Wednesday 4 April 2012

FOOLPROOF


It's the 1st of April - 'April Fools Day'. Traditionally this is a time to play jokes on each other.

In France and Italy for instance, they pin paper fish on each other's backs and then shout 'April Fish'. What jolly fun.

Incidentally, the original joke day was the Roman festival of Hilaria but they held it on March 25th hilariously enough.

I always pride myself on being able to spot the April Fool story in the papers. Today, the Mirror and Express offer the Queen boarding an EasyJet flight to save money. The Sun says it has flavoured its paper and urges its readers to lick a page to guess the flavour with the warning 'may contain nuts'. The Telegraph informs us that the cable TV company Virgin Media uses ferrets to help lay its cables with a photo of a ferret dressed in a work suit .

My own paper however has me stumped. The reason for this is that so many of its stories sound unbelievable. Take your pick from these offerings:

1.
Government to snoop on emails. They want to read all our emails? Will they create a new Department for being bored witless?

2.
Help! No-one's in that car. Oxford University is to put a driverless car on the roads controlled by computer with lasers and cameras. I can't wait for the first instance of road rage between two computer driven cars.

3.
Wingman aims for cardboard box at 60 m.p.h. A man is to jump out of a helicopter at 2400 feet wearing a wingsuit and aim to land on a runway made of cardboard boxes. Is this a new budget venture by EasyJet?

4.
Able-bodied grab a granny scooter to beat road tax. Apparently people are buying motability scooters because there is no tax or insurance to pay. With a top speed of 8 m.p.h. this means my commute to work would have taken 3 hours. Can't see it catching on.

I'll leave you to decide which if any of these is a hoax.

No comments:

Post a Comment