Who's Foolin' Who?

Just a few weeks to go before April Fool’s Day, that time of year when I kind of get away with my visceral stupidity by claiming “I was only joking”. It’s the only day of the year when I don’t look a complete idiot, just a work in progress.

So, have you planned ahead? Got some innovative ideas that will have them falling about with laughter and hiding with embarrassment, or are you going to fall back on the old faithfulls like cling film over the toilet bowl and washing up liquid in the cistern?

Toilets do seem a ripe area for April Fools. While my academic record at University may make my genius less like Michaelangelo and more like Michael Angelis, the voice of Thomas The Tank Engine, I will always be proud of the day I visited an old school pal’s student flat for the first time. I left a twelve inch length of dental floss floating inside his toilet bowl and showed him that he had left a huge tapeworm behind. My cries of April Fool didn’t help in any way, perhaps, on reflection, because it was, and I imagine he’s probably still in therapy. Once you plant an image like that, it stays for life.

I think I’m already ahead of the game this year. I have ordered a box containing a new capsule that has just been launched, and I may end up buying crate loads. It’s called Puck - probably because the reaction you will get may sound a lot like that – and the idea is that you go to someone’s house and ask to use the loo. Once there, slip a capsule in to the cistern and then say nothing. For about a week afterwards, no matter how often they flush, the water will remain the shade of yellow that artists may call ‘lemorange chiffon’ but you and I will know better as ‘three day old wee’.

The best practical jokes take a bit of setting up. Chocolate covered apples with sticks in make lovely treats. Chocolate covered onions, however, look exactly the same and are the present that keeps on giving – every time the recipient gets wind for hours afterwards.

Some April Fool jokes can be cruel. One couple I know were expecting their first baby and had already decorated the nursery and installed a cot. They hired a babysitter and went out for the night, telling her not to disturb their nonexistent child as she had just fallen asleep. After an hour in their favourite restaurant they rang home and asked the sitter to check how the baby was doing. I’m told the hysterical report back that the baby was missing had them in stitches. Me? I thought it was mean.

I also didn’t much appreciate the thinking behind last year’s call to our local large grocery superstore on April 1st when some idiot had obviously ‘phoned in and asked for a call to be put out for his friend. Over the PA system a woman steadily announced “Would Al Kyder please go to customer information. That’s Al Kyder to the front desk please.” You don’t have to be a terrorism specialist to find that a bit stupid. Clever, but stupid just the same.

These April Fool tricks are usually great when done to someone else but, for some reason, I don’t find them hilarious when aimed at me. I still harbour a grudge against the school pal who put those sticky plant seeds in my gym kit many years ago, making me itch for days. I’m not happy either with another pal at my gym who swapped my deodorant for Ralgex heat spray, nor my old school pal Robin who stayed with me just before I got married and hard boiled all the fresh eggs in my fridge one day when I was out, before putting them back in their box.

So, let’s get our thinking caps on this year and come up with something new and different. If you have any ideas please let me know. A lot rests on this, remember. It’s my day to shine and make people forget I’m just a sad idiot every other day of the year.