THE NAKED CITY: WHEN SPAGHETTI GREW ON TREES

In case you are not aware, this coming Monday April 1 is traditionally April Fool’s Day — a tradition of playing pranks and fooling your friends and workmates that dates back hundreds of years. It’s a day when the media often trot out some curious hoax in the form of a vaguely believable news item, only to be later revealed as total nonsense. Given that the media and the internet today are awash with fake news and misinformation, any pulling of the leg on April 1 might seem completely redundant.

Nevertheless it’s bound to be something the breakfast and morning TV news shows cannot resist and in previous years there have been some quite creative leg pulls. Perhaps the most famous of them was the BBC’s ‘Spaghetti Tree Hoax’, way back in 1957. The elaborate deception showed a family, in Switzerland of all places, harvesting cooked spaghetti from a tree. Apparently pasta was not all that common in the UK at the time and a number of viewers rang the BBC seeking advice on planting their own spag plot.

So we wait with bated breath to see just what ABC Breakfast and the Today Show will cook up as this year’s April Fool’s Day hoax.  In the meantime, I have come up with a number of suggestions — feel free to text them as breaking news items to your unsuspecting friends.

JACQUI LAMBIE ANNOUNCES TASMANIAN SECESSION:  After a mixed result with her network of candidates in the recent Tassie election, Jacqui Lambie has revealed plans for the island state to secede from Australia and become a nation in its own right. “They can shove the mainland up their arse” she recently commented.

DONALD TRUMP LABELS JESUS AS NASTY: After labelling our very own US ambassador Kevin Rudd as ‘a little bit nasty’, Trump is reminded of the words of Jesus – “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”. He then brands Jesus as equally ‘nasty’, adding that he is not the brightest bulb in the Bible.

CLOVER IN THE CLOUDS: Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore has revised plans for the $11 million dollar Cloud Arch over George Street, announcing that it will now incorporate a pedestrian walkway as well as handy mobile phone charging ports.

RAISING THE TITANIC: Clive Palmer has abandoned plans to build a replica of the Titanic and will now raise the wreck of the original ship, giving it a multi million dollar makeover incorporating the world’s only floating dinosaur park.

QUOLLS INSTEAD OF CATS AT PYLON LOOKOUT: Chris Minns revealed today that native quolls would replace cats that once lived in the famous ‘cattery’ atop the south east pylon lookout on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The Premier noted the quolls would be safe from their usual predators like dingoes and feral cats and whilst they are normally nocturnal, some tasty tidbits would be employed to lure them out in the daylight for numerous photo opps.

US SPACE MISSION DISCOVERS BANKSYS ON THE MOON: Photos from the recent Odysseus Lander moon mission reveal what appear to be genuine Banksy artworks on the lunar surface. Whilst the artist himself denies any involvement, suspicion now focuses on the 2019 Chinese moon landing and the possibility that forgeries were silk screened directly onto large lunar rocks. The US Pentagon noted that “the Chinese will copy anything”.

STORAGE WARS — THE MUSICAL: Opera Australia has just commissioned a multi million production of the popular reality show ‘Storage Wars’, composed entirely using AI, and including songs such as “Don’t Forget To Pay The Lady”.

And finally, it worked back in 1957, so why not give it a burl in 2024.

SPAGHETTI GROWN ON INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION: Scientists on the International Space Station have developed a unique way of growing spaghetti from seeds nurtured in the pristine atmosphere of outer space. As one of them recently commented “The Russians hate it but we are enjoying Spag Bol almost every second day”.