London calling.
No, wait. London conning.
Because this morning,
ladies and gentlemen,
boys and girls,
unsuspecting passers-by and habitual gulls alike…
this city is out to get you.
Not with a knife.
Not with a tax bill.
Not even with a Central line delay.
No.
Today it’s after something far more valuable.
Your credulity.
Your dignity.
Your last shred of “surely they wouldn’t…”
Because it’s April the 1st.
And London –
dear, dazzling, double-dealing London –
has slipped on its motley, sharpened its wits,
and is already halfway through its first prank of the day.
So where does all this nonsense come from?
Because let’s be clear –
this is not some modern invention cooked up by breakfast radio producers and bored office workers with access to cling film.
No.
April Fool’s Day has pedigree. Murky pedigree,
but pedigree nonetheless.
One popular theory takes us back to 16th-century France.
1564.
King Charles IX decides –
quite sensibly –
that the New Year should begin on January 1st,
not at the end of March.
A calendar reform.
Administrative tidying.
Very French.
But news travels slowly in those days.
Or perhaps some people
simply refused to get the memo. They carried on celebrating
New Year around April 1st.
And what happened?
They were mocked.
Given fake gifts.
Sent on foolish errands.
Invited to phantom parties.
In short,
they were made April fools.
Now,
is that definitively the origin?
Not quite.
Historians hedge their bets.
There are whispers
of Roman festivals –
Hilaria, for example –
great name isn’t it, Hilaria – Roman festivals
where disguises and practical jokes were the order of the day. Medieval Feast of Fools, too –clergy dressing up,
turning the world upside down, laughing in the face of order and authority.
But wherever it began,
by the 18th century it had firmly taken root here in Britain.
And London, naturally,
ran with it.
Oh, did it run with it.
Now, let us go then, you and I,
to one of the greatest hoaxes in London history.
The year is 1860.
The place,
Tower of London.
Invitations go out –
very proper, very official –requesting the honour of your presence
at the annual ceremony
of the Washing of the White Lions.
White lions, you see,
were once part of the Royal Menagerie at the Tower.
Exotic beasts,
symbols of power.
And the invitation is precise.
You are to arrive at exactly four o’clock.
Well.
Come the appointed hour,
crowds gather.
Respectable Londoners.
Curious visitors.
People who’ve put on a decent coat for the occasion.
Four o’clock strikes.
Nothing happens.
No lions.
No washing.
No ceremony.
Because there never was.
The whole thing was a prank.
A beautifully judged,
perfectly pitched,
gloriously London prank.
And you can almost hear
the suppressed laughter
of the organisers
as the penny drops.
Now that –
if you’ll forgive the expression –
is the gold standard.
But London doesn’t stop there.
Oh no.
Fast forward to 1957.
The BBC –
trusted,
authoritative,
voice-of-the-nation BBC – broadcasts a straight-faced report about Swiss farmers
harvesting spaghetti
from trees.
Spaghetti.
Growing.
On trees.
People watched it.
Believed it.
Rang in asking how they could grow their own.
To which the answer –
delivered with a straight face – was,
“Place a sprig of spaghetti
in a tin of tomato sauce
and hope for the best.”
And you think you’re too sophisticated to be taken in.
Are you?
Because here’s the thing about April Fool’s Day.
It only works because
we want to believe.
We want the world
to be a little stranger,
a little funnier,
a little more surprising
than it usually is.
And London –
layer upon layer of history, coincidence,
absurdity –
gives us plenty of material to work with.
Take this, for instance.
As everyone knows,
there is,
in the City of London,
a church called St Mary-le-Bow.
And if you’re born
within the sound of its bells, tradition says you’re a true Cockney. A true Londoner.
But here’s the wrinkle.
After the Great Fire of London,
the bells were recast by Sir Christopher Wren’s builders.
And their sound carried far and wide.
Meaning that, for a time, you could be born miles away – and still qualify as a Cockney, in the old, proper sense: a true Londoner, somebody born within sound of Bow Bells.
A kind of geographical sleight of hand.
A widening of identity
by the simple expedient
of louder bells.
Not a hoax, exactly.
But very much in the spirit of things.
Or consider this.
In the 18th century,
London newspapers
would happily print fantastical stories –
sea serpents,
monstrous births,
extraordinary events –
because readers lapped them up.
Fake news,
you might say,
is not a modern invention.
It’s practically a London tradition.
And April the 1st
simply gives it permission.
A licence.
A stage.
A day when the city
collectively agrees
to loosen its grip on reality
and see what slips through the net.
And there’s something rather wonderful about that.
Because London can be serious. Monumentally serious.
Empires built,
fortunes made and lost,
histories written in stone and soot.
But it can also be gloriously daft.
A city that can produce
both John Donne and a fake lion-washing ceremony
is a city that understands balance.
That understands that life –
like London itself –
is richer
when it includes a bit of mischief.
So today,
keep your wits about you.
If someone tells you something extraordinary,
pause.
Smile.
Ask yourself –
am I being had?
And then, perhaps,
allow yourself to be.
Because being fooled,
just occasionally,
is no bad thing.
It means you’re still open to surprise.
Still capable of delight.
Still,
in the best possible way,
a little bit gullible.
And in London…
That’s practically a civic duty.
Right.
That’s your April Fool’s Day briefing.
And tomorrow –
April 2nd – we’re heading back 190 years,
back to April 2nd, 1836 –
wedding bells, not jester’s bells.
Charles Dickens
marries Catherine Hogarth
at St Luke’s, Chelsea.
There’s an old English rhyme:
Married beneath April’s changing skies,
A chequered path before you lies.
The young Mr and Mrs Dickens perhaps should have taken heed before they decided on an April wedding.
Which is by way of saying,
She bore him ten children.
And the marriage… ended disastrously.
We’ll pick up that story tomorrow.
London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time.
History time.
Here’s to heaping helpings of great Londoning, one and all.
And watch your step out there.
Someone,
somewhere,
is already setting the next trap.
See you tomorrow.