The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest

Synopsis

This episode perpetrated the great Spaghetti Harvest Hoax on April Fool's Day 1957. The filmed report appeared to show a Swiss family harvesting their annual crop of spaghetti which was growing on trees on their farm, talked about the efforts to eradicate the Spaghetti Weevil and discussed the selective breeding that had been required to produce spaghetti of a uniform length. Many viewers believed what they saw and contacted the BBC to enquire how to grow their own spaghetti tree: the advice that they were given was "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best".