It’s A Tradition
Elayne Riggs highlights the best April Fool’s ad, which, as usual is from the BBC.
While it isn’t on the scale of the 1957 entry, The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest [video link], it is clever.
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On This Day- 1930: Mohandas Gandhi begins a campaign of peaceful civil disobedience against British rule in India.
- 1938: Germany occupies and then annexes Austria in the 'Anschluss', supposedly intended to re-establish order.
- 1984: British miners call a national strike against job losses, starting Britain's longest industrial dispute.
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12 comments
Well, to be fair, I didn’t see the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest link until this evening.
christopher houdini watched that penguin ad verrrrrry attentively, even after i played it 4 or 5 times. i enjoyed it too. thanks.
After almost all of the Ernie Kovacs shows, the “Spaghetti Harvest” is right up there with with the “WKRP in Cincinnati” turkey give-away as classic TV comedy. They are so serious about it.
Of course, there weren’t a lot of TVs in Britain, or anywhere else, in 1957, [I was in Europe at the time and no one had a TV in the village where we lived in Germany], so re-runs are the basis for memories of the event.
Thank Elayne, Hipparchia, I missed when I visited the BBC site.
my thanks to both of you.
You are certainly welcome.
That Swiss Spaghetti Harvest video was the funniest thing I’ve seen today! Thanks to whoever found it.
My family had a TV from the days in which the local NBC station was as yet showing only a test pattern. Unfortunately, the TV was at my grandmother’s house, not ours; my paratrooper uncle bought it for her, probably to show how much wealthier and more dedicated a son he was than my father. Still, we had some very early TV experiences, unlike many families of our socioeconomic class… which was low indeed. I finally let go of the mahogany cabinet (!) of that TV only 13 years ago, when I moved to this apartment: I gave it to a fellow whose hobby was installing new TVs in old cabinets. I consider that to be what the Germans used to call “das Happyend.”
The BBC ran it as a segment on a very serious information/magazine type program. They manage not to take themselves over seriously.
It’s a shame that you can’t get cabinets or wood like that anymore. At one point my Dad was building a Heathkit to put in one of those cabinets.
If only penguins really COULD fly. Sigh!
- Badtux the Flightless Penguin
Have you really, really tried? What if you went to a tall structure…eh, that’s probably a bad idea.
Bryan,
I remember seeing this very “short” (as it was then known) playing in a theater in my home town — between double features, no less. Yes, it was 1957. I may be wrong, but I could swear in its original form there was mention in the film, too, of how conditions were affecting the macaroni bushes.
That must have been a hoot. Too many farmers in my family to be taken in, but I can see city people swallowing hook, line, and sinker.
My Mother has made pasta, when it wasn’t available where we lived and she wanted it.