To a large extent, most TV audiences today wouldn’t fall for a story that spaghetti grows on trees. But that wasn’t the case in 1957 when spaghetti wasn’t widely known in Britain and on April Fool’s Day the BBC aired a story claiming spaghetti was harvested from spaghetti trees in Switzerland -a hoax that was later described as “the most successful April Fool’s Day prank of all time.”
The news report was produced as an April Fool’s Day joke by the BBC current-affairs show Panorama. It presented a family in the canton of Ticino in southern Switzerland gathering a bumper spaghetti harvest after a mild winter and “virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil.”
“The last two weeks in March are an anxious time for the spaghetti farmer,” respected journalist Richard Dimbleby told viewers. “There’s always a 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.”
The authenticity of the hoax relied heavily on Dimbleby, a distinguished presenter who had hosted Panorama for years. He was also well-known as the BBC’s first war correspondent.
Footage of a traditional “Harvest Festival” was aired, along with a discussion of the breeding necessary to develop a strain to produce the perfect length of spaghetti. Some scenes were filmed at the (now closed) Pasta Foofs factory on London Road, St. Albans in Hertforshire and at a hotel in Castagnola, Switzerland.
When the broadcast ended, Dimbleby signed off with a winking acknowledgement that the segment that had aired was a joke but many people at home didn’t get the message. An estimated eight million watched the program on April 1, 1957 and the Associated Press reported that, hundreds called to BBC the next day to ask about the authenticity of the story and inquire about spaghetti cultivation and how how they could grow their own spaghetti trees. Some were so intrigued that even asked about “where they could purchase their very own spaghetti bush.”
The BBC replied “place a string of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best,” according to The Telegraph, which in a 2011 article ranked the hoax as one of “the greatest April Fool’s stories of all time.”
Panorama cameraman Charles de Jaeger dreamed up the story after remembering how teachers at his school in Austria teased his classmates for being so stupid that if they were told that spaghetti grew on trees, they would believe it. The editor of Panorama at the time, Michael Peacock, told the BBC in 2014 how he gave de Jaeger a budget of 100 pounds and sent him off.
Peacock also recalled to BBC News that journalist Richard Dimbleby loved the idea of being part of the hoax. ” He knew perfectly well we were using his authority to make the joke work.”
Not everyone was duped of course. A number of angry viewers called the BBC to criticize the producers for airing a fake documentary segment, according to Peacock.
“Some couldn’t understand what was going on. Others loved it, others hated it for misleading the nation. This is why it worked so well,” Peacock said. “We all felt very pleased with ourselves.”
