Charles De Jaeger
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Charles Theophile de Jaeger (27 February 1911 – 19 May 2000) was a cameraman for the
BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...
. He is best known as one of the creators of a famous April Fools' Day joke from 1957: a three-minute spoof report on the Swiss spaghetti harvest beside Lake Lugano broadcast by the British current affairs programme ''
Panorama A panorama (formed from Greek language, Greek πᾶν "all" + ὅραμα "view") is any Obtuse angle, wide-angle view or representation of a physical space, whether in painting, drawing, photography (panoramic photography), film, seismic image ...
''.


Early years

De Jaeger was born in Vienna. He worked for the
Free French Free France () was a resistance government claiming to be the legitimate government of France following the dissolution of the Third French Republic, Third Republic during World War II. Led by General , Free France was established as a gover ...
Film Unit during World War II and joined the BBC in July 1943, working as a sub-editor on news for Central Europe. He became a television cameraman in 1948. He was the first BBC newsreel cameraman to film outside the United Kingdom.


April Fools 1957

The idea for the April Fool came from his school days, during which a teacher had once said "Boys, you are so stupid, you'd believe me if I told you that spaghetti grew on trees". He developed the idea with producer David Wheeler and it was approved by the editor of ''Panorama'', Michael Peacock. A silent film was recorded in Castagnola in Switzerland in March and a commentary written by Wheeler was added by respected broadcaster
Richard Dimbleby Frederick Richard Dimbleby (25 May 1913 – 22 December 1965) was an English journalist and broadcaster who became the BBC's first war correspondent and then its leading TV news commentator. As host of the long-running current affairs pro ...
.


Personal life

De Jaeger left the BBC in 1959 to become a freelancer. He died in London in May 2000.


References


External links


Museum of Hoaxes article on the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest hoax
*
Obituary, ''The Independent'', 29 May 2000
1911 births 2000 deaths Austrian emigrants to the United Kingdom {{UK-tv-bio-stub