HUNTIGOWK is an old Scots tradition but it is more commonly known as April Fool’s Day and is now an excuse for journalists and advertising executives to have a bit of fun.

It’s probably best that they don’t go as far as the Romanian newspaper Opina did on April 1, 2000, when it broke the news that prisoners were going to be released early. Sixty people made the long trip to the squalid Baia Marl prison only to find the story was an April Fool “joke”. The paper was forced to print an apology.

Over the years, there have been many pranks that have been a lot funnier than Opina’s and have made “gowks” or fools of a sizeable percentage of the population.


The roast unicorn recipe had a few fooled


HOAX JOKES

TOP of the list has to be the now almost legendary spaghetti harvest broadcast by the BBC news show Panorama back in 1957. This showed Swiss farmers gathering strands of spaghetti from the trees and many British viewers reared on meat and two veg were completely taken in. Those who called wanting to know how to grow the spaghetti trees were told: “Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.”

Another BBC classic was in 1976 when respected astronomer Patrick Moore announced on radio that a once-in-a-lifetime event was about to happen when an unusual planetary alignment would lessen gravity on earth.

Moore told listeners to jump in the air at 9.47 if they wanted to experience a strange floating sensation. Moore merely wanted to take the Mickey out of a pseudo-scientific theory doing the rounds that predicted that an unusual alignment of the planets was going to trigger huge earthquakes and raze Los Angeles.

However hundreds of listeners called Radio 2 after 9.47 claiming they had experienced an incredible lightness of being. One woman went so far as to say she had floated off her chair while a man demanded compensation because he had risen so quickly he had bumped his head on the ceiling.

Comedian Spike Milligan used the BBC in 1973 to masquerade as an academic warning redheads to stay away from forests in case their hair turned yellow prior to falling out. The reason given was exposure to Dutch Elm disease that, it was said, would immunise people against the common cold but with this unfortunate side effect for redheads.

Other British institutions have taken advantage of their serious reputations to stage inventive April Fool’s pranks. Last year, for example, King’s College Choir made a video purporting to show their answer to rules that had made it difficult to allow young boys to sing with them. As the older choir members had refused the “surgical solution” they had opted for the use of helium instead.

The video that showed the use of the gas was viewed almost one million times on YouTube.

Another venerable institution, the British Library, used its Medieval Manuscripts blog to announced the “near miraculous” find of a long lost recipe book which included instructions for cooking a unicorn. The blog “reproduced” hand-drawn illustrations showing the beast being roasted after being marinated with olives and garlic.

AROUND THE WORLD

THE Swiss are not noted for their sense of humour, which is perhaps why so many were taken in by a video released by the Swiss Tourist Board in 2009 revealing the secret of their clean mountains.

Members of the Association of Swiss Mountain Cleaners would scale the hills daily to scrub the rocks free of bird droppings. A staggering 30,000 people took the online test to see if they too could become a Felsenputzer or mountain cleaner.

Germans are not noted for their humour either but the men of Liechtenstein fell foul of it when they were outraged by a story in the Berliner Illustrite Zeitung in 1928 that said their government had decided to import brides to prevent depopulation as the principality’s native women were migrating to Austria and Switzerland for work.

What really offended the Liechtenstein men was the accompanying photograph that showed some very fat women being unloaded from a freight car.

The story caused an international row with the Liechtenstein government denouncing it as an example of tasteless German humour.

The same paper had, in 1921, reported that a German farmer had discovered how to remove rashers from live pigs that could then be bandaged to promote healing and new growth.

Using the correct method this could be done three times a year, the paper reported.

The story made international news until ajournalist realised the village’s name of Schleichegrieben meant “sneaking bacon” and did not exist.

Panic was caused in Holland in 1950 when the national radio station reported that a bungling employee in the Rijksmuseum had accidentally used the wrong fluid when restoring Rembrandt’s famous painting Night Watch.

Instead of restoring it the painting was actually dissolving, with paint dripping from the canvas to the floor.

The distraught employee confessed his gaffe on radio, adding that the painting would be gone by midnight, which caused long queues outside the museum with people hoping for one last chance to view the art work.

To add insult to injury reporters from the station interviewed the art lovers as they waited in line. Some waited for hours before the penny dropped.

Thousands of Americans were taken in by Burger King’s full page advert in USA Today in 1998 announcing the introduction of a new Left Handed Whopper for the 32 million left handed Americans.

This contained the same ingredients as the original Whopper but rotated 180 degrees. Thousands flocked to Burger King to try it out while many others requested the original “right handed version”.

If none of these inspire, try the old Scots tradition of handing someone a sealed envelope and asking them to deliver it to someone else.

Inside there should be the message “Dinna laugh, dinna smile, Hunt the gowk another mile”.

The recipient then writes the same message, sends the victim off to someone else and so it goes until the gowk realises that he or she is being made a fool.