Three's Co: Hoax, prank, practical joke, trick or deception

April Fools Day is nearly upon us, will it pass you by un-noticed or do you plan an assault on your workmates days before hand? Surprisingly, nobody is really sure where April Fools day came from or when it began. It is practised around the world but on different days and in slightly different ways. One explanation, that I rather liked, was by Joseph Boskin, a professor of history at Boston University. He believed that a group of jesters in the court of Roman emperor, Constantine, boasted that they could do a better job of running the empire than the Emperor. Constantine made a jester, Kugel, king for 24 hours. Kugel passed an edict calling for absurdity on that day. It would be easy to believe that it had led to the annual custom of April Fool’s day but the story was also an April 1st hoax back in 1983!

The BBC has a long history of April Fools day hoaxes. Did you see last year’s flying penguins? Presenter Terry Jones described how the penguins flew thousands of miles to the rainforests of South America to bask in the sun during the Antarctic winter. They even had video footage of the event!

From spaghetti growing on trees to converting Big Ben to a digital readout, the BBC has an excellent pedigree in April Fools jokes. April Fools have also been used to promote brands. Most notably Virgin back in 2002 when they claimed that they were going to begin advertising with genetically modified butterflies. The specially modified butterflies would have company logos applied to their wings by scanning them with a laser beam. They even said that they hoped to control the flight areas of the butterflies and keep them in main parks and recreational areas.

Nestle announced with a special website that they were changing the name of the American Butterfinger candy bar to "The Finger," in order to give it "a shorter, more contemporary name."

Last year Google Australia introduced gDay technology powered by MATE (Machine Automated Temporal Extrapolation). This new technology would apparently enable you to “search content on the internet before it is created". They claimed that they could use the technology to predict almost anything on the web – tomorrow's share price movements, sports results or news events. They even said that they could predict the wording of blogs and newspaper columns, 24 hours before they were written!

Some businesses USPs are based on hoaxes. Take a look at Heston Blumenthal’s menu with snail porridge and parsnip cereal. And if you saw the Gadget Show last night their top 5 April Fools gadgets included a gender bending voice transformer and an electric shock pen!