Fools Rush In

So you think you can spot a fib a mile off? Some of us can’t even when it’s ten yards away. Ten million April Fools jokes are played in the UK each year, so come on, own up: what have you been silly enough to believe?

Between the Sheets talks kittens, badgers and square-shaped eggs, as we reveal what we’ve fallen for in years gone by . . .

‘I once got very indignant about a newspaper report saying that there were plans to relocate Stonehenge to a mountain in Wales, because that’s where some of the stones originally came from. Fortunately my ‘disgusted of Dorset’ letter was never posted as I was reminded just in time to check the date on the front of the newspaper’

‘When I was growing up a local hen farm had our whole community fooled. Deciding that the shape of eggs was ‘inconvenient’ (too oval; difficult to store), they allegedly designed a square-shaped contraption to be inserted into the hen (ouch) that would make the eggs come out square. It was backed by loads of science and ‘facts’ and things, so we thought it must be true . . .’

‘Someone just told me a science team had found a group of penguins that could fly – and I believed it! Hmm . . . not so likely now I think about it’

‘My boyfriend told me that our (tiny) cat had dragged a dead badger through the cat flap this morning – and I believed him, even though I’d just reminded him it was April 1st!’

‘When I was about eight, my brother told me that it didn’t really hurt to bang your head against a wall. He helpfully showed me how to do it. I didn’t realise he was sneakily keeping his head about a centimetre away but smacking the wall with his hand to fake the sound. Cue a big egg-shaped lump on my noggin and a disbelieving roll of the eyes from my mum when I tried to grass him up’

‘Newsround did something a couple of years ago that I was mortified to have believed: they announced that David Beckham wouldn’t be playing for England in the World Cup because his parents were Scottish. But I think I can be forgiven – if you can’t trust Newsround, who can you trust?’

‘I had just passed my driving test and a month later I was basking in the fact that, as a new driver, I hadn’t yet crashed the car. On April 1st my dad came rushing in, shouting, ‘What the hell has happened to the car?!’ Thinking I’d scratched half the paint off, I ran out of the house, terrified. Needless to say, the car was fine. Perhaps one of the more sadistic April Fools . . .?!’

‘I heard last year that Tony Blair was going to become an actor once he left No.10. Weirdly, I sort of believed it – until it was ‘revealed’ he was going to start off as Nan’s boyfriend in The Catherine Tate Show. Now there’s a thought . . .’

Posted 17/04/2008 10:55:00 by Women's fiction team with 0 comments.