There was a nature documentary clip on the BBC last Tuesday.  The Beeb are good at these - sumptuous music, breathtaking shots that must have cost the camera crew hours and hours of patient shivering, seasoned narrator (in this case ex-Monty Python Terry Jones).  And a mind-boggling story - the discovery of a flock of penguins that have learned to fly and who migrate to South America to swap the Antarctic winter for the warmth of the Amazon rainforest.  Nobody who sees the waddle-waddle flap-flap take-off of a flight of penguins will forget it in a hurry.  The story was also covered by the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mirror. 

Over at the Sun on the same day, they were running a story of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's forthcoming operation, using pioneering surgical techniques, to make him 5 inches taller and a bit of a better fit for his new wife Carla Bruni.  She meanwhile, according to that day's Guardian, has been hired by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown as style adviser to Britain.   

At the same time the Independent was running a piece on the decision by celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey (whose own language owes something to his experience as a professional footballer) to ban swearing in his restaurants.  And elsewhere there were stories of a plan to cut emissions and raise runway productivity at Heathrow by having smaller aircraft take off on the back of long-haul wide-body jets; of a new model BMW that will emit an electric shock from its wheels to any dog that tries pissing on them; and a planned service by mobile phone networks to allow home-owners, who have had the builders in and then seen them disappear with the job half-finished, to track them down by triangulating their mobile signal.   

And if you're still wondering why none of these scoops were picked up in the Thai press, let me point out that the penguin film was made by Prof Alid Loyas (you are good at anagrams, aren't you?), that the French government spokesperson credited with the Sarkozy stretching story is called Luc Bigger, that the by-line for the Carla Bruni stylist-to-the-government story credits Avril de Poisson and the BMW electrified wheel designer is Hans Zoff.   

These are part of a long and proud tradition of April Fool spoofs that includes such gems as the BBC Panorama programme of 1 April 1957.  In a turgid but oh-so-dependable current affairs programme, the sight of spaghetti farmers in Switzerland climbing ladders to snip off the strands of spaghetti growing from tree branches convinced multitudes.  Most British kitchens of that era knew spaghetti only as the contents of a tin and the idea that they came off a tree was perfectly plausible.  (I remember an argument with some of my schoolmates as to whether the beans in baked bean tins were real beans or an industrial product - since none of us had ever seen a bean of that size and shape growing out of the ground, the fake foodies won.)  With Richard Dimbleby, master of the Queen's microphone, doing the talkover, the word of the ‘Window on the World' couldn't be doubted.  For months the BBC was deluged with requests for spaghetti seeds and cuttings. 

The equally sacrosanct eminence of Patrick Moore convinced BBC viewers in 1976 with his infectious enthusiasm over the planetary consequences of a momentary alignment of Pluto and Jupiter.  The resulting temporary weakening of the Earth's gravity, he said, could be enjoyed by anyone who jumped into the air at a precise moment on the morning of 1 April.  The leapers of faith would be rewarded with a fleeting feeling of floating.  Of the countless April Fools who did jump, an embarrassing number reported that they did feel weightless.  Or at least light-headed. 

So the question that springs to mind is why has this tradition never taken hold in Thailand?  All you need is a credible source, like the BBC, a field of human knowledge where most people are ignorant but wouldn't like anyone to know that, and a story that teeters between the outrageous and the believable.   

But it's not easy.  For instance, how about a story about the Prime Minister telling the press about something important, like a planned coup, and then giving them a bollocking for reporting what he said?  Except that's exactly what he did.   

Or how about the giggle of appointing as Deputy Finance Minister someone who is so clueless that she has to look up what the Ministry of Finance does on its own webpage?  But that's what she said she did. 

Or we could pretend we were resurrecting a scheme to ‘help farmers in the northeast' by a huge (and hugely expensive) civil engineering project diverting water from the Mekhong into the Chi and then Mun rivers, which will make large tracts of land saline and piss off the neighbouring Mekhong countries that the Prime Minister just went to sweet talk.  Only the PM has said we'll do exactly that. 

Or maybe people would believe that the Khlong Dan Waste Water Plant, which is in the wrong place, which is in danger of flooding, which doesn't properly treat waste water, which will ruin local shellfish farming and which is the biggest corruption case currently before the courts, is in fact a good idea and should be finished.  But that's what Minister Anongwan wants. 

Or the idea that Thailand's environment is so safe that we can do away with any effective environmental impact assessment system since it only gets in the way of development?   

My word.  How do you make a joke of people who are already clowns?