Pointless trying to pull the wool over your eyes! Yes, yesterday was April 1st and - as you obviously all guessed - my story about seeing that 'falling boy' was nothing more than an All Fools Day hoax...The photograph was, in fact, an odd angled snap of part of the sculpture known as 'Boy with a Dolphin' by the artist David Wynne, which - as Gill said - can be seen, just north of Albert Bridge, on Chelsea Embankment.
Here's what it looks like from a couple of different viewpoints...
Hopefully, you weren't taken in by any April Foolery yesterday, but if you were, then take comfort from - and enjoy some of - the wittiest and cheekiest pranks to be perpetrated on the 1st of April as selected by one of my favourite web-sites...
Here you will find no fewer than 100 All Fool's Day pranks and hoaxes, including such gems as whistling carrots that let you know when they are cooked, the Sydney Harbour Iceberg, Instant Colour Television, the Islands of San Serriffe, and plans for the M25 to become a one-way street, Big Ben to have a digital read-out and the relocation of the Eiffel Tower in what was then called EuroDisneyland.But the Number 1, top-ranking April Fool Hoax was, apparently, BBC TV's celebrated Panorama programme report on The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest of 1957...
Read the full story of this brilliant, legendary spoof in this Museum of Hoaxes' article.
And view the other 99 fooleries on the Museum's collection of The Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time.
There's more here about The Museum and its curator Alex Boese.
And here are some of Alex's best-selling books on Hoaxes, Scams and Cons...
Mark Twain on All Fool's Day...
"This is the day upon which we are reminded of what
we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four."
we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four."
- Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
6 comments:
Ah yes, I remember seeing this when it was first broadcast . . .
Time, I think, for a blog about your own broadcast "All Fool's Day" hoax. maybe next year . . .
I'll try to remember come next April 1st!
Perhaps if we read the papers and internet all year with the same scepticism and wariness that we reserve for 1st April, we wouldn't be such fools on that day.
What a complete dumpling, I used to walk past the statue twice a day my first year at art school.
I blame age and..... er...
GOOD DOG - The probably explanation is that you're not gay and/or didn't watch Flipper when you were kid... ;-)
...memory.
Actually the first time I properly saw the sculpture, having crossed the Albert bridge from the hall of residence on the start of a long leisurely walk up to Hampstead, it reminded me of Marine Boy more than anything.
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