The 1957 “Spaghetti-Grows-on-Trees” Hoax: One of TV’s First April Fools’ Day Pranks

BBC program in 1957 panorama One of the first April Fools’ Day hoaxes aired on television. Above, you can watch a fake news report from Switzerland, narrated by respected BBC journalist Richard Dimbleby. Here’s the basic premise: After a mild winter and the “virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil,” residents of Ticino (a Swiss canton on the Italian border) harvested a record-breaking spaghetti crop. Swiss farmers pluck strands of spaghetti from trees and lay them out in the sun to dry. Then we asked Swiss residents to enjoy a fresh pasta meal for dinner – as if going from farm to table.

The spoof documentary was started by BBC cameraman Charles de Jager. He recalled a schoolteacher from his childhood in Austria jokingly saying, “Boys, you are so stupid, if I told you that spaghetti grows on trees, you would believe me.” Obviously he was right. Years later, David Wheeler, producer of the BBC segment, recalled: “The next day [the broad­cast] There was a lot to do because there were a lot of people who would go to work and say to their coworkers ‘Have you seen that extraordinary thing? panoramaI never knew about spaghetti.’ An estimated eight million people watched the original program, and, decades later, CNN called the broadcast “the greatest hoax ever conducted by any reputable news establishment.”

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