For most people April Fools’ Day is either a bright spot in grim times, or a tedious parade of poor jokes we could all do without, with nothing in between. With a pandemic and a global focus on conflicts in Ukraine and elsewhere, judging the tone of a decent April Fools’ gag has become much harder for companies, and even more so for news organisations battling a rising tide of disinformation on social media.
For the Telegraph, the big news on April Fools’ Day was a plan by the England and Wales cricket board to drop the dreary and unsuccessful England men’s cricket team defeated in the West Indies and replace them wholesale with Heather Knight’s World Cup finalists.
The Mirror announced that mud from the ill-fated Marble Arch mound was to be used to rebuild Hadrian’s Wall as part of the government’s “levelling up” agenda. Wales Online, meanwhile, suggested the Second Severn Crossing was to be renamed after the Welsh footballer Gareth Bale.
You may have spotted our dedicated shipping correspondent Mari Tyme reporting not entirely implausibly that Tory MPs have been lobbying Downing Street to let the royal family use a recently seized Russian superyacht as the new flagship royal yacht.
ITV’s Good Morning Britain attempted to prank viewers by having the weather presenter Laura Tobin drop live on air what was being presented to her as a unique plant that had been specially bred and was to be named in her honour.
Anything can happen on live television... 😳
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) April 1, 2022
Poor @Lauratobin1 😭 pic.twitter.com/X5FgnP5cXR
Elsewhere, there was exciting news for those with an interest in cryptozoology, as the Scottish Deer Centre in Fife announced it had caught a wild haggis, a mythical creature long thought to be extinct. The animal, which is definitely not some sort of guinea pig wearing a wig, had apparently been leaving telltale footprints around the glens near the Lomond Hills. The Deer Centre has built a special habitat for the delicious little fluffball.
Fusion cuisine may be somewhat out of fashion these days, but British people ruining Italian food is timeless. Pasta Evangelists claimed to be adding to their delivery range a mash-up featuring the nation’s favourite Sunday meal to produce Sunday roast spaghetti. Pink Marmalade, which genuinely does make a colour-changing gin, is also making a distressing move into Italian foods, by claiming to have launched three new pizza-flavoured gins, including a pepperoni gin which promises “an unmistakably meaty taste and a burst of takeaway vibes in every pour”.
The rising cost of living in the UK has driven some people not to refer to Friday as April Fools’ Day but rather Bleak Friday. The Koop+Kraft restaurant in Waterlooville, Hampshire has a plan for that. It is promising that on Friday it is giving away a free pint of petrol with every order, an offer that is possibly more appetising than a pizza-flavoured gin. On a more practical note, the restaurant chain Burger King does genuinely appear to be giving away free Whoppers, blaming a “glitch” in its app, which has issued a voucher to customers that must be used by Saturday.
Also on the food front, Easter is traditionally a time when professional hand-wringers go around bemoaning that Easter eggs don’t say Easter on them any more. They will no doubt be delighted that Mash Direct has very definitely called its new product an Easter egg. They may be less enchanted to discover that it is a chocolate egg filled with mashed potato.
