October 1, 2020 • 45 mins
On the first of April in 1957, cameraman Charles de Jaeger's childhood dream came true: Panorama, Britain's most popular news program, aired a segment describing the traditional method of harvesting spaghetti from trees.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Or should I say cheerioh
We hope this message finds you well. Uh, we hope
that you are a a fan of Franks and Italian food.
I guess that's our segue anyway, I'm Ben, I'm nolah
(00:47):
and should we say perhaps been spaghettio m as opposed
to cheer cheerio it suppos to spaghetti? Yeah, yeah, we
were talking off Mike. I have a bit of a
philosophical issue with canned spaghetti, uh and uh? And you
you chimed in, Ben and said that you quite enjoy
some of it, and I I mentioned, how does your
(01:09):
metal uh phobia conflict with that? And You're like, well,
know you you beat it out of a bowl. Maybe
that's why you've been doing it wrong. I think you're right, Ben,
I think I need to re revisit canned spaghetti, perhaps,
but certainly not my or I would think most people's
preferred method of consuming uh, this Italian delicacy. Would you
(01:30):
at least meet me halfway in that statement? I think
it's easy to make spaghetti from scratch. It's all about
the sauce. For me. Uh, I think we're specifically talking
about the Chef Boy r D products. For me, it's
just installed Jeff for the ravioli in the can. But
I think a lot of us when we're making spaghetti,
we prefer to make our own sauce. That's the secret there.
(01:52):
But our super producer Casey Pegram off air when we
were talking about the earlier before we recorded, uh, we
went down a little bit of a rabbit hole with
the famous Tim and Eric sketch, which is entirely just
the guy is very bad at scaring people, jumping out
(02:12):
and yelling spaghette. Spaghett doesn't at some point you start
kind of mangling the pronunciation and it becomes spook. What's that?
That's really the whole deal. He's just like he's just terrible. Yeah.
And then Steven Spielberg makes a feature film about it,
and he has to have like hair surgery. Yeah, and
(02:36):
he's like bleeding from his scalp at some point, right,
and he's doing all this like green screen work. It's
it's great. I would love to hear the origin story.
I'd love to hear Tim Heidecker tell us how how
they managed to get that sketch from the idea staged rolling.
But today we're talking about something that's also a little
bit Tim and Eric. I think, uh, maybe the best
(02:59):
way to approve this is to first ask you guys
what you think of April Fool's Day. I'm I'm for it. Uh.
I think a good natured prank is absolutely a thing
of beauty, you know, as long as you're not doing
like your mother died, you know, like, oh my god,
(03:20):
my mother she died April Fools Like, that's not cool,
that's not nice. But you know, something like a well
produced BBC panorama, uh news report about spaghetti growing on
trees in the Swiss Alps. Heck, yeah, all for that, sure, yeah,
if it's absurd, I'm personally, I personally think April Fool's Day,
(03:45):
at least in the modern age of rampant misinformation, can
be a pretty mean spirited thing. You know, a lot
of pranks, like there's a difference between a funny joke
prank and then something like hurt ful or mocking, you know.
And I I was famously part of a prank that
(04:06):
turned me against April Fool's Day on stuff you should
know several years ago. Uh they for the record, Josh
asked me to do that, folks, So please stop sending
me emails about it. It's been so long. But you're right,
you're right. Well this is this is interesting. There's a
little bit of a war the world's vibe. It turns
out that on April one, seven, the British Broadcasting Corporation No,
(04:30):
most commonly as the BBC rocked the world, rocked their
viewership because they broadcasted a relatively short report on a
current affairs like news program called Panorama about exactly what
you described a spaghetti tree somewhere in the south of Switzerland.
And I think we actually have we should we just
(04:53):
play a little bit of that clip to give people
a sense of it. I think that's the smart move.
It isn't really in Britain that spring this year has
taken everyone by surprise. Here in the Ticino, on the
borders of Switzerland and Italy, the slopes overlooking Lake Lugano
have already burst into flower, at least a fortnight earlier
than usual. But what you may ask, has the earlier
(05:17):
and welcome arrival of bees and blossom. To do with food, well,
it's simply that the past winter, one of the mildest
in living memory, has had its effect in other ways
as well. Most important of all, it's resulted in an
exceptionally heavy spaghetti crop. The last two weeks of March
are an anxious time for the spaghetti farmer. There's always
(05:39):
the chance of a late frost, which, while not entirely
ruining the crop, generally impairs the flavor and makes it
difficult for him to obtain top prices in world markets.
But now these dangers are over and the spaghetti harvest
goes forward. Okay, so let's let's pause there for a second.
That's a that's like Carneck BBC v O. Right. That
(06:00):
narrator is someone who would have been really familiar to
the audience at the top. And how does the BBC
and still confidence and its listeners and viewers if not
through authoritative voiceover. You know, you gotta believe the words
that are coming out of those speakers. And and this
was no exception, and this would absolutely have been one
of the most well regarded voices or presenters. I guess
(06:22):
you could say in British broadcasting history. A man with
a powerfully British name, Richard Dimbleby. Yeah. Yeah. He narrates,
as you can hear in the clip we we just
played a piece of He narrates this story of this
family from Tocino in Switzerland, and you can see video
(06:44):
of this as well. It isn't audio visual broadcast, so
you will see members of this family taking spaghetti off
of a tree and laying it out to dry in
the sun. Uh. Some people were angry about this because
they were like, look, this is supposed to be presentation
(07:06):
of facts, not farce and fancy. And then other people,
you know, rode in to see where they could find
their own spaghetti foliage, their own spaghetti bush or tree. Uh.
This is, according to the BBC itself, believed to be
one of the first times in history that television was
(07:27):
used to uh make an April Fool's Day prank. That's right.
And just you know, since this is obviously a not
a televisual podcast, if you were watching this clip that
we're playing, you'll see buzzing bees pollinating the flowers and
trees and and these Sylvan kind of meadows and very
quaint villagery type, you know, harvesters pulling their spaghetti crop
(07:52):
from from the trees. Like you said, ben very idyllic
kind of stuff and also obviously accompanied by a very
idyllic score. So part of today's episode is about sort
of like the nature of of hoaxes of April Fool's
Day pranks and the reaction that they can elicit. I've
certainly been on both sides of that, and it's easy
(08:15):
for people to feel like they've been had or someone
was making fun of them or trying to pull the
wool over their eyes in a way that wasn't laughing
with them, but laughing at them. And that's that's all,
you know, par for the course of this kind of thing.
But well, we'll discuss a little bit of that along
the way, but first and foremost we should talk about
who the mastermind behind what I believe to be a
(08:36):
pretty ingenious April Fool's Day prank was. It was a
guy by the name of Charles de Yeager who was Viennese.
He was born in Vienna in nineteen eleven UM. He
was a freelance photographer before he moved to Britain in
the thirties UM, and that's where he got a job
working in a film unit of General Charles de Gaull's
(08:57):
Free French Forces, so yeah, very on the ground running
and gunning type work. And then he joined the Babe
and throughout his long career Diyager had this uh. He
was very well known for being an a veterate jokester, prankster,
(09:17):
and early in his career with the BBC he even
tried to mess with the Pope a little bit. He
was supposed to interview His Holiness the Pope in the Vatican,
which is a great gig if you can get it.
Scheduling was difficult. Turns out the Pope is is uh,
you know, it's kind of a busy dude. Often when
(09:39):
he was told that His Holiness will see you on
Tuesday afternoon, the diyaker replied, yes, but is he a
man of his word, which, as you can imagine, the
priest in the in the room did not find as
as hilarious and witty as he did. He had a
couple of other pranks that he was kind of well
known for, but the these were smaller things. These are
(10:01):
kind of like internal funny jokes with his colleagues. But
his idea for a spaghetti harvest hoax it turns out
it was a It was a lifelong dream. He had
had this on his mind since he was a kid,
because once upon a time, when he's very young, one
(10:23):
of his teachers would often say to their class boys,
you're so stupid, you'd believe me if I told you
that spaghetti grows on trees. Okay, first of all, abusive, Uh,
this is not how you engender intellectual growth and positivity
and and self love and and budding young students. But
(10:43):
I guess as we know that you think of like
you know, like Pink Floyd's the Wall for example. Uh,
British schools were not necessarily about positive vibes, if you
know what I mean, Casey Off, Mike, you were talking
about the idea of spaghetti growing on trees as a
concert app Yeah, it's like the kind of thing your
parents say to you. Uh, when you're a kid and
you just take spiety for granted. You say, what do
(11:05):
you think, kid, speary grows on trees? Get a job,
joined the real world? You know, get a job, join
the real world, Casey on the case that's the That's
that's the interesting part too, because we'll get into this
a little bit later. But I want to be very careful.
I always make a big point of this. I want
to be very careful to note that the audience of
(11:27):
the BBC there by no means unintelligent, right, it's we
just have to remember, Uh, spaghetti wasn't pasta in general,
wasn't super common until fairly recently in in the majority
of the UK culture. Right, that's right. Well, and you know,
we we know the idea of if you've watched any
(11:48):
amount of British comedy or or you know British read
British fiction. Um, you know that tinned foods were very
popular before fresh foods kind of, so they would have
seen things like canned spaghettios. In fact, I was gonna
say earlier, but I'm glad to say until now. Um.
And if you watch I think the Mighty Boush. But
(12:09):
you hear a lot in different British shows, they don't
call them spaghetti oh's over there. They call them spaghetti hoops,
spaghetti hoops, and you know, the H has kind of
become silent, so it becomes spaghetti hoops. Um. But yeah,
so that's the thing that they would have seen more of.
And I want to just you know, backtrack ever so
slightly and kind of make my case for why I
find those to be disgusting. It's because of the sheer
(12:32):
amount of sauce. Like I like a space, like you know,
if we could share our spaghetti recipes, but I like,
you know, to make my sauce where it coats the
spaghetti and it's sort of got a thickness to it
and like a new mommy and like has like chunky
vegetables and meat and good stuff in there, but it's
not swimming in this watery, blood red kind of ooze.
That's that's that's okay. I'm sorry if I've ruined can
(12:54):
spaghetti for anyone, but that's my two cents on that issue.
I don't think you've ruined it. I think you've got
a person little preference is one that people might agree with,
and that you know, of course, if you look at
the sales of Chef Warrior D, millions of people disagree
with they probably they clearly love it. Uh. But I
I unfortunately cannot disclose my top secret uh spaghetti and
(13:16):
pasta sauce recipes on air. But if you really want
to know, folks, uh, just hit me up on the
internet and I can. I can share some tips. I
do have a secret ingredient that might surprise you. Ben
Thai fish sauce. Just to dash, Yeah, I use it.
I have. I've got a fish sauce house. Yeah, just
just to dash. It gives it like a certain new
(13:37):
mommy and you know, it doesn't taste fishy, just gives
it kind of a savory, little extra something that people
can't always put their finger on. It gives it some
depth as absolutely as a salt replacement. So uh. Some
people can become obsessed with the perfect pasta sauce. And
this would have been somewhat familiar to de Jager, at
(13:58):
least the idea of obsession, because he was obsessed. He
was like, let's tell people spaghetti grows on trees. Let's
make it a thing. And just like I have always
been pitching crazy ideas to various bosses. Here how stuff
works for I heart. He was always pitching this idea.
So picture him in the writer's room, in the brain
(14:19):
storming room at the news desk, and someone say, okay, um,
let's see we've got some pieces we should do on
the Cold War, on East and West Germany. What else?
What else is in the news, we want some like
human interest stuff and then uh, Dieger raises his hand
and they go something that's real and not spaghetti on
trees and he just like, damn it, next time it.
(14:42):
So he did this for years. It wasn't until nineteen
fifty seven he was currently working as a cameraman for
Panorama that he was able to find some like minded
folks who thought this would be funny. Why is this
a big deal? Because Panorama was a big deal at
the time. Ten million people watched this show. Well and
(15:06):
it's still around to this day, if not to this day,
since very recently there is a fabulous Panorama documentary on
Church of Scientology. Uh they've covered everything from you know,
sending reporters into North Korea. Um, it's really been like
a heralded show with a really cool, rich and deep history. UM.
(15:28):
I believe it only had begun maybe less than ten
years before this. I think it was in like forty
five or maybe even closer to fifty when Panorama actually debuted.
But yeah, the Yeager got a job as a cameraman
on Panorama, and um, he had been pitching this spaghetti
you know, tree story to anyone that would hear him
(15:50):
and in jobs that he had occupied, he seemed like
a real character. I want to find out more about
this guy. But finally he he pitched it to a
supervisor that was all about it. And this would have
been the very first time that again being a relatively
new show, um and already well respected that uh, that
Panorama would have ventured into the sort of satirical waters here. Um.
(16:10):
And we know that the Brits are are famous for
their satire beautiful, beautiful sense of humor comedy Monty Python.
If you've ever seen the show look Around You, that's
sort of exactly what this kind of reminds me. A
look Around You is sort of meant to look like
a kind of stodgy British news show about sort of
dull things. Like they have a whole episode called Maths
(16:31):
and it's about like math and mathematics, but it's all
fake information and completely uh ludicrous, but presented as though
it were real. Highly recommend that show. It's done in
like a sixties kind of BBC style with mog synthesizer
sounds and you know, expert scientists tapping their pencils on things.
It's just a wonderful show, but this would have been
kind of a prototype for that um and they really
(16:54):
pulled it off. As we've heard in the clip. They
really were trying to sell it like one of these
classic news packages from the air. Keep in mind that
if you are a British television viewer in the nineteen fifties,
you have two choices of television program You have two channels,
(17:15):
the BBC and I t V. So Panorama is the
biggest news program on the BBC. As I said earlier,
it has viewership of ten million. It was on weekly
every Monday night at eight pm, and since about two
years before this brank occurs, it had been hosted by
(17:35):
that iconic Richard dem Bleby. He was one of the
most well known, revered public figures in the country. If
he said it, people figured it must be true. So
someone once said. One of his co workers once said
of Dimbleby, as quoted in Hoaxes dot Org, that he
(17:55):
had enough gravitas to float an aircraft carrier. And this
is important because if it had been some other narrator,
a lot of people probably wouldn't have taken this as gospel.
But because he was the guy saying it, people thought, uh,
it had to be true, even if it sounded really,
(18:17):
really strange. Now, as I said earlier, he had been
pitching this idea for a long long time. It wasn't
until nine seven that he was able to convince other
people to go along with it. He couldn't do this
himself as just the cameraman. So the writer, David Wheeler,
loved the idea because you know, as you know, a
lot of these narrators and news programs don't do their
(18:40):
own researcher writing. So Wheeler was the writer of program.
He loved it. And then they went to the editor,
guy named Michael Peacock, and they said, let's make this
weird thing happen. Peacock, of course, is is uh. He
likes his co workers obviously, uh. And who doesn't like
a good joke. But they really have to sell it
to him, and Dieger stresses. Dieger talks Turkey, he talks
(19:04):
the financial lens, which is always uh, I can assure
you always a great way to start selling stuff in
a corporate gig. Uh. He said, you know it's gonna
be cheap to create this. It's not gonna be It's
not gonna cost us a bunch I'm already gonna be
in Switzerland, so we'll I'll just do that while I'm there.
You don't have to pay me extra. We don't have
(19:25):
to pay anybody extra to do this. We can just
also do it along with the real news. We were
already planning on reporting, and Peacock went for it. Um
he you know, obviously it was a good, good humored dude,
and he gave them one hundred pounds with which to
uh to film this extra little side quest with which
isn't a ton of money, but it was enough to
(19:47):
you know, cover the cost of production of buying some
some materials, you know, for our set dressing. We'll get
into it a little bit, but yeah. The writer for
Panorama was also clearly on board with this prank because
he wrote the script in that voice of the show
to add at that extra level of credibility. That was
just really hit home when Richard Dimbleby himself wrote the
(20:10):
three and fifty word uh script um in in those uh,
those dulcet tones that the British people knew so well
of Dimbleby that really um kind of imparted that level
of authority to the whole proceeding and made it much
more easy to believe that this is what you were
what you were hearing was a real thing. Um. So
(20:31):
they set out for Switzerland in March of that year.
They have a few like a like a handler I
guess from the Swiss Tourist office who had helped them
scout some locations. Uh. It was kind of nasty weather.
It was cold and and drizzly, and unfortunately a lot
of the trees were bare. But they did eventually find
(20:51):
a spot that was suitable for the shoot. It was
near a hotel in Caste Leon, off of the shores
of Lake Lugano, and was surrounded by some evergreen trees
laurel trees. So that was exactly what they needed to
sell the effect, which was which was achieved with some
pretty great practicals. If you if you know what I mean. Yeah,
(21:13):
we get into uh we get into some proper work. Uh,
the kind of problems that Casey, I know, you know
this they could be very familiar to independent filmmakers. Uh,
if you've ever worked in something where you are trying
to make the perfect fake blood where you are you know,
I once had we had to this factor that we
(21:33):
had to paint entirely blue in a way that looked
like he was blue or not just bade blue anyway.
So Dieger runs into some stuff like this, where does
his budget go. Well, at least part of it goes
to twenty pounds of uncooked homemade spaghetti. He tries to
hang it from those laurel tree branches you mentioned earlier, Nold,
and then he encounters some problems. First, spaghetti would dry
(21:57):
out quickly, it wouldn't hang from the branches right they
have been kind of taping it up there. Then he said, okay,
we'll cook it and then we'll hang it. But then
if we cook it, it becomes too slippery and it
slides off the branches onto the ground, so you can't
get the shot. And then the tourist rep from the
Swiss tourist office who was hanging out with the acre there, said, okay,
(22:17):
let's put the uncooked spaghetti between these damp cloths. We'll
keep it kind of uh moist. I feel the way
about the word moist that you feel about canned spaghettios,
by the way, but that's another correct word. They keep
it damp, they keep it moist. Uh. And then he
hires some local young women to wear the traditional national
(22:41):
costume of Switzerland, and he films them hanging spaghetti in
the trees, climbing ladders, will wicker baskets, and then playing
the spaghetti in the sun. He gets the shots he
needs pretty quickly once they figure out how to get
spaghetti hanging from the trees. Spaghetti cultivation here in Switzerland is, not,
of course, cut it out on anything like the tremendous
scale of the Italian industry. Many of you, I'm sure,
(23:04):
will have seen pictures of the vast spaghetti plantations in
the Po Valley. For the Swiss, however, it tends to
be more of a family affair. Another reason why this
may be a bumper year lies in the virtual disappearance
of the spaghetti weevil, the tiny creature whose depredations have
caused much concerned in the past. And then, because he's
(23:26):
a he seems like ultimately really nice dude. He says, hey,
you guys are doing such a wonderful job acting. Let
me at least make you dinner, and he serves them spaghetti.
M I think this is really funny, you guys. It's
it's so it's it really does remind me of like
a Monty Python sketch, like there's something there the absurdity
(23:48):
of this. I don't know, what do you think, Casey, don't, don't,
I don't know. I find this delightful. Yeah, it has
that kind of high absurdity and I love the mix
of that with the authority of the BBC behind it.
It's sort of like the ultimate betrayal in a way
because they're sort of branding themselves as like objective truth
and so to mess with people. There's probably people that
(24:08):
were skeptical of it to begin with, but they thought, well,
it's the BBC, like what, They're not gonna mess with
this exactly. So Yeah, it reminds me of a War
of the worlds, you know, Casey on the case. So
here we go this, there's there's something else that's happening here.
So while the footage is rushed back to London, while
(24:31):
it's being edited, they're adding music. Uh, They're they're choosing
the right kind of high minded tone for this. Uh.
While that's happening. Concurrently, the editor of the show, Michael Peacock,
has been sitting on his decision. He has not told
his bosses that they're gonna put this April Fool stage
(24:53):
joke in the nation's number one current affairs show because
he thought there's a very reasonable fear He thought that
his bosses might say, what the hell are you doing
where the number one news show in the entire country.
We can't tell people this. Uh So at the last
(25:13):
minute he tells his boss, Leonard Mile and nobody else
at the BBC knew it, which means that a lot
of BBC employees were watching this when it came on,
Which means that at least some of those BBC employees
may have thought, dang, that's crazy, and you knew about
spaghetti and trees. I must have missed that in the meeting.
(25:36):
I mean, it really is perfectly primed for that response,
you know what I mean, Like you have you think
of something like the BBC, especially a show like Panorama
is like unimpeachable, and then you have that voice that
just gives it this gravitas. And to see that, I
think even modern audiences might do a double take as
to like, maybe I didn't learn that part in school,
(25:58):
you know. I honestly believe that that's the beauty of this.
And I was listening to it another podcast about this
when we were when we were doing research. I just
it's just called Weird History Podcast by Joe Streckert. I
believe it's a Patreon supported podcast, so check it out.
It's a short They're like twelve thirteen minute episodes on
a little short nugget of goodness from history. And um.
(26:19):
He made a really interesting point that this represents like
something a lesson that we could learn, like and take
with us like today, the idea of fact checking and
like not just believing something that's shoved in front of
you just because it has an air of authority to it. Um.
And and obviously this wasn't meant to keep people in
the dark for long. I mean, it was obviously going
(26:39):
to be revealed that it was a prank. That's how
April Fools jokes work. And maybe you feel a little
hurt momentarily of oh they got me, But then if
you really take a little step back and have a
little self awareness, maybe it taught you a lesson on
how you should always think about things beyond what's presented
to you. So I think that's part of what makes
April Fools interesting, at least in an intel legant prank
(27:00):
like this. Yeah, I mean it's it's totally. It's played
completely straight. After picking, the spaghetti is laid out to
dry in the warm alpine sun. Many people are often
puzzled by the fact that spaghetti has produced at such
uniform length, but this is the result of many years
of patient endeavor by plant breeders who succeeded in producing
(27:23):
the perfect spaghetti. Just to give a context, here the
lineup for the show that day, which again I love this,
uh this article from Hoax's dot org. But there's a
great article about the from the Guardian about this as well. Uh,
the lineup was pretty average. There was a segment about
(27:44):
an archbishop who was leader of the Greek Cypriots at
the time, a clip of the Duke in Edinburgh attending
the premiere of a war film, and then uh, the
little piece about a wine tasting contest, and then the
spaghetti harvest was the last segment. And after that it
cuts back to to Dimbleby who and he says, just
(28:07):
you know, now, we say goodnight on this first day
of April. So they put a clue in there that
this was April fools, right, Like British people may not
have known the origin of spaghetti, but they knew what
April Fools was. And that's kind of a hint. You
can see in modern news pieces today where you'll read
something and then you'll check the byline, especially around April,
(28:31):
and you see it says April first, you know, or whatever.
That's typically an indication that there's a that there's some
Shenanigan read going on. How self works used to do
it every year too, That's right, that's right. And and
Chuck actually on on Movie Crash, did one one year
where he had, um, Kevin Pollock and uh pretending to
be Christopher walking. Kevin Pollock is famous for his Christopher
(28:54):
walkin impression, and he did a whole episode with Chuck
where he pretended to be Christopher walking. And uh, much
like the reaction to the spaghetti hoax that the BBC received.
Some people were all about it and thought it was
hilarious and felt in on the joke. Uh, some people
felt taken for a ride and um, we're very upset,
(29:14):
and they they communicated as such, because if there's one
thing people love to do is to tell you when
they're upset. Um. So yeah, as soon as the broadcast ended,
immediately on that night, the BBC's switchboards started lighting up
like crazy. One of the producers from the show walked
over to the what school was called the BBC's telephone
exchange to see what was going on, and he wrote
(29:36):
this about it. The calls came in increasingly somewhere from
viewers who had enjoyed the joke, including one from Bristol
who complained that spaghetti didn't grow vertically, it grew horizontally.
But mainly the calls request for the BBC to settle
family arguments. The husband knew it must be true that
spaghetti grew on a bush because Richard Dimbleby had said
it must be true, and the wife knew it was
(29:56):
made with flour and water, but neither could convince the
I love that because the women had made it or
there they knew at least enough about the you know,
the process of making spaghetti that whereas a husband would
have been the total numb skull about stuff like that.
And now the harvest is marked by a traditional meal.
Toasts to the new crop are drunk in these boccolindos,
(30:18):
and then the waiters enter bearing the ceremonial dish. And
it is of course spaghetti picked earlier in the day,
dried in the sun and so brought fresh from garden
to table at the very peak of condition. For those
who love this dish, there's nothing like real home grown spaghetti.
(30:46):
So at the time it is important for the story.
At the time, the BBC channel was not its winning
four hour channel. It would cease transmission at a certain
hour and before transmiss sans closed for that evening, BBC
already had turned around and due to the public outcry, uh,
(31:06):
they had broadcasted an additional statement that came clean about
the hoax, and it's uh, it's long, so I'm no,
I'm not gonna make you sit here while I read
the whole thing out loud. But essentially they said, we've
received a mixed reaction to a spoof documentary about spaghetti
crops in Switzerland. And then they describe it, and then
(31:27):
they say some viewers failed to see the funny side
of the broadcasting criticized the BBC for airing the item
on what's supposed to be a serious factual program. Others, however,
were so intrigued they wanted to find out where they
could purchase their very own spaghetti bush. And then uh,
they they go on and talk about how spaghetti is
(31:51):
not widely eaten in the UK at this time. Uh,
they talk a little bit more about the program, and uh,
they say, you know, there's a first time television has
been used to stage in April Fool's Day hoax. But again,
I think I've said this before on one episode or another.
But again, people read headlines and retractions are printed on
(32:13):
like page thirty seven, and oftentimes when you correct something,
it's it's far too late. The lid of Pandora's jar
has been unscrewed. So they had this confession on air.
They had this statement, but people kept calling. They kept
calling and kept calling, and eventually the switchboard operators just said,
we're gonna come up with our own form like boilerplate reply.
(32:38):
So people would call them over the course of the
days and then the following weeks, and these operators would
eventually just say places sprig of spaghetti, an attentive tomato sauce,
and hope for the best. When people are calling to
ask how to grow their own spaghetti tree, and then
the spaghetti ferry will come visit you in the night
(32:58):
and leave you a shining you pent sixpence or whatever. Um, yeah,
this is great. It reminds me too of there there's
a really great show. It's someone that that Casey actually
hit me too. I was aware of his work on
a show called Um the I T. Crowd. He plays
the boss on the first season of The I T. Crowds.
Guy named Chris Morris. Uh he replaced he's his son, Yeah, Chris.
(33:20):
Chris Morris plays the boss Um on the first season
of The I T. Crowd. But he actually comes from
a really interesting tradition of radio satire and had a
show called Jam that's like pre Tim and Eric, like
psychedelic just terror comedy basically, and then they may get
into a TV series. But the first season, I don't
know if you know this case I think we talked about.
It is literally just them lip syncing to the audio
(33:44):
from the radio version and it's just lue Blue Jam
I think it's called Blue Jam was the radio show
that the show was called Jam. Highly recommended. But this guy,
Chris Morris went on to do sort of a hard
copy esque kind of satire show called brass I and
it is very much from this tradition of that we're
talking about here, but much more offensive and and uh
(34:07):
sardonic and just way over the top and they do episodes.
There's one about drugs, about the drug epidemics sweeping the
UK and uh, this is this made up drug called
cake that's like a rave drug, but it makes your
next swell up. It gives you a syndrome called check neck. Um.
I guess like from the Czech Republic is where the
drug from comes from. But there's one episode called Peto
(34:27):
Mgeddon that's all about the pedophilia epidemic sweeping London, the UK,
and it was so over the top offensive and again
some people thought it was real. People wrote in and
called in because apparently the BBC switchboard still a thing
you can call into complain and they pulled it so
you can only watch it on on YouTube and I
(34:49):
if you're into some sicko comedy, highly recommend checking out
the brass eye episode called Peto Mgeddon. So earlier I
had said that there were members of the BBC themselves
and BBC employees who were fooled by the Spaghetti hoax.
One of the people who was fooled was a guy
named sir Ian Jacob. It's interesting that Surrey and Jacob
(35:12):
was fooled because he was the Director General of the BBC.
He's the boss, the Emperor of the BBC. He's like
the Ted Turner of the BBC. And he had he
had been sent a note telling him that the this
hoax was happening, as prank was occurring, but he had
never received the note, and so when he saw the broadcast, uh,
(35:35):
he wasn't he wasn't sure what to expect. And then
someone on the team talked to Sir Jacob later and
he had this to say, which I thought was pretty
reasonable and actually reassuring for guys. The boss of the
BBC said, I always used to think monkey nuts grew
on bushes till I went to serve in the Canal
Zone Panama Canal and saw them growing on the ground.
(35:58):
The moment I saw the spaghetti, I had him on Panorama.
I said to my wife, I'm sure spaghetti doesn't grow
on a bush. So he looked it up in Encyclopedia Britannica.
Do you know Encyclopedia Britannica doesn't mention spaghetti. We had
to look up three books before he confirmed it. It's
kind of reassuring that at least he's doing his due
diligence and research you know. That is so fascinating, though, Ben,
(36:20):
because when you when you first said, oh, the director
of the b got caught wind of this, I thought
and that people were heads were gonna roll, you know,
as they say. But no, I think he appreciated the
joke and even had enough humility that he didn't let
the fact that he was taken in by the gag,
probably because he didn't read his memos um he didn't
let that like Bruce's ego too much. I appreciate that
(36:42):
in a boss, someone that has a little bit of
self awareness and can can take a joke and be
the butt of the joke and not get all bent
out of shape. I love that. In fact, Sir Jacob
himself became a big fan of the hoax. He even
sent the Yacre a note saying that he thought it
was a splendid idea and that it caused a great
deal of delight. Uh. There was some criticism. There were
(37:05):
a couple of people who complained that the BBC had
taken advantage of the trust of their audience. The Daily
Telegraph published a piece a BBC fools About with Spaghetti,
which is a weirdly British headline, and I did not
know this, but apparently there was a rule for April
Fool's Day, at least in the UK, which was that
(37:28):
no jokes are supposed to be carried out later than noon,
which I didn't know. Uh, casey, were you familiar with
that one? I was not. That's hilarious to me that
it's a very specific law. Yes, it was very pedantically British.
I love that it sounds like somebody was it was
a little bit sore about getting fooled by a prank
and then decided it quote unquote didn't count because it
(37:50):
wasn't like one thirty or something. Well, and it's like
it's like the perfect invitation to publish your joke at
like one in the afternoon or something, just to like
add a little extra own that well, it's afternoon, can't
possibly be true. Even though it was April Fools adjacent,
no one would dare break the rules of the BBC,
the April Fools rules. Uh yeah. So so now we're
(38:15):
in and uh we can look back at this and
it seems kind of uh silly, a bit whimsical, but
it is relevant today, especially when we think about just
how many points of information are out there for the
modern person online every single day. You know, there's there's
a huge controversy about whether social media platforms should fact
(38:40):
check the articles that their users are disseminating and the
claims that they're making. We see a lot of conspiracy theories, pranks, hoaxes, misinformation,
and disinformation. Misinformation is when you're sincerely, unknowingly incorrect about something.
Disinformation is where you're purposely misleading people. And uh, you
(39:06):
have to wonder what Dieger would think of all this. He,
by the way, passed away May nine, two thousand's, so
he would have been well aware of of uh, the
of online communication for sure. And I just want to
double down again just because I'm just such a fan.
I really do feel like this had to have laid
the groundwork for a lot of these British satires that
(39:28):
we're talking about. This is pre Monty Python, This was
pre brass I pre Chris Morris, pre all that stuff.
And uh, look around you. I love that it really
uh And and American audiences agreed. Um. Actually, Jack Parr
h in the sixties, UM and Johnny Carson later aired
the Spaghetti Hoax segment on The Tonight Show. UM and
(39:50):
then also got nasty letters from people who thought it
was real and didn't appreciate it, and they thought they
were being they were making fun of farmers or something
like that. Uh. And Carson, apparently a week or so
after playing the segment, Um had to make a retraction
of subsort on on the show where he held up
a box of spaghetti and read off the ingredients to
(40:11):
prove that spaghetti was in fact made and quote not born,
which I love. And so Panorama retired from the April
Fool's Day game. They just did the one to international
acclaim and criticism, and they never did a sequel, but
it became kind of an in joke in the world
(40:32):
of television. You can see reports that are all kind
of uh, paying tribute or homage to this, the Australian
spaghetti crop, the dim Blebee pickle farm, which is the
same thing as spaghetti on trees, bes pickles on trees,
the pickle ranch harvest. It goes on and on. But
(40:53):
we do have to say that just because Panorama never
did another April Fool's Joke, that doesn't mean that the
BBC itself never did something. I think it was back
in nineteen eighty the world Service. The BBC World Service
News reported gave a lot of people some conneptions when
(41:13):
they reported that the famous clock tower Big Ben would
be given a digital display. Can you imagine that that
would be insane? Uh? And here's here's the coolest part though.
When they announced this, they said not only was it
going to be given a digital display, but the hands
of the clock would be given away to the first
(41:34):
four people who called the station. I love it. I
love it. You think people would know, uh, and and
most people do. And the brit You know, the Brits
are are very uh, witty people, as you can tell
again by some of their pop culture stuff. I mean
there's always a great amount of wit and kind of
sardonic edge to It's a lot of British comedy. Um.
(41:55):
But even still some people get taken in. It's it's
fascinating and I absolutely of it. Now I'd like to
to pass this over to you folks. Maybe there's a
conversation we can continue on the internet, on Facebook, on Twitter, Instagram.
What are your favorite April Fool's Day pranks? Either the
big ones that got national attention, or maybe just some
(42:18):
of your favorite ones that are a little more close
to home in your own life. When of the best
places to share these stories is our Facebook page Ridiculous Historians,
which has been having some top tier meme posts lately. Ah,
the memory abounds for sure. All you gotta do is
go to Facebook dot com and search for Ridiculous Historians
and just like, name me or Casey or or Ben
(42:41):
or whomever, anyone associated with the show, any little ref
from the show, just to lets. Sometimes we have people
who are honest and say, I don't know anything about
the show, but this seems like a fun group. I
I I'll even let those people in. Sometimes it's not
it's not about being exclusive. It's just we want to
make sure you're not like some kind of Russian boty.
You can also find us the social media as individuals.
(43:02):
That's right. You can find me on Twitter at Ben
Bowlen h s W, where I am currently reveling in
my fascination of corvids. You can also find me on Instagram,
where I have in a number of misadventures as at
Ben Bowlen. That's Corvid is not COVID's right, Yeah. Corvid
is a group name for things like crows and magpies
(43:24):
and so on. I kid Ben I know about your
obsession with these little rascals, which is funny considering that
you're anti metal and these guys love shiny objects. Isn't
that the thing? Sure? Not just metal. Corvids are very
well known for forming bonds and friendships with humans, and
so they try to maybe pay for food and favors
(43:46):
by giving humans what they see as human things. So
I could be like a button or a coin, or
I I don't know, a shoe string. They just find
stuff and they're like that looks like human stuff's currency
for them. I love the idea of you perhaps commanding
sort of like a crew of of of corvette that
can bring you things and assist to you in your
(44:08):
in your day to day sort of like uh, it's
Cinderella gets her dress made by the woodland creatures. That's
very kivy. Yeah. I got very close at our old
office to befriending some crows who lived in the parking
lot of a mall in Heck. While you're online, why
don't you tell us a little bit more about any
of your interactions with corvids. I personally would love to
(44:30):
hear them. No, old people can find you online as well, right,
They can there's zero corvidd activity on my social media
feed at how now Noel Brown on Instagram as many
of you know, and and rag me about pretty regularly
on the Internet. I am I am a bit a
feared of birds corvids in particular, but Ben, you're bringing
me around. I love this friendship aspect of these creatures.
(44:52):
That's that's fascinating and very humanizing. Um. Huge thanks to
super producer Casey Pegram Alex Williams, who composed Arthene Christopher
Haciotes here in spirit. Big big thanks of course to
our Pure podcast or Eve's Jeff Coach. She's got some
great stuff on the waist, stay tuned for her, and
of course thanks to our own walking April Fools Brank
Jonathan Strickland, a k a. The Quizter. I think that's
(45:16):
all for us today. We've never done in April Fool's
uh prank episode on ridiculous history, have we. Let's just
hope everybody forgets by April next year. I'm down. We'll
see you next time, folks. For more podcasts for my
(45:36):
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Or should I say cheerioh
We hope this message finds you well. Uh, we hope
that you are a a fan of Franks and Italian food.
I guess that's our segue anyway, I'm Ben, I'm nolah
(00:47):
and should we say perhaps been spaghettio m as opposed
to cheer cheerio it suppos to spaghetti? Yeah, yeah, we
were talking off Mike. I have a bit of a
philosophical issue with canned spaghetti, uh and uh? And you
you chimed in, Ben and said that you quite enjoy
some of it, and I I mentioned, how does your
(01:09):
metal uh phobia conflict with that? And You're like, well,
know you you beat it out of a bowl. Maybe
that's why you've been doing it wrong. I think you're right, Ben,
I think I need to re revisit canned spaghetti, perhaps,
but certainly not my or I would think most people's
preferred method of consuming uh, this Italian delicacy. Would you
(01:30):
at least meet me halfway in that statement? I think
it's easy to make spaghetti from scratch. It's all about
the sauce. For me. Uh, I think we're specifically talking
about the Chef Boy r D products. For me, it's
just installed Jeff for the ravioli in the can. But
I think a lot of us when we're making spaghetti,
we prefer to make our own sauce. That's the secret there.
(01:52):
But our super producer Casey Pegram off air when we
were talking about the earlier before we recorded, uh, we
went down a little bit of a rabbit hole with
the famous Tim and Eric sketch, which is entirely just
the guy is very bad at scaring people, jumping out
(02:12):
and yelling spaghette. Spaghett doesn't at some point you start
kind of mangling the pronunciation and it becomes spook. What's that?
That's really the whole deal. He's just like he's just terrible. Yeah.
And then Steven Spielberg makes a feature film about it,
and he has to have like hair surgery. Yeah, and
(02:36):
he's like bleeding from his scalp at some point, right,
and he's doing all this like green screen work. It's
it's great. I would love to hear the origin story.
I'd love to hear Tim Heidecker tell us how how
they managed to get that sketch from the idea staged rolling.
But today we're talking about something that's also a little
bit Tim and Eric. I think, uh, maybe the best
(02:59):
way to approve this is to first ask you guys
what you think of April Fool's Day. I'm I'm for it. Uh.
I think a good natured prank is absolutely a thing
of beauty, you know, as long as you're not doing
like your mother died, you know, like, oh my god,
(03:20):
my mother she died April Fools Like, that's not cool,
that's not nice. But you know, something like a well
produced BBC panorama, uh news report about spaghetti growing on
trees in the Swiss Alps. Heck, yeah, all for that, sure, yeah,
if it's absurd, I'm personally, I personally think April Fool's Day,
(03:45):
at least in the modern age of rampant misinformation, can
be a pretty mean spirited thing. You know, a lot
of pranks, like there's a difference between a funny joke
prank and then something like hurt ful or mocking, you know.
And I I was famously part of a prank that
(04:06):
turned me against April Fool's Day on stuff you should
know several years ago. Uh they for the record, Josh
asked me to do that, folks, So please stop sending
me emails about it. It's been so long. But you're right,
you're right. Well this is this is interesting. There's a
little bit of a war the world's vibe. It turns
out that on April one, seven, the British Broadcasting Corporation No,
(04:30):
most commonly as the BBC rocked the world, rocked their
viewership because they broadcasted a relatively short report on a
current affairs like news program called Panorama about exactly what
you described a spaghetti tree somewhere in the south of Switzerland.
And I think we actually have we should we just
(04:53):
play a little bit of that clip to give people
a sense of it. I think that's the smart move.
It isn't really in Britain that spring this year has
taken everyone by surprise. Here in the Ticino, on the
borders of Switzerland and Italy, the slopes overlooking Lake Lugano
have already burst into flower, at least a fortnight earlier
than usual. But what you may ask, has the earlier
(05:17):
and welcome arrival of bees and blossom. To do with food, well,
it's simply that the past winter, one of the mildest
in living memory, has had its effect in other ways
as well. Most important of all, it's resulted in an
exceptionally heavy spaghetti crop. The last two weeks of March
are an anxious time for the spaghetti farmer. There's always
(05:39):
the chance of a late frost, which, while not entirely
ruining the crop, generally impairs the flavor and makes it
difficult for him to obtain top prices in world markets.
But now these dangers are over and the spaghetti harvest
goes forward. Okay, so let's let's pause there for a second.
That's a that's like Carneck BBC v O. Right. That
(06:00):
narrator is someone who would have been really familiar to
the audience at the top. And how does the BBC
and still confidence and its listeners and viewers if not
through authoritative voiceover. You know, you gotta believe the words
that are coming out of those speakers. And and this
was no exception, and this would absolutely have been one
of the most well regarded voices or presenters. I guess
(06:22):
you could say in British broadcasting history. A man with
a powerfully British name, Richard Dimbleby. Yeah. Yeah. He narrates,
as you can hear in the clip we we just
played a piece of He narrates this story of this
family from Tocino in Switzerland, and you can see video
(06:44):
of this as well. It isn't audio visual broadcast, so
you will see members of this family taking spaghetti off
of a tree and laying it out to dry in
the sun. Uh. Some people were angry about this because
they were like, look, this is supposed to be presentation
(07:06):
of facts, not farce and fancy. And then other people,
you know, rode in to see where they could find
their own spaghetti foliage, their own spaghetti bush or tree. Uh.
This is, according to the BBC itself, believed to be
one of the first times in history that television was
(07:27):
used to uh make an April Fool's Day prank. That's right.
And just you know, since this is obviously a not
a televisual podcast, if you were watching this clip that
we're playing, you'll see buzzing bees pollinating the flowers and
trees and and these Sylvan kind of meadows and very
quaint villagery type, you know, harvesters pulling their spaghetti crop
(07:52):
from from the trees. Like you said, ben very idyllic
kind of stuff and also obviously accompanied by a very
idyllic score. So part of today's episode is about sort
of like the nature of of hoaxes of April Fool's
Day pranks and the reaction that they can elicit. I've
certainly been on both sides of that, and it's easy
(08:15):
for people to feel like they've been had or someone
was making fun of them or trying to pull the
wool over their eyes in a way that wasn't laughing
with them, but laughing at them. And that's that's all,
you know, par for the course of this kind of thing.
But well, we'll discuss a little bit of that along
the way, but first and foremost we should talk about
who the mastermind behind what I believe to be a
(08:36):
pretty ingenious April Fool's Day prank was. It was a
guy by the name of Charles de Yeager who was Viennese.
He was born in Vienna in nineteen eleven UM. He
was a freelance photographer before he moved to Britain in
the thirties UM, and that's where he got a job
working in a film unit of General Charles de Gaull's
(08:57):
Free French Forces, so yeah, very on the ground running
and gunning type work. And then he joined the Babe
and throughout his long career Diyager had this uh. He
was very well known for being an a veterate jokester, prankster,
(09:17):
and early in his career with the BBC he even
tried to mess with the Pope a little bit. He
was supposed to interview His Holiness the Pope in the Vatican,
which is a great gig if you can get it.
Scheduling was difficult. Turns out the Pope is is uh,
you know, it's kind of a busy dude. Often when
(09:39):
he was told that His Holiness will see you on
Tuesday afternoon, the diyaker replied, yes, but is he a
man of his word, which, as you can imagine, the
priest in the in the room did not find as
as hilarious and witty as he did. He had a
couple of other pranks that he was kind of well
known for, but the these were smaller things. These are
(10:01):
kind of like internal funny jokes with his colleagues. But
his idea for a spaghetti harvest hoax it turns out
it was a It was a lifelong dream. He had
had this on his mind since he was a kid,
because once upon a time, when he's very young, one
(10:23):
of his teachers would often say to their class boys,
you're so stupid, you'd believe me if I told you
that spaghetti grows on trees. Okay, first of all, abusive, Uh,
this is not how you engender intellectual growth and positivity
and and self love and and budding young students. But
(10:43):
I guess as we know that you think of like
you know, like Pink Floyd's the Wall for example. Uh,
British schools were not necessarily about positive vibes, if you
know what I mean, Casey Off, Mike, you were talking
about the idea of spaghetti growing on trees as a
concert app Yeah, it's like the kind of thing your
parents say to you. Uh, when you're a kid and
you just take spiety for granted. You say, what do
(11:05):
you think, kid, speary grows on trees? Get a job,
joined the real world? You know, get a job, join
the real world, Casey on the case that's the That's
that's the interesting part too, because we'll get into this
a little bit later. But I want to be very careful.
I always make a big point of this. I want
to be very careful to note that the audience of
(11:27):
the BBC there by no means unintelligent, right, it's we
just have to remember, Uh, spaghetti wasn't pasta in general,
wasn't super common until fairly recently in in the majority
of the UK culture. Right, that's right. Well, and you know,
we we know the idea of if you've watched any
(11:48):
amount of British comedy or or you know British read
British fiction. Um, you know that tinned foods were very
popular before fresh foods kind of, so they would have
seen things like canned spaghettios. In fact, I was gonna
say earlier, but I'm glad to say until now. Um.
And if you watch I think the Mighty Boush. But
(12:09):
you hear a lot in different British shows, they don't
call them spaghetti oh's over there. They call them spaghetti hoops,
spaghetti hoops, and you know, the H has kind of
become silent, so it becomes spaghetti hoops. Um. But yeah,
so that's the thing that they would have seen more of.
And I want to just you know, backtrack ever so
slightly and kind of make my case for why I
find those to be disgusting. It's because of the sheer
(12:32):
amount of sauce. Like I like a space, like you know,
if we could share our spaghetti recipes, but I like,
you know, to make my sauce where it coats the
spaghetti and it's sort of got a thickness to it
and like a new mommy and like has like chunky
vegetables and meat and good stuff in there, but it's
not swimming in this watery, blood red kind of ooze.
That's that's that's okay. I'm sorry if I've ruined can
(12:54):
spaghetti for anyone, but that's my two cents on that issue.
I don't think you've ruined it. I think you've got
a person little preference is one that people might agree with,
and that you know, of course, if you look at
the sales of Chef Warrior D, millions of people disagree
with they probably they clearly love it. Uh. But I
I unfortunately cannot disclose my top secret uh spaghetti and
(13:16):
pasta sauce recipes on air. But if you really want
to know, folks, uh, just hit me up on the
internet and I can. I can share some tips. I
do have a secret ingredient that might surprise you. Ben
Thai fish sauce. Just to dash, Yeah, I use it.
I have. I've got a fish sauce house. Yeah, just
just to dash. It gives it like a certain new
(13:37):
mommy and you know, it doesn't taste fishy, just gives
it kind of a savory, little extra something that people
can't always put their finger on. It gives it some
depth as absolutely as a salt replacement. So uh. Some
people can become obsessed with the perfect pasta sauce. And
this would have been somewhat familiar to de Jager, at
(13:58):
least the idea of obsession, because he was obsessed. He
was like, let's tell people spaghetti grows on trees. Let's
make it a thing. And just like I have always
been pitching crazy ideas to various bosses. Here how stuff
works for I heart. He was always pitching this idea.
So picture him in the writer's room, in the brain
(14:19):
storming room at the news desk, and someone say, okay, um,
let's see we've got some pieces we should do on
the Cold War, on East and West Germany. What else?
What else is in the news, we want some like
human interest stuff and then uh, Dieger raises his hand
and they go something that's real and not spaghetti on
trees and he just like, damn it, next time it.
(14:42):
So he did this for years. It wasn't until nineteen
fifty seven he was currently working as a cameraman for
Panorama that he was able to find some like minded
folks who thought this would be funny. Why is this
a big deal? Because Panorama was a big deal at
the time. Ten million people watched this show. Well and
(15:06):
it's still around to this day, if not to this day,
since very recently there is a fabulous Panorama documentary on
Church of Scientology. Uh they've covered everything from you know,
sending reporters into North Korea. Um, it's really been like
a heralded show with a really cool, rich and deep history. UM.
(15:28):
I believe it only had begun maybe less than ten
years before this. I think it was in like forty
five or maybe even closer to fifty when Panorama actually debuted.
But yeah, the Yeager got a job as a cameraman
on Panorama, and um, he had been pitching this spaghetti
you know, tree story to anyone that would hear him
(15:50):
and in jobs that he had occupied, he seemed like
a real character. I want to find out more about
this guy. But finally he he pitched it to a
supervisor that was all about it. And this would have
been the very first time that again being a relatively
new show, um and already well respected that uh, that
Panorama would have ventured into the sort of satirical waters here. Um.
(16:10):
And we know that the Brits are are famous for
their satire beautiful, beautiful sense of humor comedy Monty Python.
If you've ever seen the show look Around You, that's
sort of exactly what this kind of reminds me. A
look Around You is sort of meant to look like
a kind of stodgy British news show about sort of
dull things. Like they have a whole episode called Maths
(16:31):
and it's about like math and mathematics, but it's all
fake information and completely uh ludicrous, but presented as though
it were real. Highly recommend that show. It's done in
like a sixties kind of BBC style with mog synthesizer
sounds and you know, expert scientists tapping their pencils on things.
It's just a wonderful show, but this would have been
kind of a prototype for that um and they really
(16:54):
pulled it off. As we've heard in the clip. They
really were trying to sell it like one of these
classic news packages from the air. Keep in mind that
if you are a British television viewer in the nineteen fifties,
you have two choices of television program You have two channels,
(17:15):
the BBC and I t V. So Panorama is the
biggest news program on the BBC. As I said earlier,
it has viewership of ten million. It was on weekly
every Monday night at eight pm, and since about two
years before this brank occurs, it had been hosted by
(17:35):
that iconic Richard dem Bleby. He was one of the
most well known, revered public figures in the country. If
he said it, people figured it must be true. So
someone once said. One of his co workers once said
of Dimbleby, as quoted in Hoaxes dot Org, that he
(17:55):
had enough gravitas to float an aircraft carrier. And this
is important because if it had been some other narrator,
a lot of people probably wouldn't have taken this as gospel.
But because he was the guy saying it, people thought, uh,
it had to be true, even if it sounded really,
(18:17):
really strange. Now, as I said earlier, he had been
pitching this idea for a long long time. It wasn't
until nine seven that he was able to convince other
people to go along with it. He couldn't do this
himself as just the cameraman. So the writer, David Wheeler,
loved the idea because you know, as you know, a
lot of these narrators and news programs don't do their
(18:40):
own researcher writing. So Wheeler was the writer of program.
He loved it. And then they went to the editor,
guy named Michael Peacock, and they said, let's make this
weird thing happen. Peacock, of course, is is uh. He
likes his co workers obviously, uh. And who doesn't like
a good joke. But they really have to sell it
to him, and Dieger stresses. Dieger talks Turkey, he talks
(19:04):
the financial lens, which is always uh, I can assure
you always a great way to start selling stuff in
a corporate gig. Uh. He said, you know it's gonna
be cheap to create this. It's not gonna be It's
not gonna cost us a bunch I'm already gonna be
in Switzerland, so we'll I'll just do that while I'm there.
You don't have to pay me extra. We don't have
(19:25):
to pay anybody extra to do this. We can just
also do it along with the real news. We were
already planning on reporting, and Peacock went for it. Um
he you know, obviously it was a good, good humored dude,
and he gave them one hundred pounds with which to
uh to film this extra little side quest with which
isn't a ton of money, but it was enough to
(19:47):
you know, cover the cost of production of buying some
some materials, you know, for our set dressing. We'll get
into it a little bit, but yeah. The writer for
Panorama was also clearly on board with this prank because
he wrote the script in that voice of the show
to add at that extra level of credibility. That was
just really hit home when Richard Dimbleby himself wrote the
(20:10):
three and fifty word uh script um in in those uh,
those dulcet tones that the British people knew so well
of Dimbleby that really um kind of imparted that level
of authority to the whole proceeding and made it much
more easy to believe that this is what you were
what you were hearing was a real thing. Um. So
(20:31):
they set out for Switzerland in March of that year.
They have a few like a like a handler I
guess from the Swiss Tourist office who had helped them
scout some locations. Uh. It was kind of nasty weather.
It was cold and and drizzly, and unfortunately a lot
of the trees were bare. But they did eventually find
(20:51):
a spot that was suitable for the shoot. It was
near a hotel in Caste Leon, off of the shores
of Lake Lugano, and was surrounded by some evergreen trees
laurel trees. So that was exactly what they needed to
sell the effect, which was which was achieved with some
pretty great practicals. If you if you know what I mean. Yeah,
(21:13):
we get into uh we get into some proper work. Uh,
the kind of problems that Casey, I know, you know
this they could be very familiar to independent filmmakers. Uh,
if you've ever worked in something where you are trying
to make the perfect fake blood where you are you know,
I once had we had to this factor that we
(21:33):
had to paint entirely blue in a way that looked
like he was blue or not just bade blue anyway.
So Dieger runs into some stuff like this, where does
his budget go. Well, at least part of it goes
to twenty pounds of uncooked homemade spaghetti. He tries to
hang it from those laurel tree branches you mentioned earlier, Nold,
and then he encounters some problems. First, spaghetti would dry
(21:57):
out quickly, it wouldn't hang from the branches right they
have been kind of taping it up there. Then he said, okay,
we'll cook it and then we'll hang it. But then
if we cook it, it becomes too slippery and it
slides off the branches onto the ground, so you can't
get the shot. And then the tourist rep from the
Swiss tourist office who was hanging out with the acre there, said, okay,
(22:17):
let's put the uncooked spaghetti between these damp cloths. We'll
keep it kind of uh moist. I feel the way
about the word moist that you feel about canned spaghettios,
by the way, but that's another correct word. They keep
it damp, they keep it moist. Uh. And then he
hires some local young women to wear the traditional national
(22:41):
costume of Switzerland, and he films them hanging spaghetti in
the trees, climbing ladders, will wicker baskets, and then playing
the spaghetti in the sun. He gets the shots he
needs pretty quickly once they figure out how to get
spaghetti hanging from the trees. Spaghetti cultivation here in Switzerland is, not,
of course, cut it out on anything like the tremendous
scale of the Italian industry. Many of you, I'm sure,
(23:04):
will have seen pictures of the vast spaghetti plantations in
the Po Valley. For the Swiss, however, it tends to
be more of a family affair. Another reason why this
may be a bumper year lies in the virtual disappearance
of the spaghetti weevil, the tiny creature whose depredations have
caused much concerned in the past. And then, because he's
(23:26):
a he seems like ultimately really nice dude. He says, hey,
you guys are doing such a wonderful job acting. Let
me at least make you dinner, and he serves them spaghetti.
M I think this is really funny, you guys. It's
it's so it's it really does remind me of like
a Monty Python sketch, like there's something there the absurdity
(23:48):
of this. I don't know, what do you think, Casey, don't, don't,
I don't know. I find this delightful. Yeah, it has
that kind of high absurdity and I love the mix
of that with the authority of the BBC behind it.
It's sort of like the ultimate betrayal in a way
because they're sort of branding themselves as like objective truth
and so to mess with people. There's probably people that
(24:08):
were skeptical of it to begin with, but they thought, well,
it's the BBC, like what, They're not gonna mess with
this exactly. So Yeah, it reminds me of a War
of the worlds, you know, Casey on the case. So
here we go this, there's there's something else that's happening here.
So while the footage is rushed back to London, while
(24:31):
it's being edited, they're adding music. Uh, They're they're choosing
the right kind of high minded tone for this. Uh.
While that's happening. Concurrently, the editor of the show, Michael Peacock,
has been sitting on his decision. He has not told
his bosses that they're gonna put this April Fool stage
(24:53):
joke in the nation's number one current affairs show because
he thought there's a very reasonable fear He thought that
his bosses might say, what the hell are you doing
where the number one news show in the entire country.
We can't tell people this. Uh So at the last
(25:13):
minute he tells his boss, Leonard Mile and nobody else
at the BBC knew it, which means that a lot
of BBC employees were watching this when it came on,
Which means that at least some of those BBC employees
may have thought, dang, that's crazy, and you knew about
spaghetti and trees. I must have missed that in the meeting.
(25:36):
I mean, it really is perfectly primed for that response,
you know what I mean, Like you have you think
of something like the BBC, especially a show like Panorama
is like unimpeachable, and then you have that voice that
just gives it this gravitas. And to see that, I
think even modern audiences might do a double take as
to like, maybe I didn't learn that part in school,
(25:58):
you know. I honestly believe that that's the beauty of this.
And I was listening to it another podcast about this
when we were when we were doing research. I just
it's just called Weird History Podcast by Joe Streckert. I
believe it's a Patreon supported podcast, so check it out.
It's a short They're like twelve thirteen minute episodes on
a little short nugget of goodness from history. And um.
(26:19):
He made a really interesting point that this represents like
something a lesson that we could learn, like and take
with us like today, the idea of fact checking and
like not just believing something that's shoved in front of
you just because it has an air of authority to it. Um.
And and obviously this wasn't meant to keep people in
the dark for long. I mean, it was obviously going
(26:39):
to be revealed that it was a prank. That's how
April Fools jokes work. And maybe you feel a little
hurt momentarily of oh they got me, But then if
you really take a little step back and have a
little self awareness, maybe it taught you a lesson on
how you should always think about things beyond what's presented
to you. So I think that's part of what makes
April Fools interesting, at least in an intel legant prank
(27:00):
like this. Yeah, I mean it's it's totally. It's played
completely straight. After picking, the spaghetti is laid out to
dry in the warm alpine sun. Many people are often
puzzled by the fact that spaghetti has produced at such
uniform length, but this is the result of many years
of patient endeavor by plant breeders who succeeded in producing
(27:23):
the perfect spaghetti. Just to give a context, here the
lineup for the show that day, which again I love this,
uh this article from Hoax's dot org. But there's a
great article about the from the Guardian about this as well. Uh,
the lineup was pretty average. There was a segment about
(27:44):
an archbishop who was leader of the Greek Cypriots at
the time, a clip of the Duke in Edinburgh attending
the premiere of a war film, and then uh, the
little piece about a wine tasting contest, and then the
spaghetti harvest was the last segment. And after that it
cuts back to to Dimbleby who and he says, just
(28:07):
you know, now, we say goodnight on this first day
of April. So they put a clue in there that
this was April fools, right, Like British people may not
have known the origin of spaghetti, but they knew what
April Fools was. And that's kind of a hint. You
can see in modern news pieces today where you'll read
something and then you'll check the byline, especially around April,
(28:31):
and you see it says April first, you know, or whatever.
That's typically an indication that there's a that there's some
Shenanigan read going on. How self works used to do
it every year too, That's right, that's right. And and
Chuck actually on on Movie Crash, did one one year
where he had, um, Kevin Pollock and uh pretending to
be Christopher walking. Kevin Pollock is famous for his Christopher
(28:54):
walkin impression, and he did a whole episode with Chuck
where he pretended to be Christopher walking. And uh, much
like the reaction to the spaghetti hoax that the BBC received.
Some people were all about it and thought it was
hilarious and felt in on the joke. Uh, some people
felt taken for a ride and um, we're very upset,
(29:14):
and they they communicated as such, because if there's one
thing people love to do is to tell you when
they're upset. Um. So yeah, as soon as the broadcast ended,
immediately on that night, the BBC's switchboards started lighting up
like crazy. One of the producers from the show walked
over to the what school was called the BBC's telephone
exchange to see what was going on, and he wrote
(29:36):
this about it. The calls came in increasingly somewhere from
viewers who had enjoyed the joke, including one from Bristol
who complained that spaghetti didn't grow vertically, it grew horizontally.
But mainly the calls request for the BBC to settle
family arguments. The husband knew it must be true that
spaghetti grew on a bush because Richard Dimbleby had said
it must be true, and the wife knew it was
(29:56):
made with flour and water, but neither could convince the
I love that because the women had made it or
there they knew at least enough about the you know,
the process of making spaghetti that whereas a husband would
have been the total numb skull about stuff like that.
And now the harvest is marked by a traditional meal.
Toasts to the new crop are drunk in these boccolindos,
(30:18):
and then the waiters enter bearing the ceremonial dish. And
it is of course spaghetti picked earlier in the day,
dried in the sun and so brought fresh from garden
to table at the very peak of condition. For those
who love this dish, there's nothing like real home grown spaghetti.
(30:46):
So at the time it is important for the story.
At the time, the BBC channel was not its winning
four hour channel. It would cease transmission at a certain
hour and before transmiss sans closed for that evening, BBC
already had turned around and due to the public outcry, uh,
(31:06):
they had broadcasted an additional statement that came clean about
the hoax, and it's uh, it's long, so I'm no,
I'm not gonna make you sit here while I read
the whole thing out loud. But essentially they said, we've
received a mixed reaction to a spoof documentary about spaghetti
crops in Switzerland. And then they describe it, and then
(31:27):
they say some viewers failed to see the funny side
of the broadcasting criticized the BBC for airing the item
on what's supposed to be a serious factual program. Others, however,
were so intrigued they wanted to find out where they
could purchase their very own spaghetti bush. And then uh,
they they go on and talk about how spaghetti is
(31:51):
not widely eaten in the UK at this time. Uh,
they talk a little bit more about the program, and uh,
they say, you know, there's a first time television has
been used to stage in April Fool's Day hoax. But again,
I think I've said this before on one episode or another.
But again, people read headlines and retractions are printed on
(32:13):
like page thirty seven, and oftentimes when you correct something,
it's it's far too late. The lid of Pandora's jar
has been unscrewed. So they had this confession on air.
They had this statement, but people kept calling. They kept
calling and kept calling, and eventually the switchboard operators just said,
we're gonna come up with our own form like boilerplate reply.
(32:38):
So people would call them over the course of the
days and then the following weeks, and these operators would
eventually just say places sprig of spaghetti, an attentive tomato sauce,
and hope for the best. When people are calling to
ask how to grow their own spaghetti tree, and then
the spaghetti ferry will come visit you in the night
(32:58):
and leave you a shining you pent sixpence or whatever. Um, yeah,
this is great. It reminds me too of there there's
a really great show. It's someone that that Casey actually
hit me too. I was aware of his work on
a show called Um the I T. Crowd. He plays
the boss on the first season of The I T. Crowds.
Guy named Chris Morris. Uh he replaced he's his son, Yeah, Chris.
(33:20):
Chris Morris plays the boss Um on the first season
of The I T. Crowd. But he actually comes from
a really interesting tradition of radio satire and had a
show called Jam that's like pre Tim and Eric, like
psychedelic just terror comedy basically, and then they may get
into a TV series. But the first season, I don't
know if you know this case I think we talked about.
It is literally just them lip syncing to the audio
(33:44):
from the radio version and it's just lue Blue Jam
I think it's called Blue Jam was the radio show
that the show was called Jam. Highly recommended. But this guy,
Chris Morris went on to do sort of a hard
copy esque kind of satire show called brass I and
it is very much from this tradition of that we're
talking about here, but much more offensive and and uh
(34:07):
sardonic and just way over the top and they do episodes.
There's one about drugs, about the drug epidemics sweeping the
UK and uh, this is this made up drug called
cake that's like a rave drug, but it makes your
next swell up. It gives you a syndrome called check neck. Um.
I guess like from the Czech Republic is where the
drug from comes from. But there's one episode called Peto
(34:27):
Mgeddon that's all about the pedophilia epidemic sweeping London, the UK,
and it was so over the top offensive and again
some people thought it was real. People wrote in and
called in because apparently the BBC switchboard still a thing
you can call into complain and they pulled it so
you can only watch it on on YouTube and I
(34:49):
if you're into some sicko comedy, highly recommend checking out
the brass eye episode called Peto Mgeddon. So earlier I
had said that there were members of the BBC themselves
and BBC employees who were fooled by the Spaghetti hoax.
One of the people who was fooled was a guy
named sir Ian Jacob. It's interesting that Surrey and Jacob
(35:12):
was fooled because he was the Director General of the BBC.
He's the boss, the Emperor of the BBC. He's like
the Ted Turner of the BBC. And he had he
had been sent a note telling him that the this
hoax was happening, as prank was occurring, but he had
never received the note, and so when he saw the broadcast, uh,
(35:35):
he wasn't he wasn't sure what to expect. And then
someone on the team talked to Sir Jacob later and
he had this to say, which I thought was pretty
reasonable and actually reassuring for guys. The boss of the
BBC said, I always used to think monkey nuts grew
on bushes till I went to serve in the Canal
Zone Panama Canal and saw them growing on the ground.
(35:58):
The moment I saw the spaghetti, I had him on Panorama.
I said to my wife, I'm sure spaghetti doesn't grow
on a bush. So he looked it up in Encyclopedia Britannica.
Do you know Encyclopedia Britannica doesn't mention spaghetti. We had
to look up three books before he confirmed it. It's
kind of reassuring that at least he's doing his due
diligence and research you know. That is so fascinating, though, Ben,
(36:20):
because when you when you first said, oh, the director
of the b got caught wind of this, I thought
and that people were heads were gonna roll, you know,
as they say. But no, I think he appreciated the
joke and even had enough humility that he didn't let
the fact that he was taken in by the gag,
probably because he didn't read his memos um he didn't
let that like Bruce's ego too much. I appreciate that
(36:42):
in a boss, someone that has a little bit of
self awareness and can can take a joke and be
the butt of the joke and not get all bent
out of shape. I love that. In fact, Sir Jacob
himself became a big fan of the hoax. He even
sent the Yacre a note saying that he thought it
was a splendid idea and that it caused a great
deal of delight. Uh. There was some criticism. There were
(37:05):
a couple of people who complained that the BBC had
taken advantage of the trust of their audience. The Daily
Telegraph published a piece a BBC fools About with Spaghetti,
which is a weirdly British headline, and I did not
know this, but apparently there was a rule for April
Fool's Day, at least in the UK, which was that
(37:28):
no jokes are supposed to be carried out later than noon,
which I didn't know. Uh, casey, were you familiar with
that one? I was not. That's hilarious to me that
it's a very specific law. Yes, it was very pedantically British.
I love that it sounds like somebody was it was
a little bit sore about getting fooled by a prank
and then decided it quote unquote didn't count because it
(37:50):
wasn't like one thirty or something. Well, and it's like
it's like the perfect invitation to publish your joke at
like one in the afternoon or something, just to like
add a little extra own that well, it's afternoon, can't
possibly be true. Even though it was April Fools adjacent,
no one would dare break the rules of the BBC,
the April Fools rules. Uh yeah. So so now we're
(38:15):
in and uh we can look back at this and
it seems kind of uh silly, a bit whimsical, but
it is relevant today, especially when we think about just
how many points of information are out there for the
modern person online every single day. You know, there's there's
a huge controversy about whether social media platforms should fact
(38:40):
check the articles that their users are disseminating and the
claims that they're making. We see a lot of conspiracy theories, pranks, hoaxes, misinformation,
and disinformation. Misinformation is when you're sincerely, unknowingly incorrect about something.
Disinformation is where you're purposely misleading people. And uh, you
(39:06):
have to wonder what Dieger would think of all this. He,
by the way, passed away May nine, two thousand's, so
he would have been well aware of of uh, the
of online communication for sure. And I just want to
double down again just because I'm just such a fan.
I really do feel like this had to have laid
the groundwork for a lot of these British satires that
(39:28):
we're talking about. This is pre Monty Python, This was
pre brass I pre Chris Morris, pre all that stuff.
And uh, look around you. I love that it really
uh And and American audiences agreed. Um. Actually, Jack Parr
h in the sixties, UM and Johnny Carson later aired
the Spaghetti Hoax segment on The Tonight Show. UM and
(39:50):
then also got nasty letters from people who thought it
was real and didn't appreciate it, and they thought they
were being they were making fun of farmers or something
like that. Uh. And Carson, apparently a week or so
after playing the segment, Um had to make a retraction
of subsort on on the show where he held up
a box of spaghetti and read off the ingredients to
(40:11):
prove that spaghetti was in fact made and quote not born,
which I love. And so Panorama retired from the April
Fool's Day game. They just did the one to international
acclaim and criticism, and they never did a sequel, but
it became kind of an in joke in the world
(40:32):
of television. You can see reports that are all kind
of uh, paying tribute or homage to this, the Australian
spaghetti crop, the dim Blebee pickle farm, which is the
same thing as spaghetti on trees, bes pickles on trees,
the pickle ranch harvest. It goes on and on. But
(40:53):
we do have to say that just because Panorama never
did another April Fool's Joke, that doesn't mean that the
BBC itself never did something. I think it was back
in nineteen eighty the world Service. The BBC World Service
News reported gave a lot of people some conneptions when
(41:13):
they reported that the famous clock tower Big Ben would
be given a digital display. Can you imagine that that
would be insane? Uh? And here's here's the coolest part though.
When they announced this, they said not only was it
going to be given a digital display, but the hands
of the clock would be given away to the first
(41:34):
four people who called the station. I love it. I
love it. You think people would know, uh, and and
most people do. And the brit You know, the Brits
are are very uh, witty people, as you can tell
again by some of their pop culture stuff. I mean
there's always a great amount of wit and kind of
sardonic edge to It's a lot of British comedy. Um.
(41:55):
But even still some people get taken in. It's it's
fascinating and I absolutely of it. Now I'd like to
to pass this over to you folks. Maybe there's a
conversation we can continue on the internet, on Facebook, on Twitter, Instagram.
What are your favorite April Fool's Day pranks? Either the
big ones that got national attention, or maybe just some
(42:18):
of your favorite ones that are a little more close
to home in your own life. When of the best
places to share these stories is our Facebook page Ridiculous Historians,
which has been having some top tier meme posts lately. Ah,
the memory abounds for sure. All you gotta do is
go to Facebook dot com and search for Ridiculous Historians
and just like, name me or Casey or or Ben
(42:41):
or whomever, anyone associated with the show, any little ref
from the show, just to lets. Sometimes we have people
who are honest and say, I don't know anything about
the show, but this seems like a fun group. I
I I'll even let those people in. Sometimes it's not
it's not about being exclusive. It's just we want to
make sure you're not like some kind of Russian boty.
You can also find us the social media as individuals.
(43:02):
That's right. You can find me on Twitter at Ben
Bowlen h s W, where I am currently reveling in
my fascination of corvids. You can also find me on Instagram,
where I have in a number of misadventures as at
Ben Bowlen. That's Corvid is not COVID's right, Yeah. Corvid
is a group name for things like crows and magpies
(43:24):
and so on. I kid Ben I know about your
obsession with these little rascals, which is funny considering that
you're anti metal and these guys love shiny objects. Isn't
that the thing? Sure? Not just metal. Corvids are very
well known for forming bonds and friendships with humans, and
so they try to maybe pay for food and favors
(43:46):
by giving humans what they see as human things. So
I could be like a button or a coin, or
I I don't know, a shoe string. They just find
stuff and they're like that looks like human stuff's currency
for them. I love the idea of you perhaps commanding
sort of like a crew of of of corvette that
can bring you things and assist to you in your
(44:08):
in your day to day sort of like uh, it's
Cinderella gets her dress made by the woodland creatures. That's
very kivy. Yeah. I got very close at our old
office to befriending some crows who lived in the parking
lot of a mall in Heck. While you're online, why
don't you tell us a little bit more about any
of your interactions with corvids. I personally would love to
(44:30):
hear them. No, old people can find you online as well, right,
They can there's zero corvidd activity on my social media
feed at how now Noel Brown on Instagram as many
of you know, and and rag me about pretty regularly
on the Internet. I am I am a bit a
feared of birds corvids in particular, but Ben, you're bringing
me around. I love this friendship aspect of these creatures.
(44:52):
That's that's fascinating and very humanizing. Um. Huge thanks to
super producer Casey Pegram Alex Williams, who composed Arthene Christopher
Haciotes here in spirit. Big big thanks of course to
our Pure podcast or Eve's Jeff Coach. She's got some
great stuff on the waist, stay tuned for her, and
of course thanks to our own walking April Fools Brank
Jonathan Strickland, a k a. The Quizter. I think that's
(45:16):
all for us today. We've never done in April Fool's
uh prank episode on ridiculous history, have we. Let's just
hope everybody forgets by April next year. I'm down. We'll
see you next time, folks. For more podcasts for my
(45:36):
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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