“Paise kya ped pe ugte hain?” “Nahi, lekin Spaghetti toh ugti hai”. Yes, what if we told you that your favourite genre of pasta can basically be harvested and grown on trees. No, we are not crazy, after all, the BBC itself said so. In 1957, the BBC telecasted a segment wherein they showed families in Switzerland pulling off their fresh Spaghetti harvest or so to say, collecting their Spaghetti crop from their very own magical pasta tree. Spaghetti was considered to be an exotic food in the UK and elsewhere back in the day as the Italian dish was loved by many. The prospect of growing one’s own spaghetti created a frenzy and the BBC was flooded with calls on how this harvest can be made. The BBC popularized the idea by telling the eager ones that they can “place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best”.
Where did this revolutionary idea come from though? Did the BBC catch hold of some spaghetti farmer from Italy? Nah, the idea was generated by the BBC show’s cameraman Charles de Jaeger, and popularized by the presenter Richard Dimbleby who was an extremely trusted man on television. He shot this sequence using 20 pounds of uncooked homemade spaghetti and hung the strands to the branches of a tree in a way that the tree looked completely covered in spaghetti. A local woman was hired who wore Swiss national costume to pull off the shoot. And voila, spaghetti on a tree. You must check out the original video on YouTube, it looks truly authentic.
Did we tell you the date of airing of the show? Yeah, it was April 1st, 1957 and this hoax cum prank is considered to be the biggest ever April Fool’s joke that was widely believed. So, fair points to de Jaeger and Dimbleby who decided to teach the UK a lesson that is still relevant today. Don’t believe all that you see on TV, even on national news!
We too have a pasta joke too but we already ate it!
Image credits: STSTW Media
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