Scotland is butt of the April Fool frenzy

It's after midday so all of the April Fool gags should now be taken down and we can get on with the serious business of the day. I offered my view of the jokes this time last year. Basically, when I was an editor I never understood why we would spend the whole year persuading people of our integrity and credibility and then one day just tell blatant lies - and take the mick out of the readers. And apart from anything else most of them weren't at all funny. 

If you came up with a Panorama spaghetti farm idea or if The Guardian discovered the islands of San Serriffe, including the small islet Ova Mata, then it would definitely be worthwhile. But crude photoshopped images of giant bunnies invading football pitches? I think not. This year everyone seems to have been at it. So, taking my po face off for a while, here is my pick.

Scottish independence seemed to be the main butt of the jokes with five national papers taking a bit of a poke. 

The Daily Telegraph used Page 10 to unveil the new Scottish pound coin with Alex Salmond replacing the Queen. The Guardian gave Page 5 prominence to its story that if Scotland wins independence it will change driving to the right. I liked the proposal to change the traffic lights to red, amber and blue which was rejected after fears the Southern Tories would adopt it as their own. Scottish Independence was the theme in the Mail too - with an idea to get rid of the Scottish Saltire from the Union Flag so that it will look like this:

Avril Mactickle was the campaigner in this one. 

The Times had a story about a German duke who would have claims to rule Scotland and The Independent said the UN will be drafted in to monitor 'cross border tensions'. The peacekeepers will be changing their helmets from blue to purple so that they aren't seen to be Scottish supporters. 

The Sun opted for Page 9 to run its headline Frackingham Palace above a story on the Queen drilling for gas at Buck House. I quite liked ER Ewing. Predictably, campaigner Avril Fuel also makes an appearance. The Sun also had a story on the sports pages about Plymouth Argyle changing their pitch colour to orange so that it doesn't clash with their green strip. 

The Express also carried a spoof football story - that Arsenal and Spurs were to share a ground.

The Express ran two more April Fool stories - one online and one in the paper. Online was a story about a mummified teddy bear being discovered and on Page 3 there was a tale about a farmer hatching a plan to sell square eggs. It will end the need for eggcups. The farm was, predictably, in Flair Loop in Suffolk and campaigner Flora Pilo was the campaigner.

 Coincidentally, ITV's Daybreak also ran a story about square eggs.

The Mirror went with an economical farming story too - the farmer breeding six-legged lambs. 

In the regions the Brentwood Gazette reported that Brentwood is planning to pay tribute to TOWIE star Joey Essex with a huge bronze statue. Meanwhile both the Nottingham Post and Hartlepool Mail went for the discovery of historic bones. In Nottingham it was Robin Hood's remains that were found and in Hartlepool, inevitably, it was those of the famous hanged monkey.

Sinkholes were a bit of a theme too - there was one in Somerset and one in Coronation Street. The Western Daily Press's report - with a far more authentic looking picture than the Corrie one - had me wondering for a second but Freshford resident April O'Lof was a bit of a clue. 

The PR companies were at it too. Andrew Bloch listed scores of them on twitter this morning including the aquatic taxi by Addison Lee that can get you across the Thames quicker. If you want to indulge yourself, follow Andrew here. 

The readers were also being inventive, as this bicycle prank covered on Kent Online shows.

Perhaps my favourite though was Penguin Books announcing it was to replace full stops with exclamation marks. "For the first time, iconic books such as Albert Camus's The Stranger, Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, and Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment will remove all the instances of full stops in the original text, and replace them with exclamation marks." 
Brilliant ... although I fear I have worked in some places where they have already done that!!!!!!

If you are not rigidly bored with all of this by now you can follow Felicity Morse who has been prolific in collecting today's jokes. There are also good compilations by The Independent, the Mirror, The Guardian and The Telegraph.   

The only one that got me going, though, was from my 17-year-old son. He is taking his photography AS level today and set off early for college in his car. At 9.30am I got a text that read: "Traffic was really bad. Was late for my exam and the examiner wouldn't let me in. My teachers flipped out for no reason. Think I've been kicked off the course." Ten minutes later I managed to get down from the ceiling. Gotcha!

Best of today's April Fools jokes

It's April Fools Day so the newspapers and websites are littered with spoof stories, some funny, some clever, some puerile. When I was an editor I used to be very po-faced about such whimsy. I never really understood why we would spend the whole year persuading people of our integrity and credibility and then one day just tell blatant lies - and take the mick out of the readers. Apart from anything else, very few so-called pranks were particularly funny. So under my tenure, there were no April Fools' jokes at all.
Now, though, I have lightened up a bit. The web, Photoshop and the fact humour is a key part of what publishers do, have made me take a slightly different view.
There are certainly a few stories around today that have potential. You would be forgiven for thinking that Sunderland signing a new right winger - head coach Paolo Di Canio - and Princess Diana sneaking into a gay bar disguised as a man with Freddie Mercury, were spoofs. But both are, apparently, true. Anyway, as it's Easter Monday, raining and I am not working, I have had time to have a bit of a trawl. Here are a few that caught the eye.

The New Statesman
I am always a sucker for a typography gag, so I enjoyed the New Statesman's decision to change its masthead to the much ridiculed Comic Sans. This is its old stylish slab-serif masthead:

And here is the new one:

The website says: 'We're delighted to announce that the New Statesman is unveiling a brand new look to celebrate its centenary, using the popular Comic Sans font. Starting today, we'll be replacing our web header and text fonts with Comic Sans, and the magazine will soon change too.'

"It's a classic font, and one which has been unfairly maligned," said Wolfgang Brick of the Berlin design house Täuschen, which was employed by the NS to makeover the title. "Like the New Statesman, it is jaunty, fun and frolicsome. It doesn't take itself too seriously."

And to prove how the New Statesman has become fun and folicsome its site has some fascinating teasers including Alex Andreou's article 'Melanie Philips stole my Muslim transsexual baby, forcing me to eat my cat, which gave me cancer'. 

Twitter

Twitter has announced that from now on you will be charged to use vowels.  The basic service Twttr is still free but you get only consonants. The premium Twitter service, with vowels, is $5 a month. Sounds a bit too plausible to me. Maybe they are just testing the water ... 

Daily Mirror

Another joke which might have had an element of credibility is Virgin's plans to put glass bottoms on its planes. There are of course technical reasons why it can't happen - and you would just be looking at a load of luggage. Pity though! 

Channel 4

The report that Boris Johnson will stand in David Miliband's seat of South Shields stretches all credibility, even without the newsagent called April Firston (possibly the least creative anagram ever). They might as well have said that Johnson, a right winger with no experience at the top level, had taken over the head coach's job at Sunderland. Oh, hang on ... 

The Daily Telegraph

The paper carries an advert from BMW on Page 3 for the new P.R.A.M. (Postnatal Royal Auto Mobile) - a limited edition soft top convertible to coincide with a forthcoming birth.

Metro

Metro ran a round-up of all the best April Fools from this morning ... including The Sun's report that the Angel of the North is to be painted pink and renamed after Cheryl Cole.

But then the paper revealed that it had made them all up ... an elaborate reverse ferret kind of joke.

Daily Mail

According to the Mail, Asda is now selling toilet paper in 50 shades of grey. Each ‘shade’ has been named after Christian Grey’s traits, from ‘enigmatic’ to ‘obsessive’. Asda’s director of tissue buying, says there is a growing trend towards themed toilet paper. ‘Much like Grey’s character all rolls are tightly wound and will take time to unravel.’ I really do hope this is an April Fools joke.

The Mail also reports that owls are being trained to deliver the internal post at a North Yorkshire animal sanctuary. The story is written by Nesta Vowles. Funny, don't remember her on any of our training schemes.

Other jokes include Google launching Google Nose - with its Aromabase. Don't just type and talk, now you can smell too. And then there's YouTube closing down and choosing the best ever video to mark its departure.
The Daily Telegraph has a round-up of most of the newspaper jokes here. The Guardian has a blog here. Unlike them though, I waited until after midday to reveal all. Isn't that what you are supposed to do?