Wednesday 1 April 2009

Elvis found on Mars

It is April Fools Day, and we wait with increasing cynicism every year for the latest attempt by the tabloids or TV producers to fool the nation. It's not like the old days, when hordes of wide-eyed viewers were apparently taken in by the deadpan reporting of the "annual spaghetti harvest" by Richard Dimbleby on Panorama in the 50s.

Maybe we British are less credulous than the Americans. After all, as recently as 1998, thousands of customers went into Burger King to order their "new left-handed burger". The company had to issue a press statement to announce the fact this was a hoax - but evidently a lucrative one for them..

Our lives were brightened in the 1980s when the cult newspaper The Sunday Sport used to publish increasingly outrageous headlines every week - "World War 2 Bomber Found on Moon!", "Lord Lucan Found - Riding Shergar!" and "Lovesick Gardener Marries Lettuce!" being among the most ludicrous... No-one could take it seriously, and books of these headlines were best-sellers. However, its other interests - tits and football - were soon eclipsed by newer media formats such as the reprehensible Loaded and Nuts, and the paper was the first national to go under in generations..

I miss it, in a way....





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