Swiss spaghetti harvest - BBC Panorama

APR 01 1957

On 1 April 1957 the BBC's Panorama broadcast a three-minute report, narrated by the trusted Richard Dimbleby, showing a family in southern Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from trees. It was filmed in Ticino, at a hotel in Castagnola and a pasta factory in St Albans. The idea came from cameraman Charles de Jaeger, who recalled teachers teasing his Austrian schoolmates that they believed spaghetti grew on trees. Around eight million watched and hundreds phoned the BBC, some asking how to grow their own spaghetti tree.