Flashes of Panic

There’s a thin line to tread when you run a news site on April 1. A good joke is a good joke—at RW we once adopted a common jab aimed at the magazine and ran a (fake) press release announcing that we were changing our name to Walker’s World—but there’s inevitably a certain amount of heat from the people who either didn’t get the joke, or just didn’t think it was funny.

With that in mind, I applaud the courage of telegraph.co.uk, who today ran the headline, “Revealed: cash-strapped London ready to share Olympics with France”.

It almost reads as serious for a few paragraphs:

The Government is drawing up plans to “farm out” several events at the 2012 London Olympics—including the showpiece opening ceremony—to Paris.

Steeply rising costs and unexpected delays in developing the London site have forced the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to draw up the radical contingency proposals.

Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, is understood to have set up a top level, inter-departmental working party to consider the options.

One idea is to stage some of the events in Paris, which was narrowly beaten by London to host the Games when the International Olympic Committee made its choice in 2005.

Part of the unspoken protocol, though, is that you have to give away the joke somewhere, and while the Telegraph drops a number of hints (check the URL, for example), they give the best one to the French:

No formal approach has yet been made to the French government about the “Games-share” plans, but it is thought that it is likely to expect some concessions in return for its co-operation. “We are very excitable,” said Avril Bouffonnerie, a spokesman for the original French bid. It is thought she meant “excited”.

Avril Bouffonnerie? Nice. We generally used April S. Loof to give our game away; this is so much better. I can’t wait to see how much of the hate mail they get for this is published.

Now Playing: Hiroshima Mon Amour from A Box Of Birds by The Church

Technorati Tags: aprilfool, games, olympics, reporting