on  Sat Mar 15, 2003  at  11:50 PM

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I remember seeing that program on TV when I was a kid. I got a good laugh from it. I thought it was a Lowell Thomas special at the time. I have told many people about over the years. That one was one of the best and harmless.
Posted by Dave K  on  Thu Oct 16, 2003  at  11:50 PM

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I, too, saw this with my family when I was a child. We all had a good laugh! I never bumped into any one else who saw it over all these years!
April Fools Issue Montreal Star Sunday Magazine Section - around 1975
The entire magazine, like the USA Parade Sunday Magazine, was a joke; story after story! One was about an under ground sugar mine, another about Margaret Trudeau changing her mind in every paragraph about her goals in life...I wish I could read it again.
Maybe I'll find it's already on your site!
Posted by Barbara Ann  on  Sat Nov 01, 2003  at  12:54 AM

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There were two other memorable April Fools hoaxes, one on the BBCin the 60', I think where a building had been errected, by an "Irish contractor", upside down. Inverviews and photos were presented in a similar manner to the Spaghetti episode.
The other wat a "1000 Watt" amplifier which was in the April edition of Wireless World/ This included full information on how to build the phonograph amplifier on to you house heating radiators (for cooling) and how one needed to take care not to drop the phonograph needle ont the record in-case the impact of the sound damaged the house walls. The following month included a letter from a reader who said he'd built speakers for the amplifier into a Fighter jet ejector seat. This was so that life-threateningly loud passages of music could be detected and the seat fired to protect the seated listener.
Posted by david perkins  on  Sun Nov 02, 2003  at  07:44 PM

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Your story in the Los Angeles Times Magazine (Feb. 15, 2004) reminds me of my husband's story about having his younger sister convinced that spaghetti was mined in spaghetti mines. They were quite young, and she believed him, at least for a while.
Posted by Bette Darwin  on  Sun Mar 14, 2004  at  10:52 AM

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Very good joke.

Posted by Aleec  in  COlumbus, Texas  on  Tue Mar 30, 2004  at  11:18 AM

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it's cool!! i found this from Korean Site, so i see to here. i will use that news for tomorrow April Fools'!!!
It would be so fun!!!!
Posted by Jenny Kim  on  Wed Mar 31, 2004  at  11:00 PM

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The year and culture definitely have to be taken into account when trying to figure out how anyone could be taken in by this.
Posted by Brent  in  Florida  on  Thu Apr 01, 2004  at  06:27 PM

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Ok, I watched too much TV as a kid and saw this at around age 7. Used to watching lots of nature documentaries, I believed this for *years*. To save embarassment, I won't say how many but it made quite impression on my fragile, little mind.
Posted by Nate  in  Minnesota  on  Fri Apr 02, 2004  at  12:45 PM

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I remember seeing this film on tv (perhaps Art Llnkletter). Then, a year or so later, they showed it to the upper grades at my elementary school. Immediately after, we had to write 1/2 page about what we'd learned from the movie. With 2 exceptions, all 90 students explained how & where spaghetti is grown. I had made noodles at home and remembered seeing the movie before as well, so i knew it was a "fake movie". I said that i hadn't learned anything because it was "fake". Phil, my classmate just said "what in the world???"
Posted by Ann  in  New York State  on  Fri Apr 02, 2004  at  06:44 PM

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