It was Fool Day in 1957 when the serious and professional voice of Richard Dimbleby told the huge BBC audience about the early harvest of spaghetti in the Ticino region. The video showed women plucking spaghetti from trees and laying them in the sun to dry.
It was a time when pasta was not widely available in Britain and it was considered a kind of exotic food.
Mr Dimbleby was so convincing in explaining that the harvest takes place always around March and the lenght of spaghetti is the result of the hard work of generation of growers, that many people phoned BBC to ask where it was possible to find a spaghetti plant for their own use.
Very funny, dear BBC. But remember that the use of making jokes and mischief on April has its origin in Roman times. In Italy we call it Pesce d’Aprile (April Fish) and, guess what?, we would never joke on something so ‘sacred’ as pasta.
BBC fools their public
