"Here's the basic premise: After a mild win­ter and the "vir­tu­al dis­ap­pear­ance of the spaghet­ti wee­vil," the res­i­dents of Ticoni (a Swiss can­ton on the Ital­ian bor­der) reap a record-break­ing spaghet­ti har­vest. Swiss farm­ers pluck strands of spaghet­ti from trees and lay them out to dry in the sun. Then we cut to Swiss res­i­dents enjoy­ing a fresh pas­ta meal for dinner-going from farm to table, as it were."
"He remem­bered one of his child­hood school­teach­ers in Aus­tria jok­ing, "Boys, you are so stu­pid, you'd believe me if I told you that spaghet­ti grew on trees." Appar­ent­ly he was right. Years lat­er, David Wheel­er, the pro­duc­er of the BBC seg­ment, recalled: "The fol­low­ing day [the broad­cast] there was quite a to-do because there were lots of peo­ple who went to work and said to their col­leagues 'did you see that extra­or­di­nary thing on Panora­ma? I nev­er knew that about spaghet­ti.'""
A 1957 BBC television segment presented a spoof report from Switzerland where residents harvested spaghetti from trees after the 'virtual disappearance' of the spaghetti weevil. The report was narrated by respected BBC journalist Richard Dimbleby and showed Swiss farmers plucking strands of spaghetti and drying them in the sun before families ate fresh pasta. Cameraman Charles de Jaeger traced the idea to a childhood teacher's joke, and producer David Wheeler recalled widespread audience astonishment. An estimated eight million viewers watched the broadcast, and decades later CNN described it as the biggest hoax ever pulled by a reputable news establishment.
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