TALL Stories On April Fool’s DayTRUTH is often stranger than fiction although it was probably a close run thing between two of our ‘exclusives’ on April Fool’s Day.
There was the tall story about River Clyde Homes wanting to put huge photos of tenants on the side of multi-storey blocks in Greenock.
April Fool? Well no, although some readers thought it was. As it turned out, River Clyde Homes changed their mind about the plan but it was very real.
We deliberately delayed publication of our story about it until 1 April as we thought it might be greeted with incredulity — did they actually say they were going to “dress” the Belville Street flats? – and the timing of the applications coming up at a planning meeting on April Fool’s Day was perfect.
Meanwhile, in our other ‘scoop’, it was announced, by Sue Wage, that a large part of Battery Park, Greenock, was to become a massive regional dog toilet. (No change there!)
Inverclyde Now’s April Fools – which have a small but dedicated fan club who faithfully e-mail their appreciation each year — are always intended as a bit of a laugh – we don’t try too hard to actually fool people; it’s just a chance to have some fun.
There were no flies on most of you regarding the dog poo revelation, so to speak, but at least a couple of readers were fooled by this story and only realised their error when they clicked on the April Fool link put on the page at noon.
Till next year, here are a few of the comments we received:
— “Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Your April Fool story got me hook line and sinker. The final paragraph had my blood boiling until I clicked onto the more info link at the bottom.”
— “Well done on your April Fool story. As a journalist working for BBC Scotland I was ready to dispatch a reporter and satellite crew to cover for the national news!! Brightened up my day though!!”
— “You didn’t fool us — well — OK – you did actually…..Wish my mother had been alive to read this – Battery Park was her favourite place.”
