The background to April Fool’s is hotly contested. While the French say its origin stems from a 16th-century poem celebrating a prank involving a so-called April fish, the English claim it comes from one of Geoffrey Chaucer’s stories from The Canterbury Tales about a wily fox tricking a vain cockerel.
One morning in the late spring of 2021, I awoke to devastating news.
On its Instagram feed, the popular culture site, Lovin Dublin, posted a picture of a single candy-striped tower sitting in a familiar location against a cold morning sky. The caption read: “Overnight we said goodbye to one of the iconic red and white stacks synonymous with the Dublin skyline The other chimney is set to come down in the coming weeks.”
Horrified, and leaning into my instinct to seize on breaking news, I called out to my Brehon law wife. The Pigeon House chimneys had been the backdrop to much of our lives.
One of the first articles I ever wrote (and got paid for) was all about them and their history. They bore witness to so many of our walks hand in hand on the Great South Wall and Sandymount Strand. And now they were being destroyed.
“Did you see this?” I said to her, lunging the phone in her direction.
“I did, Johnny,” she replied, continuing to scroll through her phone. “It’s April Fool’s.”
Lovin Dublin had snagged me good, but judging by the comments underneath the post, I wasn’t the only one. Though many people added their own amusing witticisms indicating they had copped it straight away, others were outraged by this apparent attack on the capital’s heritage, only to come back later and realise the joke was on them.
April Fool’s has had something of a renaissance since the invention of social media, with companies and influencers finding it much easier to get in on the act and garner the attention they seek, whether to boost their sales or just their egos.
In Ireland, some have been more successful than others. Never ones to shy away from publicity (and it is often very clever), Supermac’s is a past master at the annual prank.
A few years back, the fast-foot giant claimed that they would be opening a restaurant in Copper Face Jacks, while another year they said they were now serving snack boxes on Aer Lingus flights. But last year, the Irish fast food chain found itself in some hot frying oil, when a post declared that the home of Gaelic Games would be renamed Supermac’s Croke Park.
The post included an image of the stadium with the company’s logo on the pitch and pitch-side screens. The joke was not appreciated by Meta, who disabled their Facebook and Instagram accounts and notified the company that they may have made a trademark violation.
They were given 180 days to appeal the decision. Though the misunderstanding was cleared up quickly, it will be interesting to see what the cheeky Galway chipper comes up with today.
The background to April Fool’s is hotly contested. While the French say its origin stems from a 16th-century poem celebrating a prank involving a so-called April fish, the English claim it comes from one of Geoffrey Chaucer’s stories from The Canterbury Tales about a wily fox tricking a vain cockerel.
Another Gallic claim suggests the holiday dates back to 1582, when France switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. While the new calendar now celebrated the new year on January 1, the Julian Calendar began the new year with the spring equinox around April 1.
People who were slow to get the news or remained faithful to the old calendar became the butt of jokes and hoaxes and were called April fools.
Whatever the genesis of the day, it is celebrated the world over. With its tricksy leprechauns and a folklore full of pranks, it’s little surprise that we Irish love the day, and it has been popular in other spheres long before social media.
One medium that has always put the day to good use is radio. Back in 2009, Cork’s Red FM announced that U2 was to play a surprise Cork concert.
The band had recently announced their upcoming 360 tour but had failed to schedule a date for the real capital. As a gesture of goodwill, the station claimed that the four-piece wanted to reenact the famous Los Angeles rooftop concert from their Joshua Tree heyday.
The station went all in on the ruse, sending out live recordings of tribute act U2opia playing on top of the Blackpool Shopping Centre. Fans began to down tools and travel from all over the county to catch the show.
Even the local gardaí and Fire Brigade joined in and eventually shut down the concert over supposed health and safety concerns. By then, more than 500 fans had gathered to see their heroes only to be told they’d been sold a pup.
Football fans were the butt of an elaborate hoax by Joe Duffy back in 1996. In the days when the Irish national team was in somewhat better health than today, the broadcaster announced that Croatia had withdrawn from the Euro ’96 finals, thus making way for the Republic of Ireland.
The tournament was set to take place across the water in England and, on hearing the news, hundreds swamped the Football Association of Ireland with enquiries about tickets. They quickly discovered they’d been had and many were somewhat unhappy.
Print has also got in on the act over the years. In 1965, The Irish Times ran a lengthy editorial on April 1 entitled Staggering in which the paper slated then taoiseach Seán Lemass for saying he would enforce prohibition in Ireland. At the time, the country was approaching the final days of a general election campaign, and Lemass was quoted as saying, “If I am elected on April 7th, the boozer will have to go abroad for his drink in future. He won’t get in here.”
In response, Lemass issued a statement saying the paper “seems to have passed into the control of a group of crypto-reds...”
The following day, they ran his statement beside a photo of a grinning taoiseach holding a pint of Guinness. Lemass went on to win the election and formed the next government.
Of course, sometimes the media finds itself on the receiving end. In 2003, the Irish Independent newspaper reported that Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi had demanded the return of the painting The Taking of Christ.
Caravaggio’s masterpiece, — still housed in the National Gallery, Dublin, had been discovered in a nearby Jesuit residence some 10 years earlier, but now, according to the paper, the Italians wanted it back.
This, of course, wasn’t true, and it appears the paper hadn’t taken into account the fact that it was April 1 when they picked the story up from a popular website P45.net.
They later apologised for their mistake and the editorial which painted the Italian prime minister in something of an unpleasant light — even if most of what they said about him was absolutely true.
© Examiner Echo Group Limited
