The worst thing about April Fool’s Day is how it makes you realise how ridiculous, strange or just unlikely the real news is. You see a story and think “ha ha. What a great joke, well done” and then straight afterwards you see another one that is even less likely and wonder: has the paper done two spoof stories or is one of them actually real?
This may not apply to readers of the Daily Mail or Sport, where so much of it is made up anyway, but for the rest of us it makes you question reality a bit. Surely the media don’t save all the weird stuff until April 1st. It must happen all year round and we just take it in our stride.
Anyway, the Crawley News website presented a real challenge today. On the one hand there was a story that said George Clooney would play Widow Twankey in this year’s Crawley pantomime and would try to get Matt Damon and Cameron Diaz to sign up for it as well. On the other hand, they also have a story that says the county council are going to repair the potholes in Woodfield Rd in Northgate. One of them has to be true.
At least they kept it almost plausible and didn’t try running a story about the Tories approving a local plan for Crawley. We would have seen through that straight away!
Nice PhotoShop job on the Clooney story BTW.
Next you’ll be telling me they said the Leader of Crawley Borough Council lived in the town…
or that Henry Smith is building a hospital at Pease Pottage
There would actually be more chance of George Clooney appearing at the Hawth than Pease Pottage hospital – with Philip Seymour Hoffman!
Henry now seems to be saying things like how Crawley hospital now has an A&E “in all but name”. Not the sort of thing he was saying when the walk-in centre opened.