sr speech 23638

I'm sitting here today on a a very hot

summer's day, but I'd like to draw our

attention back a few months, if I may,

to the month of April because I want to

talk to you about the 1st of April,

which uh is traditionally known as April

Fool's Day.

And I'm going to look at why April the

1st was chosen as Fool's Day, and what

Fool's Day means.

I personally always look forward to the

1 of April. I like to go through the

newspapers and watch the media and spot

the deliberate mistakes. And in

particular over the years, I think one

of the best ones for making up jokes on

the 1 of April is the BBC, not the BBC

World Service because senses of humor

are not very international. But if you

go to a BBC channel, a local BBC

channel, for example, BBC London, and

watch their morning TV news, you will

definitely see a joke included in the

story.

Sometimes they're funny, sometimes

they're just silly. Some classics,

however, uh are known. There was a great

one in the 1950s when BBC reported that

all over Italy there was a crisis

because a late spring frost was

threatening the spaghetti crop. And

there was footage of Italian peasants

climbing the spaghetti trees, cutting

the spaghetti to save it from the frost.

Another one a few years ago was in order

to improve public transport in London,

the mayor had ordered some secondhand

submarines from the Ukrainian Navy. And

the submarines would go under the water

in the themes and take people up and

down the river.

Some of them are easy to spot, but some

of them are very intelligent. But why?

Why do we feel the need to make jokes on

the 1st of April? Where does it come

from? Well, there are several theories

and if you Google it, you'll get

countless ideas of where it came from,

but I just like to look at two.

First of all, think about it. The time

of the year, the 1st of April, is the

end of the winter, the beginning of

spring. It's when the world springs back

into life after a dark, dreadful winter.

It's when we start to feel a sense of

hope yet again. So, traditionally, the

1st of April was the first day of the

year.

However, this all changed in 1582 when

the Pope, Pope Gregory I 13th, ordered

that a new calendar be used. It's what

we have now. We call it the Gregorian

calendar. The Pope ordered that

henceforth new year would start on the

1st of January. Totally totally

arbitrary date instead of the obvious

1st of April which should be the first

day of the year.

So it the news came forth from the

pope's court and it went to the various

kings all over Europe

and the closer you were to power, the

closer you were to the pope, the closer

you were to the king, the sooner you

would get the news. And as the years

went by, more and more people began to

celebrate New Year on the 1st of January

rather than the 1st of April. Only the

ignorant, the illiterate, and those who

lived in remote places didn't get the

news. So it was quite popular amongst

sophisticated circles to mock the

ignorant people who still celebrated New

Year on the 1st of April. So if you saw

somebody celebrating on the 1st of

April, you knew they were fools. It was

their day. The 1st of April became

fool's day.

That's one theory. A second theory of

where April Fool's Day came from uh

takes us to the emperor Constantine.

Now, as you may know, in the royal

courts of the time, the only person who

could mock the king or the emperor was

the official court jester. And one day,

the the king's jester said, "I could run

the kingdom or the empire much better

than you could." So, as a joke, the

emperor decided to allow his jester to

be emperor for one day. And the one

piece of legislation that the jester

passed on his day was to order that

henceforth the anniversary of this event

which happened to be the 1st of April

would be known as fool's day and there

should be a annual day of absurdity so

that the people of low status could

officially mock those of high status to

remind them that they too are just human

and fallible. So there you have two

stories, both p perfectly plausible, but

of course since we're talking about the

1st of April, one of them is true and

one of them is a complete fabrication

made up by myself. See if you can spot

the deliberate mistake. Thank you.