The BBC's Most Famous Hoax...

The British are often famed for their sense of humour, sometimes for good and bad reasons... but we love a good prank, and all the way back in 1957, the BBC pulled its first prank of the viewing public...

Via their prestigious and respected PANORAMA programme, host Richard Dimbleby began to narrate a segment filmed in Switzerland. The subject was covering a bumper crop of a recent harvest, but the crop in question is... spaghetti? SPAGHETTI TREES?! Come and learn the story of the first & most famous occasion in which the BBC played on April Fools on all of us!

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#spaghetti #panorama #bbc

[JepMasta]

Funnily enough this scam would inspire the pasta company San Giorgio to make a series of commercials based on it in the 70s. Using the tagline “now you know, spaghetti doesn’t really grow on trees, but if it did, nobody would grow spaghetti like San Giorgio.”

[Wenlocktvdx]

Channel 7 news in Melbourne used a similar prank in a news article saying there was a risk of a shortage as the spaghetti harvest was failing.

[thefrecklepuny]

Not too dissimilar to Orson Wells' infamous 'War of the Worlds' radio broadcast in the 1930s, which had people fleeing to the hills thinking the Martians has invaded.

[Mitch-Hendren]

Cant believe i mentioned this on your Swedish April fools earlier today and here it is😀😀

[Laribhaven]

Spaguetti is so common place around the world today, we kinda take for granted how weird it must have been to people that never ate or see anything like that at the time, and them seeing on tv that it grew on trees. It is really funny...

[teslafreak]

That is a masterful prank. Well done to those involved.

[bigdaddigaming]

I'm 57 today but I remember when I was a teenager the BBC rebroadcast the spaghetti tree joke when it was one of its anniversarys but the made sure everyone knew it was an old April fools joke, not sure if it was the anniversary of the actual joke or of panorama

[angiogen]

Always learning something new here. Can you imagine if spaghetti trees were real?

[ChristopherSobieniak]

Up there with the Swedish Cheese Rolling Festivals!

[ElectromagneticVideos]

Wonderful to hear the story behind what was probably the best Aprils Fools prank ever!

[rogerdarthwell]

I knew you were going to make a doc about you delivered again Adam!

[mariusjmi]

First time being early on an Adam Martyn video!! Really was shocked as a kid when my teacher played the video about spaghetti trees!!

[ArianesDrawingPH]

In my opinion after I watched this video, this is the cleverest April's fools joke in history.

[PhilipGamingLandExtra]

Never thought TV would do a April Fool to its viewers.

[jgsouthgate]

It wasn’t all filmed in Switzerland. Some scenes were filmed at a food factory in St Albans.

[Seer_Of_The_Woodlands]

Great video! I have to say: for me, this reminds me of fables about how in the old days merchants explained how to get spices, that you either had to pass a monster or climb to the top of a mountain, etc. Basically, they told how dangerous it was to get the spices, so it was justified how expensive the spices were.

[Redrally]

The sad part is some people would still fall for it today.

[MartinFarrell]

Does anyone remember Ghostwatch hoax that millions believed was real? That faced a bigger backlash.

[MayorMcC]

they should have just reframed it as a lesson about misinformation

[glen]

It was the BBC, Panorama was a heavyweight current affairs program and Dimbleby was their top presenter, spaghetti was an exotic food in England in those days, so who was to not believe it