Without a word of a lie

BY MICHAEL FALLOW

Media hoaxters abound.

THE BBC has the ring of respectability, so you do get taken in. So said Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt, lightly and without reproach, after he realised he'd just joined the ranks of New Zealand politicians, musicians and others duped by a BBC TV crew making a fake documentary about the travels of, ahem, Zimbabwean triplets.

Turns out all three characters were played by an unknown comedian.

Such treachery. Especially after Mr Shadbolt had hitherto happy dealings with the Beeb. He was given 10 precious minutes on its morning global news programme to rebut vile defamations about Invercargill in The Lonely Planet guidebook. So little wonder he was well disposed towards them.

Were you to ask yourself who's more liable to be tricksy – Invercargill's mayor of larrikin demeanour or the venerable broadcaster, it's an easy call. Tim's the lesser fibber.

For all the mayor's occasional pranks, typically at the behest of media for April 1, or charity fundraising, when it comes to hoaxterism it is the BBC whose record is more sinning than sinned against.

Beautiful fibs, some of them. None moreso than delightful footage of Adelie penguins suddenly rising up and taking flight around an exultant Terry Jones in the 2008 natural heritage series Miracles of Evolution. In hindsight, the fact it was presented by an ex-Python rather than that nice BBC regular David Attenborough, might have been a clue.

Or maybe not. Attenborough once reported on BBC Radio 3 about a night-singing Pacific tree mouse that, you will be astonished to learn, doesn't actually exist.

BBC radio has also reported a researcher into Dutch Elm Disease had found exposure to it immunised people from the common cold, with the regrettable side-effect that it also caused red hair to turn yellow. Little wonder there's an angry red mob who believe the BBC has it in for them.

Ginger sensitivities have recently arisen with the BBC's Dr Who series in which, when the Doctor undergoes one of his transformations, new actor Matt Smith looked at his new reflection and mused "Still not ginger". His predecessor, David Tennant, had done something similar. Plausibly or not, the BBC later sought to insist that these were in fact expressions of disappointment.

The BBC's famed astronomer Patrick Moore, on a visit to Invercargill, had astrologers in mind when he confided "there's one born every minute".

The crusty, cantankerous old sweetheart presumably took the same approach when he once announced on BBC Radio 2 that Pluto and Jupiter were aligning in a way that would increase Jupiter's gravitational pull, counteracting the Earth's own gravity.

The upshot, gentle reader, was that at a designated time, we would all, just for a moment, weigh less. And if we jumped in the air, we'd enjoy a bit of a float. Many a stout-hearted Brit did just that. One marvelled that she'd hit her head on the ceiling.

The BBC, in its varying TV and radio incarnations, has po-facedly reported Big Ben was going from analogue to digital, that an island off the Kent coast was a danger to shipping so would be towed somewhere safer, and that God Save the Queen was being replaced by a Euro Anthem sung in German.

Not that the BBC has anything like a monopoly on the finer arts of jolly deception. Among the most enjoyed cases are the Henry Root letters. Mr Root was the fictional creation of one William Donaldson, who wrote under that name to famous figures espousing either abusive criticism or frothing support. He would always find a way to enclose 1, which all-but guaranteed a reply, if only to prevent any future audits showing that one had accepted funding from such a nutjob.

The letters and replies were eventually published, to enormous embarrassment and hilarity. Root wrote to the Conservative Party finance chairman asking the going rate for a peerage, commended the Thorpe trial judge ("You tipped the jury the right way ...") and sympathised with the Queen about difficult daughters ("My Doreen, 19, is completely off the rails too ... " )

Some replies were just entertainingly inapt. TV personality Esther Rantzen, untroubled that he called her a fat idiot and her show a disgrace, sent what may or may not have been a form-letter reply, chirpily attesting that "hearing from viewers like yourself is a tremendous morale boost for all of us".

The boss of Scotland Yard might have reconsidered his "your kind comments are appreciated" if he'd given more thought to the not especially kind tenor of the letter, asserting that it was better 10 innocent men be convicted than one guilty man goes free. On the other hand, the occasional politician who informed Root plainly that he was an idiot received real public kudos upon publication.

Then there are the fake TV interviewers, not so much the fabulous but fooling-nobody likes of Dame Edna, as Aussie actor Garry McDonald's Norman Gunston, a walking shaving accident with a combover and line in wonderfully badly researched questions. How we all laughed when he collared Linda McCartney with "Funny ... you don't look Japanese."

The cutting edge now belongs, firmly, to Sacha Baron Cohen and his acutely discomforting interviews as AliG/Borat/Bruno. These can – well, it's arguable – be defended on the basis of their potential to expose truths about people, or societies, that they would rather keep hidden.

A better case might be the recent Dutch reality TV show The Big Donorshow in which a dying woman had to pick one of three contestants to whom she would donate a kidney. Only at the climactic bit was it revealed as a deception of sorts. The setup was hoax, but a high-minded one. The three wannabes were all genuine kidney patients and the intent was to draw attention to the shortage of donors.

The most exquisitely made media hoax in New Zealand, surely, was the Peter Jackson/Costa Botes 1997 documentary Forgotten Silver which claimed to have unearthed work from an unrecognised New Zealand moviemaking genius, the entirely fictional Colin McKenzie.

It had expertly mocked-up old footage, and roped in such industry notables as film historian/critic Leonard Maltin and Miramax studio head Harvey Weinstein. As a secondary audacity, it also seemed to contain proof that a fellow Kiwi, the real-life Richard Pearse, had beaten the Wright Brothers in the race for powered flight. The Southland Times fielded excited viewer calls the night it screened.

Sam Neill delivered the Forgotten Silver narration and, perhaps in part as a thank-you, Jackson sent a little video contribution to a 2002 ball in Los Angeles honouring Neill.

The video showed Jackson taking a private tour of Neill's home back here near Queenstown, only to be assailed by thugs raiding the wine cellar and then, clasping a plastic dinosaur, flee the house. Just before it explodes.

- © Fairfax NZ News