Panorama – April Fool’s Day Hoax – Spaghetti Harvest – 1st April 1957
On April 1, 1957 the British television programme Panorama broadcast a three-minute segment about a bumper spaghetti harvest in southern Switzerland. The success of the crop was attributed both to an unusually mild winter and to the virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil. The audience heard Richard Dimbleby, the shows highly respected anchor, discussing the details of the spaghetti crop as they watched video footage of a Swiss family pulling pasta off spaghetti trees and placing it into baskets. The segment concluded with the assurance that, For those who love this dish, theres nothing like real, home-grown spaghetti. The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest hoax generated an enormous response. Hundreds of people phoned the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this query the BBC diplomatically replied, Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best. To this day the Panorama broadcast remains one of the most famous and popular April Fools Day hoaxes of all time. It is also believed to be the first time the medium of television was used to stage an April Fools Day hoax. Since 1955 Panorama had been anchored by Richard Dimbleby, whose authoritative, commanding presence had made him one of the most revered public figures in Britain. If Dimbleby said it, people trusted that it was true. Which is one of the reasons why the spaghetti harvest hoax fooled so many viewers. His participation lent the hoax an air of unimpeachable …
Video Rating: 4 / 5
@aptsarchive Helloooooooooooooooooo. He was JOKING, do you know?
@aptsarchive I think that was a joke.
that’s a great prank!
And people weren’t dumb in the fifties, or at least not any dumber than today… Think of all the hoaxes around us now: they’re more elaborate because now we have access to a lot more information, but some of them are completely believable, just as this spaghetti crop must have been to an audience that probably had never set foot abroad and wasn’t used to the variety of food that is now available in our supermarkets…
The intro is not a problem!! It’s only that nowadays people watching TV are subject to a lot more stimuli and are not used to sit and wait… Actually the intro is in character with the rest of the film.
woooow
AWW HECK NO!!! Why must ALL Italian food become plants?
feeble humans!
lol! I showed this to my 14 year old brother and he believed it !!!
@dorkyboy981 We all know that rice is not a plant or grain, it is in fact a protein that is harvested from sheep like creatures called Arayaks. They grow these grains all over their nearly hairless skin, which are then sheared off and hardened. The Arayak is native to the regions from northern India all the way up into present day North Korea, but was imported into China and Japan by Hindu and later Buddhist priests when they spread their religion.
the day the world lost to the TV lies…
I liked every aspect of this bit. The long intro suited me just fine. And I stood to gain a bit of knowledge I never had, not previously realising that spaghetti was even grown in this region.
@alienlabs We don’t have the time or resources to go back and re-edit uploads that have our “old” trailer at the start. All our other uploaded items, over the past two years, have our “new” trailer.
@aptsarchive
Good. Unfortunately this is no real excuse, most voted comment on this video complains about the same thing, meaning that you dont need a commercial designer to actually realize how slow and empty is the intro sequence. Limited resources is also weird, only resource you need here is common sense and a pair of eyes to tell you 31 secs of slow intro before the actual footage are something nobody would like to go through. You dont need “resources” to make something shorter, dont you?
Vintage trolling.
@alienlabs As I commented in an earlier post we are a none profit organisation and are not able to pay for such things as commercial designers, so this intro done in house with limited resources. Our new animated logo, which can be seen on all our more recent uploads is shorter, more direct and has the addition of an audio track.
31 seconds of frightening nothing before the video actually begins.
Macaroni & cheese? VERY sophisticated. We had macaroni pudding, with milk and sugar – and a sprinkling of nutmeg.
Rice does grow in semi-submerged fields at least that is sorta believable.
Rice does grow in semi-submerged fields at least that is sorta believable.
I remember seeing this on the Tonight Show with Jack Paar when I was in the 3rd grade. Spaghetti was not known in our house. The only pasta we ate was macaroni & cheese, but, as an 8 year old, I knew this was a spoof, and it sent me into convulsions of laughter (I was a big Mad Magazine reader, and it struck the same nerve). I had not thought about this for 50 years!!!. THANK YOU for resurrecting this wonderfully absurd piece of tomfoolery… unsurpassed, but only matched by Monty Python .
coudnt stop laughing
A quarter of that 3 minutes was the intro. -_-
H ahahaha I love this
Where can i buy those trees?!?