In Competition No. 2991 you were invited to submit an April Fool disguised as a serious news feature that contains a startling revelation about a well-known literary figure.
The top-ranked April Fool of all time, according to the Museum of Hoaxes, was Panorama’s 1957 report on how Swiss farmers on the shores of Lake Lugano were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop thanks to the elimination of the dastardly spaghetti weevil and one of the mildest winter in living memory. Gullible viewers, convinced by a charming video showing peasants harvesting strands of pasta, flooded the Beeb with queries as to how they might grow their own spaghetti tree.
It was a smallish entry, carbohydrate-free but with an unusual degree of overlap. (Barbara Cartland made several appearances.) George Eliot was revealed to be a man; Philip Larkin, it turns out, was a woman; and Emily Dickinson, the Nun of Amherst, was a rollicking good-time girl.
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