Good Spagetti Harvest this Year?

Arguably the best media-generated April Fool's joke dates from a Richard Dimbleby "news report" aired on 1 April 1957 on BBC's Panorama. It opened with a line about Spring coming early that year, prompting the spaghetti harvest in Switzerland to be early, too. Against a video backdrop of happy peasant women harvesting spaghetti from trees, whimsical claims about the foodstuff's cultivation were made in a straightfaced manner. Spaghetti's oddly uniform length was explained as the result of years of dedicated cultivation. The ravenous spaghetti weevil which had wreaked havoc with harvests of years past had been conquered, said the report. More than 250 viewers jammed the BBC switchboard after the hoax aired, most of them calling in with serious inquiries about the piece — where could they go to watch the harvesting operation? Could they buy spaghetti plants themselves? (For those anxious to try their hand at homegrown pasta, Panorama producer Michael Peacock offered this helpful hint: "Many British enthusiasts have had admirable results from planting a small tin of spaghetti in tomato sauce.")