Arguably one of the finest hoaxes ever to air on broadcast media was carried out by the supposedly staid British Broadcasting Corporation during the 1950s. BBC Television's current affairs documentary programme "Panorama" had built a reputation for carefully researched and wide-ranging journalism. It was presented on Monday evenings by the respected former war correspondent Richard Dimbleby and attracted a wide audience.

On 1 April 1957 it ran a three-minute segment on the bumper spaghetti harvest for family farms in the Italian-speaking Swiss canton of Ticino. It was widely believed: keen gardeners across Britain wrote in for tips on planting their own spaghetti trees; even the BBC’s Director-General was taken in by the broadcast segment, until he was disabused by his wife.

Why did the hoax work? There were several factors. The idea had come from an enterprising Austrian-born "Panorama" cameraman who took great care in crafting the detail of the production. It was put together in great secrecy. The voice-over was in the authoritative and calm tones of the great Dimbleby himself. In the 1950s spaghetti was relatively unknown in the UK, so many British people were unaware that it is made from wheat flour and water.

Decades later, CNN called this broadcast "the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled."

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