Friday 1 April 2022

April Fooled

Have you ever been done like a dinner on April Fools' Day, Dear Reader? Both Mr. P & I fell one year hook, line and sinker for a very amusing spoof magazine feature on a Nordic ice cream tycoon and his family. But hunting the interwebs for delicious evidence to share has left me empty-handed and now wondering if I dreamt the whole thing. Perhaps this is the key to being properly April Fooled?

Despite spending an unseemly amount of time today perusing archived 1990s trashy magazine covers seeking editions around the beginning of April and only becoming reacquainted with the likes of Claudia Schiffer (so many times) and Jane Seymour (so many children) and 90s-headlining royal covergirls in their prime, Mr. P reassures me that he, too, can visualise the whole glorious thing. So we can't have imagined the magazine spread. But it does seem to have suspiciously vanished from said archives.

We've all pored over the occasional Exclamatory(!) guilty-pleasure magazine in the dentist's waiting room (and, ahem, purchased the occasional copy with an alluring cover) so you can picture for yourself the glossy images splashed across several pages with their breathless yet almost tongue-in-cheek captions:

The Family Portrait comprises a handsome middle-aged tycoon with a nonsense Nordic name posing in his lavish mansion, his sullen and beautiful blonde adolescent scions from a first marriage surrounding his baronial throne, his 20-something sultry and beautiful blonde second wife at his side and at their feet their sweetly blonde twins.

Subsequent Home Interior photos have the trophy wife draped provocatively across furniture, pouting at the camera in a new ensemble for each shot, the sulky adolescents glowering at the camera in the background. The accompanying editorial sings the praises of the brilliant tycoon, gushes admiringly over his beauteous family, the exquisite taste of the home, the furnishings, the fashion labels. It was all so utterly convincing and a brilliant parody of the typical spread found within their pages any other week.

And we fell for it. For an embarrassingly long time. Maybe even for weeks. I can't remember when the penny dropped but it finally did. But in the meantime, I did even tell people, sensible adults, that the Scandinavian millionaire founder of an ice-cream empire had wittily named his twins Ben & Jerry.  


Image credit: via Google


22 comments:

  1. You just made my April fools day with this story. What a cracker!!! Love it

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    1. Very happy to have obliged, dear Valentina!

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  2. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
    HAPPY April fools DAY!
    TODAY WAS MY PARENTS ANNIVERSARY TOO!!!!!!!

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    1. All true, despite the mere moths in Google's cupboard if you go looking for it, dear Contessa. Your parents picked an easy day to remember for their wedding!

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  3. There you are !
    For a moment I feared the entry itself was an april fool day joke~

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    1. Hullo, dear Ur-spo! Never fear, I'm no master prankster :)

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    2. I love me a Trickster!

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  4. Hello Pipistrello, Your little tale reminded me of those "sick" jokes that went around during the Dahmer scandal:

    --What did they find in Jeffrey Dahmer's freezer?
    --Ben and Jerry.

    Another one was:

    --What did they find in Jeffrey Dahmer's bathroom?
    --Head and Shoulders.

    Unfortunately, the Dahmer affair was not an April Fools joke.
    --Jim

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    1. Hullo, dear Jim! Why do these jokes tickle us so?? I can't remember jokes terribly well so well done you for dredging up these old chestnuts!

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  5. They sound like a thoroughly modern, every-day, family.

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    1. Ha! So you see immediately, dear Cro, why we were so easily fooled.

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  6. In 1957, long before people travelled the globe, the BBC carried out a spoof on April Fools Day now remembered as the Spaghetti-tree hoax. The film showed a family on the Swiss/Italian border gathering in their Spring spaghetti harvest which was growing along the branches of trees. At that stage most Britons only knew that spaghetti came from tins in a tomato sauce then served on toast.
    There is a very old Youtube here of the event:-
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU

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    1. Isn't it wonderful, dear Rosemary! I hadn't known about this until it popped up when I was hunting for my Häagen-Dazs hoax. Such an elaborate yet gentle tease with all the hallmarks of credibility.

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  7. Dear Pip, I find it marvellous to fell for such a joke!
    I heard about the one Rosemary mentions (spaghetti harvest), or in 2005 in Bavaria was announced that Prince Charles and Camilla would marry in Schloss Nymphenburg in Munich.
    And Heidi Klubs Fans were happy when she announced that she would replace Samantha at Sex in the City.
    Yesterday we had only a sour text in our over-regional newspaper saying that the 1.April day is the only holiday which one has to forget - then, and only then it can function. But, they closed with a deep sigh, "April fool's Day is dead". I protest and say: especially in dark times we need humour. Viva!

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    1. Dear Britta, your newspaper is a killjoy and fie on them! Humour and dark times do indeed go hand-in-hand for it is one of life's great coping mechanisms. The lovely thing about April Fools' is that most of the time it passes without notice so doesn't really get overdone. The magazine hoax really is the only one I've ever encountered but I'd have to say that many times absurd or preposterous announcements are double-checked against the calendar, just in case! We've switched back our clocks from summer time this morning and I'd have to say that the first time it was proposed, many must have wondered if fiddling with time was just an April Fools' joke!

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    2. The problem is when something that is hard to believe occurs on April 1st, then it is never believed for years after. This happens rather a lot. I am one of those curmudgeonly souls who does not like the silliness of April's Fools Day one bit. It does, however, allow me to go "Bah Humbug" twice a years instead of just on the other silly day.

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    3. Thank goodness there's plenty of grumbling from the corner, dear Andrew, or we'd be awash with ludicrous goings-on across the calendar. Even the jolliest and most credulous amongst us would becoming unhinged by it all!

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    4. Mr MacLaren Scott does OBVIOUSLY not know that our family in second generation is growing pasta in various moulds.

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    5. Dear Sean, may I presume your family to be organic farmers? I hope their hands are stayed from nasty pesticides to ensure their Farfalle crops aren't annihilated during their caterpillar phase?

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    6. You may, loveliest of all Pipistrellas. Only yesterday Farfalle vanished from the youngest generation's plates as if it were the famous rice no one is able to prepare as heavenly as their Opi.

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  8. I would have believed it as they sound like most family’s that are spread all over Homes & Garden magazines !!!
    Slightly off piste, as much as I love a bit of fashion ( and spent most of my time in Biba in my youth ! ) I have never been interested in the likes of Vogue etc. & never really bought those magazines ….. although I did buy the Millennium edition of Vogue ….. I thought it might be worth something and my grandchildren could sell it !!!!!! XXXX

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    1. There's a thought, dear Jackie, Homes & Garden et al. I was quite sure it was the likes of Hello! wherein this little treasure once hid.

      I haven't bought a Vogue-style magazine in an absolute age. I think there's a notorious pic of moi lounging about reading one when I was supposed to be cramming for my Year 12 exams. Deary me! I also recall that back in the Olden Days, friends and I'd snaffle up the complimentary Tattlers etc at the end of long haul flights from London - hardly the cheapest way to keep up with the glossies!! xx

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