April ghouls: when did the joking of yore turn nasty?

WHICH story did you fall for? The hilarious Panorama programme of 1957 voiced by Richard Dimbleby, still held up as a classic, which showed how the Swiss were cultivating spaghetti trees? Perhaps you might be less familiar with the 1962 Swedish spoof public information film that suggested a quick, easy and inexpensive way to convert a black-and-white TV into colour was by stretching a nylon stocking over the screen? Haggis-hunting? Or how about the idea that the UK is leaving the EU, leaping lemming-like over a cliff of hard Brexit? The morning of the first day of April has long been defined by fools and the foolish, and if one explores a little further, it transpires that the roots of the tradition couldn’t be more foolish. The strict limitations of the foolishness (pranks after midday being invalid) relate to the renewal nature of the event. It’s thought that the 17th-century ritual of “Shig-Shag” was the precursor to Fools’ Day. To show their loyalty to the monarchy (and ergo know their place in the subjugation of hierarchical, non-meritocratic societies), folk would attach a twig to their hats. It seems the arboreal reference doffs its (twigged) hat to that hilarious time when King Charles II hid in a tree to escape the pointy lances of the Roundheads. Oh, how they all laughed. Hence the origins of “Shig-Shag”. Any non-twig-wearers were ridiculed, but only until midday. I had never before known this. If I didn’t already find the concept irritating, the anti-republican genesis would have pushed me over the edge. I do find April Fools’ Day rather tedious these days … On April 1, back in the day when I was a boy in Bishopbriggs, we would race to get the newspaper or watch the morning news bulletin. We knew there would be a preposterous, almost-believable story in there somewhere. It was great fun. The word “prank” had yet to cross the Atlantic and inveigle its crass way into our cultural consciousness. April Fools’ was a gentle day of ribald ribbing and tender teasing.

Of late, in the post-Punk’d MTV world, the innocent and collective experience of practical jokes has been suborned by far darker, more intricate deception as entertainment. While those who phoned the BBC enquiring about how best to purchase the Swiss spaghetti tree might have felt foolish for a moment, it was a harmless, almost victim-free caper.

Unlike today. I read about one Joey Dombrowski, a Michigan teacher who gave his students a surprise by springing a “fake” spelling test on the young class. He made up words such as “blorskee”, placing them in bizarre sentences like: “I lost my blorskee at the carnival.” No doubt there is some educational merit in this. But Dombrowski decided to video himself and put it up on the internet. Why? To what end?

Recent global phenomena like the “Killer Clowns”, a “fun” way to frighten folk, quickly escalated into a deeply sinister venting of outrage against the innocent. Last year, anti-bullying charity Ditch The Label found that half of 12 to 20-year-olds had been victims of bullying, almost one-fifth on a daily basis. Chillingly, one-third of those who have been bullied have considered suicide.

Globalisation made the world smaller and us all more suspicious. When we once were almost as happy to laugh at ourselves as we were at others, it feels like more fingers are being pointed and more ridicule delivered.

In 1983, a history professor at Boston University created a crafty April Fool by claiming the origins of the day itself hailed from the Roman Empire, when Constantine’s jesters told him they could do a better job of ruling than he. A jester was appointed emperor for the day; stupidity, absurdity, mockery and nonsense reigned supreme.

But a highly respected newspaper believed the academic and ran that story. Surprising really. I mean, what country would allow a stupid, mocking, purveyor of nonsense to rule for a day?

That’s one joke that has lasted longer than 24 hours.