The BBC spaghetti harvest
On 1 April 1957 the BBC's Panorama programme showed a Swiss family harvesting spaghetti from trees. Viewers phoned the BBC afterwards asking for tips on growing spaghetti trees at home.
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On 1 April 1957 the BBC programme Panorama broadcast a short film showing a Ticino family in Switzerland as they did the yearly spaghetti harvest. Richard Dimbleby, a broadcaster known mainly for war reporting and royal commentary, narrated it with a straight face. swissinfo records his explanation for the big crop: a very mild winter, and the spaghetti weevil all but vanishing.
Wikipedia gives the audience as an estimated eight million people. It adds that only 7 million of Britain's 15.8 million homes had a television at the time, and that many viewers knew pasta mainly from canned spaghetti in tomato sauce.
Hundreds of viewers phoned the BBC, according to Wikipedia on the following day, and swissinfo says the calls came straight after the broadcast. Some questioned whether the story was genuine. Others wanted more information about spaghetti cultivation and wanted to know the method for raising spaghetti trees at home. Reportedly, the BBC told callers to bury one strand of spaghetti in a can of tomato sauce and trust to luck.
"At the time, 7 million of the 15.8 million homes (about 44%) in Britain had television receivers.[3] Pasta was not an everyday food in 1950s Britain, and it was known mainly from tinned spaghetti in tomato sauce and considered by many to be an exotic delicacy.[4] An estimated eight million people watched the programme on 1 April 1957, and hundreds phoned in the following day to question the authenticity of the story or ask for more information about spaghetti cultivation and how they could grow their own spaghetti trees; the BBC told them to "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato"
- April Fool's Day: Swiss spaghetti hoax still tops the ratings, swissinfo.ch (2014)
- The 1957 Spaghetti Harvest, Mental Floss