Probably our favorite filmed April Fools hoax of all time is this: the normally staid BBC's 1957 attempt to make its viewers believe that spaghetti grew on trees. Sublime, no? But do we ask ourselves the larger question: is this the birth of fake news? Hard to say, though we'd sure love to know if Christopher Morris -- creator of the seminal mid-90's fake news radio series On The Hour and, later on TV, The Day Today -- had seen it before he started doing his surreal, occasionally foulmouthed takes on the bluster of mass media news. It's a surprisingly short jump, after all, between this and a fake news show using, as its tagline, "Thrusting deep inside the news whore." Or is it? Judge for yourself -- full pilot episode of The Day Today after the jump, featuring a very young Steve Coogan.
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