It's All Fools' Day, which is an opportunity for the more creative hacks in the media to dream up spurious news stories for the more credulous of their readers.
The exemplars, of course, are the BBC report on the excellent harvest of spaghetti in Switzerland, and The Guardian's famous supplement on the island of Sans Serif.
We shall not see their like again, but this morning, there is a plethora of such spoofs - not all incredible.
The first to catch my eye was a ridiculous story about the worst performing universities charging the full £9,000 a year - despite Dec Clegg's assurances that this would not happen. Honestly, do they expect us to believe that?
Then, there's a very silly piece about the Assistant Commissioner who headed up Scotland Yard's enquiry into phone-hacking by the News of the World enjoying "three lunches and two dinners" with Murdoch's News International during the investigation. As if.
In the business pages, there's a crazy report about the Lloyds Banking Group awarding their new Chief Executive Antonio Horta-Osorio a £10 million pay package. After all the fuss we've had recently about bankers' remuneration? Yeh right.
But the best is surely the absurd invention of yet another judicial gagging order which grants anonymity to a claimant - supposedly a wealthy financier - in a libel case.
Justice, as someone said, must not only be seen to be done; it must be seen to be believed.
Today's listening: Stan Getz. The West Coast cool helps to calm me as I wait eagerly for the first pitch in Texas tonight.
The exemplars, of course, are the BBC report on the excellent harvest of spaghetti in Switzerland, and The Guardian's famous supplement on the island of Sans Serif.
We shall not see their like again, but this morning, there is a plethora of such spoofs - not all incredible.
The first to catch my eye was a ridiculous story about the worst performing universities charging the full £9,000 a year - despite Dec Clegg's assurances that this would not happen. Honestly, do they expect us to believe that?
Then, there's a very silly piece about the Assistant Commissioner who headed up Scotland Yard's enquiry into phone-hacking by the News of the World enjoying "three lunches and two dinners" with Murdoch's News International during the investigation. As if.
In the business pages, there's a crazy report about the Lloyds Banking Group awarding their new Chief Executive Antonio Horta-Osorio a £10 million pay package. After all the fuss we've had recently about bankers' remuneration? Yeh right.
But the best is surely the absurd invention of yet another judicial gagging order which grants anonymity to a claimant - supposedly a wealthy financier - in a libel case.
Justice, as someone said, must not only be seen to be done; it must be seen to be believed.
Today's listening: Stan Getz. The West Coast cool helps to calm me as I wait eagerly for the first pitch in Texas tonight.
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