April Fools Day.

April Fools Day.

Come on admit it, you've been fooled, hoodwinked, caught out, misinformed, made to look foolish or maybe just glad to be a victim of the funniest day of the year. For as long as any of us can remember April Fools Day is the one day where the element of surprise and shock no longer seems to be quite the day it should be. Most, if not all of us, do check the calendar in the full knowledge that somebody has got a trick up their sleeves and is determined to leave us giggling on the floor.

It can only be assumed that April Fools Day was the one day when, long ago, the medieval court jesters would get up to all kinds of tomfoolery while Henry the Eighth and his motley mob greedily devoured giant sized portions of chicken, beef, lamb and whatever else was on the menu during the Middle Ages. But dear old Henry must have had a wicked sense of humour given his wild and debauched lifestyle. Still, it's probably safe to say that the old King must have shared just a few belly laughs with his delighted guests. Besides, there was no Master Chef in ye olden days and TV would have represented an irritating distraction to Henry.

In more recent years TV of course has done its utmost to give us more than its fair share of  light hearted entertainment. TV remains one of those last bastions of silliness and frivolity where the people who make us laugh when we weren't expecting it are often the ones who can hardly believe the incredible impact they've had on our lives for that day alone.

It doesn't seem like it now but over 50 years ago one BBC programme deliberately took full advantage of their viewers April Fools susceptibilities. Panorama, that ever so serious current affairs programme with a flair for brilliantly probing investigations, dared to tread where no other TV programme had even thought of going. Sensing that April Fools Day was about to arrive it sent out its cameras to some remote Italian farming area. Nothing wrong with that or so it seemed at the time.

But the BBC viewers that night, knowing full well that something wasn't quite right, were rightly alarmed by the programme they were about to see. Richard Dimbleby, the authoritative voice of the BBC, had now convinced the British viewers that a yearly crop of spaghetti was once again ready to be picked from its trees. It remains one of the most bizarre and peculiar April Fools pranks any TV channel has ever pulled off with a straight face.

Today of course you'd be forgiven for thinking that after all that preposterously endless Brexit dithering somebody would come out and tell us that it had all been some stupid April Fools joke. The sad reality is that Brexit is far from being the April Fools it should be. Those Westminster gag professors  are sweating profusely under the collar, threatening to hurl eggs and tomatoes at the first politician who so much as utters the different textures of soft and hard Irish borders. You really couldn't make this one up.

And yet every year we subject ourselves to the same humiliations and red faces. We do like to be tickled under the ribs, laugh heartily at the absurdities of every day life then go away and hide in a corner because there can be nowhere else to go when somebody tries to leave you speechless. All of us do like to have an innocent spot of fun and there can be no harm in just a brief spell of larking around mischievously. There are though few who would have known it when Panorama was having a laugh at our expense.

So there are you comedians, comediennes and mirth makers out there. This is your day to act out those ridiculous routines where everybody quite literally ends up with egg on their faces. Mind you, you have to wonder at times whether any of our esteemed members of Parliament have had the last laugh at us. This is the one April Fools Day where those sharp suited politicians who ply their trade in the House of Commons really do believe that the people who they so allegedly serve, are both foolhardy and gullible. One day, quite possibly Brexit will quite definitely mean Brexit. Or so we hope it will.

In the meantime it's time for those court jesters to ring their bells and the office comics to produce their yearly whoopie cushions on seats in the hope that nobody will be offended. Much hilarity and amusement will ensue all over the land, as April Fools provides a welcome diversion from the earnestness and wretched tedium of to Brexit or not Brexit. What on earth would William Shakespeare have made of it all? We can only wonder.