Panorama's coverage of the 'Spaghetti Harvest' is legendary, as is the Guardian's travel supplement celebrating the imaginary island of San Seriffe. Nowadays the first of April is not complete without news stories like the Sun exclusive on the Queen going to the bookies or the Independent revealing that the Archers theme-tune was to be spiced up by Brian Eno. Now, Martin Wainwright explores its development into a media phenomenon, collects all the best spoofs, revels in the gullibility that greets the tallest stories, and finds the most incredible stories published on 1 April that were actually true. And he will ensure that one historic April Fool hoax in the book is a flagrant invention of his own.
Martin Wainwright is Northern Editor of the Guardian. He has edited A Lifetime of Mountains: The Best of A. Harry Griffin's Country Diary, and A Gleaming Landscape: A Hundred Years of the Guardian Country Diary, also published by Aurum.