Where
does Spaghetti come from? Apparently, in 1957 the BBC, no lesser
source, informed that Spaghetti came from bushes. My guess is that you
could resurrect this April Fool's day stunt for the next April fool's
day. Today's children are more sophisticated in many ways, for example,
they would not believe that a radio programme purporting that Martians
had landed in America was true. However today, children are
notoriously ignorant on the sources of food. All they know is that if
they want food, they just open a tin or raid the freezer.
My
favoured try-on to hoax older children is to substitute Tagliatelle for
Spaghetti. While, for younger children the idea of a plain pasta tree
may work better.
The original
1957 BBC hoax succeed because it was shown on the prestigious Panorama
Programme. In true reverential, BBC documentary tone on the radio,
Richard Dimbleby explained how Spaghetti was harvested from bushes,
dried, then processed into strands of spaghetti.
Don't
forget there were no TV at the time, and people, children especially,
had to rely on friends repeating the tale. Also, the radio audience
lapped it up, a few people even phoned in asking where they could buy a
Spaghetti bush!
As an aside, what I
like about a good spoof is that it not only fools people, but also
someone else gets mad, in this case staff in the BBC got upset because
they felt that the BBC had wasted a Panorama slot on a mere hoax.
Well
this Programme went out on April 1st 1957, three months before Prime
Minister Harold Macmillan was to announce: "most of our people have
never had it so good". It's up to you to decide if he was talking
about Spaghetti bushes or Tagliatelle Trees!
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