SYMHC Classics: Three Legendary Pranks

This 2021 episode covers three prank stories, including a joke that became a living legend, a large-scale prank that created havoc, and a televised hoax that reminds us all of the importance of critical thinking. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday, Everybody. January twenty fourth, nineteen twenty nine, was
the first appearance of a prank on the campus of
Brown University, one that has continued on and on since
then into the twenty first century. So happy birthday to
that prank, which is one of the three that we
talk about in Today's Saturday Classic. This originally came out
on December one, twenty twenty one. It's Joy Welcome to

(00:29):
Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm
Tracy V. Wilson. So not too long ago, Tracy I
was looking up another possible episode, which she'll go nameless

(00:49):
in case it comes up, because I still might do it.
I stumbled across a list of historical pranks and hoaxes,
and we've covered some of those before, but some of
these were new to me, and it got me thinking
about such things and whether any one of them might
make another good episode. But really, the ones I was
most interested in are a little bit shy of having

(01:10):
enough information to be an episode all their own. So
today I grouped a few together. If you are listening,
you may be wondering why not hold this until April
Fool's Day. That seems like a perfect match, and it is.
But here's the answer. It's twofold. One. I just didn't
want to. I just didn't feel like it. If I'm
interested in something, I tend to want to do it

(01:30):
usually right then, And if I wait, my interest may wane,
and then where will we be? And two, I will
confess to everyone now, I'm not the biggest fan of
April Fool's Day. Here is why. It's a little bit
of a snooty thing. It always feels a little bit
like an amateur hour of irritation pranks. I don't like that,

(01:52):
Which is not to say all pranks are bad, because
some of them are very clever and legitimately fun. And
there are things that happen on April fools Day that
some people do that I really love. But two of
the ones we're covering today are actually pretty delightful, and
one was in April Fool's prank. One of the ones
that we're talking about today would have left me in
a full blown rage if I had been a part

(02:13):
of it. But all of these pranks are fairly legendary
and they're all quite different, So you're going to get
a smattering of things. So we've got a joke that
kind of became a living legend, we have a large
scale prank that created complete havoc, and we have a
televised hoax that reminds us all of the importance of

(02:33):
critical thinking. So first of these three. On January twenty fourth,
nineteen twenty nine, at Brown University, a notice was posted
on the University Hall bulletin board that advertised an upcoming
lecture and here is what it said. On Thursday evening
at eight fifteen in Sales Hall, JS Carberry will give

(02:55):
a lecture on archaic Greek architectural ravet Mints in connection
with Ionian philology. For tickets and further information apply to
Professor John Spaith. So this was the birth of a prank,
seemingly with no end. From the beginning, there were doubters

(03:16):
as to the identity and credentials of JS Carberry. Upon
seeing this lecture flyer, one of Professor Space's colleagues, Professor
Ben Klow, is said to have inserted the word not
into the text so that it read Carberry will not
give a lecture. We should note here too that even
in the documentation that you can find at Brown University,
sometimes the word philology in that lecture title is listed

(03:40):
as though it said phonology Klow, which is also a
name I've heard people say as Kloff, because there's lots
of ways to say things. Followed up with Professor Spath
to ask him what this was all about, and Spath
had loads of details about Carberry to share with this doubter.
Carberry was a professor of ico ceramics, the study of

(04:02):
cracked pots. He had a wife named Laura, who was
described as ungrammatical, and two daughters, Patricia and Lois. Patricia
was a poet and Lois hunted puffins. There was even
an assistant in the mix to fill out this story
that was a Truman Grayson, who was prone to accidents
and being bitten by things that begin with the letter A.

(04:24):
This all just sounds like a description from a children's
book to me. Yeah, it's all very silly right out
of the gate. And clearly this was all just a
bit of fun. But unlike the other pranks on today's show,
Josiah's story did not fade or blow over. It grew,
it became further embellished, and it became a twentieth century legend.

(04:44):
Of course, because of that legendary status, the Carbery story
has not only grown, but it has also developed some
inconsistencies over the years. For example, his birthday may have
been in eighteen twenty his career may have started in
eighteen twenty five. Both of those milestones have at times
been attributed instead to that year that the flyer first

(05:05):
appeared in University Hall, nineteen twenty nine. In May of
nineteen twenty nine, the school paper reported that Carberry, who
at that time was referred to as an expert in
Hindo jeramic pottery, was going to the Southwestern Arkansas Normal
Institute as a loaner from Brown University. Carbury has had

(05:26):
a number of titles attached to his name, but the
one that sticks the most is Professor of psycho Ceramics. Yeah,
depending on what you look at, you'll see him listed
in a variety of different ways. It's usually always related
to pottery in some form or another. Over the years,
there have been a great many lectures that Josiah S.
Carberry was scheduled to deliver, only to have some conflict

(05:48):
arise to prevent the presentation. But there has always been
a very good reason for such cancelations. Primarily that reason
was his world travels to places allegedly like Turkey, Hawaii,
or Mongolia that would keep him away. But travels are
no It seems that Carberry, whose middle name is apparently Stinkney,

(06:09):
manages to be ever present at Brown in one way
or another. Over the years, his family has produced a
great deal of correspondence and placed so many notices about
their various doings in the paper that the Providence Journal
banned them completely. Yeah, there's apparently a Keell order that
if the name Carbury comes up not to run it

(06:29):
like it's not real, like maybeing like no more coin
hords except this are real. In nineteen fifty five, Carberry
sent a check from his travels abroad in the amount
of one hundred one dollars and one cent, and the
accompanying missive indicated that that money was intended to set
up a memorial fund for his quote future late wife,

(06:51):
which should be named not after her, but should be
called the Josiah S. Carberry Fund. That one hundred and
one dollars in one cent was seed money. In receiving it,
the university had to agree to establish a donation drive
every Friday the thirteenth and every leap day of February
twenty ninth, where anyone could donate their loose change into

(07:12):
Brown jugs to add to the fund. That money was
to be used to purchase books that the Good Professor
might or might not approve of. It has been used
to purchase things. You can find a list of them
the Brown University Library site. In nineteen ninety two, Carbury
also wrote a cookbook, The Carbury Cookbook From Nuts to Soup.
It includes contributions from other people, but he was the

(07:34):
primary editor, and the proceeds of that were also to
go to the Carbury Fund. It contained recipes for such
delights as chocolate ice box pie, shrimp in beer, and
stuffed camel and boiled water. Chocolate ice box pie is
a real thing, yes, and that came from a contributor.

(07:55):
Shrimp in beer is that you can find that recipe online.
And it's basically like I'm shrimping beer. No cook it
all right. So that nineteen fifty five donation. The following year,
an article titled Josiah S. Carberry, the Professor and the
Legend appeared in the Brown Daily Herald and in it,

(08:17):
the return address of this famed initial donation to the
Carbery Fund was exposed as being the New Hampshire State
Liquor Store. So these Carbury mysteries continue. Yeah, there are
so many that we're not gonna list here, but imagine
more such things happening over the years. And over the years,

(08:37):
Carbury's name has appeared on a number of academic papers,
and it has been mentioned in a variety of magazines
and newspapers, including The New York Times, which claimed he
was the world's greatest traveler. His books have been cited
in the footnotes of other books. In twenty thirteen, sixteen
Minutes ran a segment on Carbury. That's right, sixteen, not sixty.

(08:59):
It is a very art full spoof of the sixty
minute story style produced by the Brown Club of Rhode
Island and Friends of Brown University Library. And that particular
piece is full of very fun Carbery lore, including the
information that there have even been allegedly financial concerns over
the mysterious faculty member, particularly whether he may have been

(09:19):
added to the payroll at some point in time. In
two thousand and five, a letter from Carberry appeared in
the Brown Daily Herald under the pleading headline make me
famous Again Brown. He relates that he's on a fishing
trawler out of Russia, sifting through pottery shards that the
crew pulls up while they quest after a mythical whale.

(09:41):
But despite a lot of chatter, his real aim really
seems to be securing his legacy by making sure that
the Carberry sandwich, which at that point has two chicken
patties on it, is upgraded with a third patty. He
may worry about his fame, he has incidentally never been
photographed with his face visible. Carberry, it appears, is either

(10:03):
immortal or merely blessed with both longevity and vitality. It
seems like as long as his name lives on, it's
going to stay that way. Before we jump into our
next story, which is a very ambitious prank, we will
take a break and have a word from our sponsors.

(10:28):
So for this next one, the street that the hoax
took place in is what gives it its name, and
that was at fifty four Berner Street, London on November
twenty seventh, eighteen ten. Starting at five am, Berner Street
became so overrun with visitors and deliveries to the residents there,
that the entire street became gridlocked, and the blocks surrounding

(10:49):
the address were also jammed, to the point that passage
was impossible, and that whole mess was the result of
a hoax, a hoax that started with a bet. So
a quick note on the dates here. Write ups about
this from the eighteen forties have put this hoax as
happening in the year eighteen oh nine. You'll see that

(11:09):
repeated a lot, but searching through newspaper archives online, all
the contemporary write ups about it are from eighteen ten.
And the architect of this whole thing was a man
named Theodore Edward Hook. Hook was born on September twenty second,
seventeen eighty eight, so he was twenty two at the
time of the Berner Street hoax. His father was composer

(11:32):
James Hook, and Theodore was the second son born to
James and his first wife. Theodore's brother, James, was eighteen
years old when Theodore was born, and their mother died
when Theodore was still fairly young. Some accounts place her
death in eighteen oh two. That means he would have
been right around fourteen. He was sent to a seminary
school while he was still a boy, but he was

(11:53):
very precocious there. At one point, it was discovered he
had skipped three full weeks of school, so he eventually
found that he really enjoyed writing. He never really did
like school, no matter which one he went to, and
wrote later in his life quote, my school life was
not a happy one. I was idle and careless of
my tasks. I had no aptitude for learning languages. I

(12:14):
hated Greek and absolutely shuddered at Hebrew. I fancied myself
a genius, and anything that could be done in a
hurry I did tolerably well, but application I had not.
Even when his father arranged for Theodore to attend Oxford
with the intent that he would become a lawyer, Theodore
almost tanked the whole thing by making jokes during the

(12:36):
entrance ceremony that infuriated the chancellor. This was more or
less how he conducted his life, and he became a
well known writer and wit. As writer J. Murray put
it in eighteen forty three, quote, he carried the spirit
of rebellious frolic with him. And we're giving you all
this biographical information to set up who the sort of

(12:56):
person was who would pull this particular type of involved prank.
In the book The Lives of Wits and Humorists, written
in eighteen sixty two, author John Tims put it this way,
quote Sheridan, as we have seen in the present volume,
had a great taste, we may say, constructive skill in hoasting,

(13:18):
but he is far exceeded by Hook. He was known
to do things like order a coach with a friend
and then stage a fight as they got close to
their destination. So then he would jump out of the
coach and leave his friend to pay the fare. He
did a lot of fair dumping as jokes. Yeah, I
don't think that's so funny, Right, let's stick your friends

(13:40):
with the bill as a joke. Over and over. He
did a lot of that, you know, humor subjective. One
day in November eighteen ten, Hook, it said, was strolling
down Berner Street with a friend and noticed a house
which is described in accounts as quote particularly neat and
modest in appearance, belonged to a shopkeeper's widow. And for

(14:02):
some reason Hook got an idea, and he is said
to have turned to his friend and said, quote, I
lay you a guinea that in one week that nice
quiet dwelling shall be the most famous in all London.
When his friend took the bet, Hook went into action
to make sure he would win it. Over the next
four or five days, Thomas Hook wrote one thousand pieces

(14:24):
of correspondence. These were orders to all manner of tradesmen
stating the need for services, all of them to be
scheduled on November twenty seventh, and all in a short
period of hours. Some were written to public officials and
socially prominent Londoners requesting that they call on the address
on the morning of November twenty seventh, all on some

(14:46):
important matter or another, depending on what Hook thought would
most entice the recipient to show up. For example, one
note which was reported in the papers read quote Missus
Tottenham requests mister Blank will call upon her at two
tomorrow as she wishes to consult him about the sale

(15:07):
of an estate. Yeah. Presumably those names were left out
so that people would not be harangued for having fallen
for this very silly prank. And in addition to sending
all of those missives out, Hook rented a room across
the street from Missus Tottenham's and sat with two of
his friends watching the whole thing play out. There are

(15:29):
some inconsistencies with this story right out of the gate,
because Hook himself wrote about it, but it's not known
what degree of license he took with the material and
his version. For example, he says that this happened in
eighteen oh nine, and he indicated that he and his
friends had worked out the plan over a longer period
than just a week. But the question that never gets

(15:52):
answered in any account is why Hook selected that particular house.
There's been some speculation that he had some kind of
disag agreement with Missus Tottenham, or that one of his
friends did, but there's also precedent in his behavior that
he just did a lot of things with no specific
motivation at all. It's entirely possible that he saw what

(16:12):
looked like the most boring house on the street and
he decided that was a challenge. Now, we mentioned at
the beginning of this story that this shut down all
passage in the area, and that cannot have been a surprise.
Hook knew that the nature of the street layout was
going to cause a jam because there were not as
many connecting points in the city at that time that

(16:34):
would allow you to pass through. So, according to an
eighteen forty three write up of the affair at the time,
quote Oxford Road was not approachable either from Westminster or
Mayfair or the city otherwise than through a complicated series
of lanes. It may be feebly and a far off
guest what the crash and jam and tumult of that
day was. That's because Berner Street connected up to Oxford.

(16:57):
It was one of the few connections. Act Hook himself
later estimated that this whole thing had impacted about a
quarter of the town. In short, it was an abysmal mess.
The Morning Post ran a story about what had happened
the next day, opening with a line that must surely
have delighted Theodore Hook. Quote, the greatest hoax that has

(17:19):
ever been heard of in this metropolis was yesterday practiced
in Berner Street, Oxford Street. The paper describes a dozen deliveries,
all arriving at once. And that's really like the light version,
because this did start first thing in the morning with
a chimney sweep, and the woman of the house, Missus Tottenham,
had not ordered a sweep, and so that person was

(17:40):
sent away, and reportedly a dozen more chimney sweeps showed
up not long after, and that was just the first
of what would be a long line of tradesmen who
appeared at the house that day. According to various accounts,
coal wagons showed up, bakers with wedding cakes, dentists, jewelers, wigmakers, midwives,

(18:02):
even an undertaker who had made a custom coffin for
the very alive Missus Tottenham. Furniture began to arrive, couch
after couch, and then organs and even butchers with massive
deliveries of meat that had not actually been ordered. Basically,
anything one might order for delivery had been ordered by
Hook as part of the prank, and it had been

(18:23):
ordered in multiples. The Mayor of London, having received what
he believed to be a letter regarding a meeting from
Missus Tottenham, arrived by carriage, although by that time the
street was already clogged with deliveries and onlookers who had
gathered to marvel at all these comings and goings, and
often to mock the various trades people who were being

(18:45):
turned away from the house. The Mayor was taken to
the nearby Marlboro Street Police office to get him out
of the crowd, to try to contain things. Police officers
were posted at the street corners to preemptively turn deliveries away,
and it took until the late evening to get the
crowd to go home and get the street unjammed. This
all may have seemed like a really funny idea to Hook,

(19:07):
but it was actually a big issue for a lot
of people. The Quarterly Review wrote about the incident and
outlined just how much damage, far beyond mere nuisance, had
been done by the prank. Quote. Perhaps no assassination, no conspiracy,
no royal demise or ministerial revolution of recent times was
greater God send to the newspapers than this audacious piece

(19:28):
of mischief. In Hook's own theatrical world, he was instantly suspected,
but no sign escaped, whether him or his confidants. The
affair was beyond that circle, a serious one. Fierce were
the growlings of the doctors and surgeons, scores of whom
had been cheated at valuable hours. Attorneys, teachers of all kinds, hairdressers, tailors,

(19:52):
popular preachers, parliamentary philanthropists had been alike victimized, and were,
in their various notes alike vociferous. But the tangible material
damage done was itself no joking matter. There had been
an awful smashing of glass, china, harpsichord, and coach panels.
Many a horse fell, never to rise again. Beer barrels

(20:15):
and wine barrels had been overturned and exhausted with impunity.
Amid the press of countless multitudes. It had been a
fine field day for pickpockets. There arose a fervent hue
and cry for the detection of the wholesale deceiver and destroyer.
That rite up was written several decades later, and as

(20:35):
it indicates, Hook was not immediately identified as the hoaxer.
He feigned illness for a couple of weeks and then
went to the country under the guise of seeking wellness
through fresh air and rest. There was, however, a satirical
print that was released in eighteen ten that hints that
people knew it must be Hook's work. There's a speech

(20:57):
bubble in the picture that has the mayor saying, oh,
this is a pretty hoax, but I'll find it out
by hook or by crook, with the word hook capitalized
like it's a proper name. As the news of this
hoax hit the press, similar copycat pranks started popping up
around England and even some in France, and Hook was
apparently miffed by the imitators and wrote as much as

(21:20):
his autobiographical but fictional persona Gilbert Gurney, intimating that anyone
doing the same prank after him was a plagiarist. He
later wrote, copy the joke, and it ceases to be one.
Any fool can imitate an example once set. But for
originality of thought and design, I do think that was perfect. Hook,
who of course won his bet, does not appear to

(21:43):
have been sobered by all the trouble that he caused.
After things blew over and he returned from the country,
he kept brewing up pranks, including one where he gave
a well known actor of the day, Romeo Coats, forged
tickets to a lavish party being thrown by the Prince
Regent or Missus Tottenham. There's not much information on how
she recovered after what must have really just been an

(22:05):
exhausting and confusing and infuriating day. I would have said
something on fire, but the third hoax on our list
is in fact my favorite, and it is not nearly
so stressful to think about as the chaos of Berners Street,
and we will get right to it after we hear
from the sponsors that keep stuff you missed in history class. Going.

(22:37):
On April first, nineteen fifty seven, a short film ran
on the BBC Current Events show Panorama titled Spaghetti Harvest
into Chino. It explains how the early spring had resulted
in quote an exceptionally heavy spaghetti crop into Chinos, Switzerland,
which is right on the border with Italy. According to
the segment, which ran less than three minutes, quote, the

(22:59):
last two weeks of March are an anxious time for
the spaghetti farmer. There's always 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. This informative piece continues explaining that Swiss
efforts at growing spaghetti are quite small compared to Italian

(23:23):
spaghetti agriculture, and it makes references to the vast spaghetti
plantations in the po Valley of Italy. All of this
information is conveyed via a voiceover as the camera pans
over these idyllic scenes of women harvesting spaghetti from the
trees that the spaghetti dangles from the branches before it's plucked.

(23:44):
The pesky spaghetti weavil, according to the narration, has disappeared
and that has led to a bumper harvest. The freshly
picked spaghetti is so beautifully uniform, we're told, thanks to
careful cultivation by skilled growers over a period of years.
And the voiceover of this short film was Richard Dimbleby,
the host of Panorama, and he is earnest in his

(24:08):
delivery throughout. It is very convincing. When Michael Peacock, who
approved the project, was interviewed about it in twenty fourteen,
he told the BBC of Dimbleby quote, he knew perfectly
well we were using his authority to make the joke work.
He loved the idea. So were viewers convinced that's really
a mixed bag. The phones at the BBC started to

(24:31):
ring as soon as the segment finished. Some people seemed
to want to correct them, to explain that spaghetti did
not grow on trees. Some viewers clearly did get the joke.
There were occasional family arguments that had people calling the
network to settle the matter about whether it was real
or a hoax. Some people just thought it was in

(24:51):
poor taste that a news program would run any sort
of fake story, and a handful reportedly wanted to know
if there was somewhere they could purchase spaghetti trees. Eventually,
somebody had the idea to have the operators at the
BBC continue the joke, with gullible callers telling people who
wanted their own spaghetti tree to place a sprigue of

(25:12):
spaghetti into a tomato sauce tin and quote hope for
the best. If I were a kid and I was
told that by an operator at the BBC, I would
one one hundred percent be doing it. This project was
so well produced that even the Director General of the BBC,
Sir Ian Jacob, was momentarily astounded to learn that spaghetti

(25:33):
grew on trees. As the story goes, his wife quickly
set him straight on that matter, although they did turn
to a reference book, the Encyclopedia Britannica to settle the matter.
It turns out though there was no entry for spaghetti
at that time, the segment and viewers' reactions to it
really made news around the world. One of the most
negative ride ups Holly found appeared in Alberta, Canada's Calgary

(25:57):
Herald under the headline frightening joke. In this column, writer
Jack Steppler takes a very alarmist tone, stating quote, but
what is disturbing is that because mister Dimbleby delivered a
monstrous hope straight faced, wrapped it up in plausible sounding
discourse about the tribulations of a spaghetti farmer, and fortified

(26:19):
it with a faked film, a large number of people
did take it seriously. It then goes on to say
some pretty racist and xenophobic things, basically along the lines
that if Britain's smart and informed public can be fooled
by such things, how can less educated people in other
countries ever discern truth from fiction, especially when it's delivered

(26:41):
in such a serious manner. He then goes on to
compare this prank to the quote hitlaryan formula of telling
a big enough lie and telling it often enough to
be believed. Steppler sort of sums it up in a
way that's part people need to be critical thinkers and
part trusted newspeople should never give prank news. Yeah, me
as a little startling that he went right for a

(27:02):
Hitler comparison, and I'm like, it wasn't like they aired
this over and over to try to convince anybody. It
was like two minutes and forty seconds one right, and
look at the date, right, And they did at the
end of it mention like that's the news from April first.
So you may be wondering how such a project that

(27:23):
ended up being a bit controversial was hatched at a
well respected news show. Apparently during one of the team's
meetings earlier that year, they had noticed that April Fool's
Day was going to fall on a Monday. That was
the day of the week that Panorama aired, and a
contract cameraman from Austrian named Charles Dijeger had the idea.
He later claimed it was based on a teacher who

(27:45):
used to tell the class that they were so stupid
they'd believed that spaghetti grows on trees. He was already
scheduled to go on a shoot in Switzerland, so he
pitched this as something that they could easily do on
the cheap, and so he was given a budget of
one hundred pounds by the show's editor, Michael Peacock, and
off Dieger went. So this fake harvest required twenty pounds

(28:06):
of uncooked spaghetti. So you may hear that he used
cook spaghetti. If you have only ever used dry spaghetti
in the box from the grocery store, that may be
the only thing that makes sense to you. Uh. But
there was no way for cooked spaghetti to stay off
the branches of the trees. It's very slippery. It would
just slide off. So they used freshly made but uncooked spaghetti.

(28:31):
It was still flexible enough to hang gracefully from the trees,
but it had enough surface texture left that it just
didn't slide right off there. But it also meant that
it had to be kept just moist enough throughout the shoot,
so as they prepped different angles, they would keep the
spaghetti damp between damp cloths. Yeah, if you've ever handled

(28:52):
like fresh pasta, you know it's got some bendiness to it. Yeah,
but it does pretty quickly start to harden up and
not be quite so so pliable. And it's definitely not
like when you try to scoop out your spaghetti that's
been cooked and it just slides through your serving utensil. Yes.
Lake Lugano, on the border between Italy and Switzerland, was

(29:15):
the location for the shoot, and locals were asked to
harvest the spaghetti they also got dressed in like Swiss
national costume. They carefully draped it into wicker baskets like
any other harvested tree fruit might be handled, and then
they staged a drying setup where these quote freshly picked
noodles are left in the sun. There is also, of

(29:35):
course a scene at the end of this mini documentary
showing the people enjoying their harvest, and that was actually
also the cast and crew wrap meal, which they filmed
to use in the final production once the footage was
back at the BBC. Producer David Wheeler wrote the script
for it. Like Peacock, he credited Richard Dimbleby with being
the most valuable asset they had and pulling off this stunt.

(29:58):
In two thousand and four, he said, quote he had
enough gravitas to float an aircraft carrier. Although the reaction
had been mixed and had perhaps made some of their
viewers feel foolish, the people involved have pointed out in
several different interviews over the years that this was a
time when fresh spaghetti was really only just being introduced

(30:19):
to most households in Britain, and really kind of pasta
in general up to that point. Camp spaghetti was kind
of the most common way a family of the British
Isles might encounter it, so maybe they didn't know where
it came from. Despite the whole dust up around it,
Sir Ian Jacob wrote to Dieger to congratulate him. Quote,
The spaghetti Harvest was a splendid idea beautifully shot and organized.

(30:41):
This item has caused a great deal of delight one
way and another. Over the years, the hoax has been
revisited by the BBC as one of the earliest examples
of television pranking, and often coverage of it has included
interviews with some of the people involved, some of which
we've quoted here. In two thousand and four, when he
was interviewed about the prank as Like a Look Back,

(31:03):
producer David Wheeler said quote, we were criticized for doing it,
but I had no regrets about it at all. I
think it was a good idea for people to be
aware they couldn't believe everything they saw on the television,
and that they ought to adopt a slightly critical attitude
to it. And I chose that one because it seemed
germane to our lives to well, and having worked on

(31:29):
the internet, since what two thousand and three or something
like that, and having seen the long arc of companies
writing fake April Fool's Day articles and making fake April
Fool's Day products, I feel like that's fallen off a
little bit right in more recent years people got kind

(31:52):
of tired of it. There's still some places that have
like their tried and true April Fol's Day events that
people seem to still enjoy. But this is an example
of that that's a little earlier then, you know, I
imagine it from my own time working for a website. Yeah,
I mean this is sometimes pointed to you as being
like the first televised prank. Not everyone in Great Britain

(32:17):
had TVs at the time. The estimate of viewership wasn't
the millions though, so it was a significant number of people.
But yet it's at that point maybe they had not
come to that idea that, like, we should question things
that show up on television. And I will say, you
can find it online. It's really easy to find this footage.
If not for the absurd subject matter, you at one

(32:39):
hundred percent believe that it was a documentary. It's filmed
so perfectly. Nothing about it reads as campy as at all.
It's definitely very much like played as straight as could be.
So I suppose if you were not familiar with the
production of pasta, and you know, maybe had had only
been watching that news program for a bit and trusted

(33:02):
it completely, maybe I would be listen. If there were
spaghetti Tree, I'd buy it. Spaghetti squash is good, but
not quite as delicious, I'd be. Thanks so much for
joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send

(33:23):
us a note, our email addresses History Podcast at iHeartRadio
dot com, and you can subscribe to the show on
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your favorite shoes