The Great Ganesha

I was going to post an April Fool’s joke on this blog on April 1. You know, some kind of humorous news item or some other story that I could have claimed to have “discovered” online and reported on here at The Great Ganesha. But then I got to thinking that that is exactly what everyone will expect. So I decided to not post anything. Ha! You see now? The joke’s on you.

Seriously though, I was reading this article on April Fool’s pranks on the BBC which, as some of you may (or may not) have noticed, is practically the only news source that I almost ever link to. For those of you who are aware of this, did you ever stop to think that in some cases, the BBC might even be lying? If this were the case, I would never know. And you, as the reader, would never know either. In fact, maybe the whole BBC setup is one big April Fool’s joke that got out of hand, and now they have to do everything in their power to keep it going to continue fooling everyone. It’s like those times in parties when you start talking in a funny voice early on in the evening and you have to continue talking in that voice for the rest of the night otherwise people will know that you were talking in a funny voice. You know what I mean? Probably not.

In any event, the BBC has done some analysis on what constitutes a good prank.

The eminent wartime scientist Reginald Jones, who headed the Directorate of Scientific Intelligence at the Air Ministry during World War II, researched the perfect April Fool’s gag. He came up with the equation: induction followed by incongruity. [link]

Reginald Victor Jones was a formidable looking guy, there’s no denying it. Take a look.

Now, if he says that “induction followed by incongruity” is the formula to the best April Fool’s joke, then I’m going to have to go ahead and agree with him. Because that’s what I do with formidable looking men – agree with them. I mean, take another look at him for god’s sake. Wouldn’t you agree with him as well? Even this other guy from the article – Martin Wainwright – agrees with him. He takes it a step further and actually even explains what Jones meant. And Wainwright’s written a book on the subject, so he knows what he’s talking about. Besides, it’s the BBC reporting – they can’t be wrong.

“Basically he was saying lull them into a false sense of security, then drop in absurdities that just keep getting more and more extreme,” says Martin Wainwright, author of the newly published Guardian Book of April Fool’s Day. [link]

Ohhhh. Now I understand. In fact, Wainwright even has a ‘Best Prank Ever’ – kind of like the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. Let me gratuitously put in a picture of him to mislead any Simpsons fans that this post has something that might interest them.

There. Now, getting back to the point. When I read about Wainwright’s ‘Best Prank Ever’, I think I had to agree that it was pretty damn good. I’ll end this post with a description of the prank. Some of you may even have heard of it – the Panorama ‘Swiss Spaghetti Harvest‘ episode that aired on April 1, 1957.

Made on a budget of just ?100, it told the tale of spaghetti harvesting in Switzerland and described how the seemingly bumper crop was at risk of late frosts, creating a disastrous situation for growers all over Europe.

The spoof documentary showed people in the Swiss Alps plucking strands of spaghetti from trees and laying it in the sun to dry. That it fooled so many was in part down to the fact that pasta, at the time, was deeply exotic in a nation reared on meat and two veg. Then there was the commentary provided in serious, hushed tones by that giant of broadcasting, Richard Dimbleby. [link]

For the uninitiated, Panorama was (and still is) a long-running news show on the BBC Network. And, like I said earlier, the BBC is never wrong. Right?

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