In 1992 BBC 1 put out a live documentary programme called Ghostwatch, in which they visited a supposedly haunted house. There were many BBC documentaries at the time, and this was no different, so we all watched with half interest.
It's also important to note that there was little alternative programming at the time: just BBC 1, BBC 2, ITV and Channel 4. I can't remember if Channel Five had launched yet, but you get the idea. A significant slice of the UK population was watching.
Also, it's worth mentioning that back then I think significantly more people entertained the idea, if even slightly, that supernatural things loke ghosts could exist. There was many more spoon benders, clairvoyants, spiritualists in mainstream media than today.
Anyhow, the programme starts normal enough but then supernatural things start happening and all hell breaks loose just as the programme ends and the credits start rolling. We're all in shock. It's all we talk about at school the next day.
They did that so well, starting out like a corny live daytime TV-ish thing and slowly ratcheting up the weirdness, taking full advantage of the phase everyone would go through where they were uncertain if it was really live or a hoax.
I doubt you'd get any impression of what it was like then by watching it now, because all the social context is gone, but as a kid at the time it was really scary.
Ghostwatch was broadcast on Halloween night. Context is important.
Is that intended as a correction? If so, I said "daytime TV -ish". I meant the initial vibe was similar to the lighthearted fare the BBC and other channels put out during the day at that time, albeit with jokey "spooky" trappings, despite its post-watershed airing. I know it was on late, I watched it "live".
The fact that they were investigating night time paranormal activity even gave them an excuse for airing such seemingly kid-friendly stuff so late.
It very much happens today, it is just extremely much darker.
Reminds me of a) the breathtaking vox pop done by the BBC [0] in 1978 as metric adoption nipped at their imperial heels, and some spectacularly bewildered misunderstandings manifested -- the first citizen here inventing the word kilomileometres and (I wish she were joking) asserting that your car's mileage is reduced because you'll be using litres,
and b) the comedy radio show I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, running since the 1970's but includes a game called Mornington Crescent [1] (since season 6) wherein the panel take it in turns to 'get to Mornington Crescent' using the London Underground map as a playing board. Many rules and variations are cited and vaguely explained, but it's all just made up -- nonetheless there has been an abundance of people who've listened to this madness, and then written to the BBC to demand a rulebook.
The point? Not sure. Does this reflect positively upon the some style of comedy favoured by the Brits, or negatively about their credulity? As a nominal Brit, I can't comment with any impartiality.
It is deeply offensive to the serious players of the game to suggest Mornington Crescent is "made up". Yes, to neophytes it can seem random and unstructured but it is preposterous to suggest game with such a lineage is fictional.
> Does this reflect positively upon the some style of comedy favoured by the Brits, or negatively about their credulity?
People function by simplistic rules of thumb rather than understanding underlying principles. We all probably do it to some extent, simply because the world is too complex to understand in full. Some people do it to a greater extent.
A good example for the HN crowd is watching people with limited understanding of the technology use a computer or a phone. A lot rely heavily memorised sequences of actions. Put them in front of a slightly different GUI and they effectively have to relearn from scratch. Something as simple as a panel on the side instead of a start men plus taskbar will complete throw people. Now apply the same thinking elsewhere.
My grandfather was still talking of this in the 90s. A very good joke!
I fell for it. I wasn't born in 1957, but I to this day I remember the picture. I must have seen it in a newspaper when I was around 5. It was before TV. I just accepted the picture as ground truth and it stuck with me for many years.
It came as quite a shock when I discovered as an adult spaghetti was made from flour.
No no, you've still got it wrong!
It's made from a flower, a rare but now successfully domesticated flower. The Tu-Tue flower does require extensive processing, sort of like how corn has to be soaked in something, like ashes, to release its nutrients.
Tu-tue requires a similar process, but just as with natives in the new world and corn, ancient Romans simply knew that washing the flowers in a hot-spring near Getti made the final product palitable, without knowing why.
Spa being of course, latin for 'hot wash', thus spa-getti.
Hope this helps.
reminds me of the "Lenin was a mushroom" hoax
I think the "hoax" is itself partly a hoax. It's one of those exaggerated tales, like the Orson Welles War of the Worlds radio play. Supposedly there were thousands of credulous people writing in to inquire more about the spaghetti trees; probably a great many were fully in on the joke and were just dryly "yes-anding", as we say nowadays. Perhaps on behalf of their children, rather like how one would "write a letter" to Father Christmas.
50s Britain wasn't that ignorant of the outside world (especially compared to other 50s countries). There were hundreds of thousands of servicemen who had been in Italy in the war and for the occupation, and the Empire was mostly still around. People knew what spaghetti was.
The Empire was largely a thing of the past by then, but the recent past.
I wonder whether some people were more familiar with things from former parts of the Empire than they were with European things? There are lots of references to things like Indian food in fiction going back to the 19th century, at least.
I agree the effectiveness of the hoax might well be exaggerated. On the other hand there are always some credulous people.
In 1992 BBC 1 put out a live documentary programme called Ghostwatch, in which they visited a supposedly haunted house. There were many BBC documentaries at the time, and this was no different, so we all watched with half interest.
It's also important to note that there was little alternative programming at the time: just BBC 1, BBC 2, ITV and Channel 4. I can't remember if Channel Five had launched yet, but you get the idea. A significant slice of the UK population was watching.
Also, it's worth mentioning that back then I think significantly more people entertained the idea, if even slightly, that supernatural things loke ghosts could exist. There was many more spoon benders, clairvoyants, spiritualists in mainstream media than today.
Anyhow, the programme starts normal enough but then supernatural things start happening and all hell breaks loose just as the programme ends and the credits start rolling. We're all in shock. It's all we talk about at school the next day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostwatch
They did that so well, starting out like a corny live daytime TV-ish thing and slowly ratcheting up the weirdness, taking full advantage of the phase everyone would go through where they were uncertain if it was really live or a hoax.
I doubt you'd get any impression of what it was like then by watching it now, because all the social context is gone, but as a kid at the time it was really scary.
Ghostwatch was broadcast on Halloween night. Context is important.
Is that intended as a correction? If so, I said "daytime TV -ish". I meant the initial vibe was similar to the lighthearted fare the BBC and other channels put out during the day at that time, albeit with jokey "spooky" trappings, despite its post-watershed airing. I know it was on late, I watched it "live".
The fact that they were investigating night time paranormal activity even gave them an excuse for airing such seemingly kid-friendly stuff so late.
Feels like a good excuse to share one of my favourite documentaries from my childhood: the North American House Hippo: https://youtu.be/G9hJK4fCq4U?feature=shared
Related:
Spaghetti-Tree Hoax - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34572174 - Jan 2023 (95 comments)
Spaghetti-Tree Hoax - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30962453 - April 2022 (1 comment)
Spaghetti-Tree Hoax - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25383763 - Dec 2020 (2 comments)
I saw this on the Jack Paar show in 1957, shortly after the BBC broadcast.
Growing up in an Italian family, of course we knew it wasn't true.
Spaghetti doesn't grow on trees, it comes in bags from the grocery store!
There was also the April fool Guardian article about the fictional island of San Serriffe as a new holiday destination
I love how they didn't come up with a joke and just run with it lazily. They added lots of additional details to make it funnier and more realistic.
I recently showed this to one of my kids when they asked how spaghetti is made. The hoax continues
I miss British humor. This doesn't seem like something that would ever happen today.
Are you counting the flying penguins documentary? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9dfWzp7rYR4#-penguins
It very much happens today, it is just extremely much darker.
Reminds me of a) the breathtaking vox pop done by the BBC [0] in 1978 as metric adoption nipped at their imperial heels, and some spectacularly bewildered misunderstandings manifested -- the first citizen here inventing the word kilomileometres and (I wish she were joking) asserting that your car's mileage is reduced because you'll be using litres,
and b) the comedy radio show I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, running since the 1970's but includes a game called Mornington Crescent [1] (since season 6) wherein the panel take it in turns to 'get to Mornington Crescent' using the London Underground map as a playing board. Many rules and variations are cited and vaguely explained, but it's all just made up -- nonetheless there has been an abundance of people who've listened to this madness, and then written to the BBC to demand a rulebook.
The point? Not sure. Does this reflect positively upon the some style of comedy favoured by the Brits, or negatively about their credulity? As a nominal Brit, I can't comment with any impartiality.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykthWUdkhu0
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mornington_Crescent_(game)
It is deeply offensive to the serious players of the game to suggest Mornington Crescent is "made up". Yes, to neophytes it can seem random and unstructured but it is preposterous to suggest game with such a lineage is fictional.
> Does this reflect positively upon the some style of comedy favoured by the Brits, or negatively about their credulity?
People function by simplistic rules of thumb rather than understanding underlying principles. We all probably do it to some extent, simply because the world is too complex to understand in full. Some people do it to a greater extent.
A good example for the HN crowd is watching people with limited understanding of the technology use a computer or a phone. A lot rely heavily memorised sequences of actions. Put them in front of a slightly different GUI and they effectively have to relearn from scratch. Something as simple as a panel on the side instead of a start men plus taskbar will complete throw people. Now apply the same thinking elsewhere.
My grandfather was still talking of this in the 90s. A very good joke!
I fell for it. I wasn't born in 1957, but I to this day I remember the picture. I must have seen it in a newspaper when I was around 5. It was before TV. I just accepted the picture as ground truth and it stuck with me for many years.
It came as quite a shock when I discovered as an adult spaghetti was made from flour.
No no, you've still got it wrong!
It's made from a flower, a rare but now successfully domesticated flower. The Tu-Tue flower does require extensive processing, sort of like how corn has to be soaked in something, like ashes, to release its nutrients.
Tu-tue requires a similar process, but just as with natives in the new world and corn, ancient Romans simply knew that washing the flowers in a hot-spring near Getti made the final product palitable, without knowing why.
Spa being of course, latin for 'hot wash', thus spa-getti.
Hope this helps.
reminds me of the "Lenin was a mushroom" hoax
I think the "hoax" is itself partly a hoax. It's one of those exaggerated tales, like the Orson Welles War of the Worlds radio play. Supposedly there were thousands of credulous people writing in to inquire more about the spaghetti trees; probably a great many were fully in on the joke and were just dryly "yes-anding", as we say nowadays. Perhaps on behalf of their children, rather like how one would "write a letter" to Father Christmas.
50s Britain wasn't that ignorant of the outside world (especially compared to other 50s countries). There were hundreds of thousands of servicemen who had been in Italy in the war and for the occupation, and the Empire was mostly still around. People knew what spaghetti was.
The Empire was largely a thing of the past by then, but the recent past.
I wonder whether some people were more familiar with things from former parts of the Empire than they were with European things? There are lots of references to things like Indian food in fiction going back to the 19th century, at least.
I agree the effectiveness of the hoax might well be exaggerated. On the other hand there are always some credulous people.