April fuel

Do you remember the surprising news from the fast food world about the introduction of the left-handed Whopper? Or the Italian spaghetti harvest? Portable zip codes you take with you when you move? Legislative efforts to ban the use of the internet while drunk?

Jack Shafer, Slate‘s media critic, recalls the best of this kind of news to be have been published on the first of April over the years in a column so good it is reprinted, Art Buchwald-at-Thanksgiving-like, every year.

Another astonishing development to add to the mix, this one from The Guardian today, is a report about Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s new ad campaign that takes advantage of his much-reported hot temper as Labour tries to avoid defeat by the high-born David Cameron’s Conservatives.

A photo showing the snarling Brown carries the caption: “Step outside, posh boy.” With the slogan: “Vote Labour. Or else.” The byline on the piece: Olaf Priol.