WITH electioneering soon to reach fever pitch, I must tell you about something that happened to me when I was canvassing in Hillingdon many years ago.
I was getting depressed by how many women, when asked on the doorstep how they were likely to vote at the next election, said they would have to ask their men.
One of these - who owed nothing to the Suffragettes - said she was unable to answer me because her husband was in the bath and couldn't be disturbed.
"I'll put him down as a floating voter then," I retorted as the door swiftly closed in my exasperated face.
Which brings me nicely to April Fools' Day, which falls tomorrow.
Many readers will remember the biggest April Fools' joke of them all: the spaghetti harvest on BBC's Panorama in 1957. Viewers were completely fooled by Richard Dimbleby's straight-faced presentation of pasta trees.
It was foreign, so sounded feasible and exotic to a nation raised on mashed potato and cabbage. Italian food hadn't 'been invented' and the closest buys were minestrone soup or tinned spaghetti.
In those days, the voices of authority all spoke like Harry Enfield's Mr Cholmondley Warner, and the media, particularly the BBC, was trusted absolutely.
Panorama may have been a current affairs programme but it only needed to smoke a pipe and wear a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches to be more revered.
If David Dimbleby's dad had told us that the world was, after all, actually flat, and 'proved' it on Panorama, we'd have believed him. Apart from Mr F of course, who has been a cynic from birth, has a phenomenal memory for facts and gets very cross when they get the wrong answers on Eggheads.
My memory is saved for important things such as birthdays, social engagements or remembering where we put our glasses, but I never remind Mr F it's April Fools' Day. That way I frequently catch him out.
I haven't graduated much further than 'Your shoelace is undone', or 'You've just stood in some dog poo'.
Not in the same category as spaghetti harvest maybe, but it makes me chortle!
