THE run-up to April Fools’ Day is one of my favourite weeks of the year. A day when fake stories are planted in the papers. It’s always fun trying to spot them. But none has ever equalled the Great Spaghetti Hoax.

On April Fools’ Day 1957, the BBC ran a story about spaghetti growing on trees. It showed Swiss women in traditional dress picking ripe spaghetti from trees by Lake Lugano. People contacted the BBC in large numbers. A sizeable percentage believed the story.

Spaghetti being a fairly exotic food in Britain at the time might have been a reason. Richard Dimbleby presenting it might have been another. Dimbleby was someone you could trust.

It’s easy to laugh. Yet who’s to say we would not have fallen for it ourselves? After all, given the gravitas of medium and presenter, not to mention the time’s social context, who wouldn’t have expected the News to be trustworthy?

And fundamentally, despite new challenges brought by the ever-growing problem of fake news, we still do. Yet it is also true that credulity in general is always there to be tested. And not just on a public Fools’ Day.

When I was in my 20s, I was in a restaurant with my long-term boyfriend and saw haggis on the menu. What was that? After a moment’s hesitation, he explained they were creatures peculiar to Scotland, living in the Highlands and rarely spotted. Taking out a biro, he drew the creatures on a paper napkin. They had hairy oval bodies balanced on long legs and munched heather for most of the hours of the day. Timid creatures, they largely kept themselves to themselves, hung around in groups.

A few years after we had gone our separate ways, we met up one nostalgic evening for a drink. In my early 30s, I was planning a trip to the Edinburgh Fringe. Talk turned to Scotland, the Highlands, and finally to that long-ago evening in the pub. Where exactly did the haggis live? Perhaps I could take a trip out of the city and see one for myself.

My ex-boyfriend was taken aback. What haggis? Hadn’t I been playing along when he drew the picture? How could I have thought they were real? And apparently still did?

I stared into my drink.

Yet rather than foolishness I felt loss. I remembered again the creatures on the napkin. It was if something wonderful had just vanished from the world.

As a child, believing any story almost defined me. The day I finished reading Alice Through the Looking Glass, I stood in front of my parents’ mirror, hands tapping up and down, fully trusting I would step through it any moment. It took many hours for me to realise that I wouldn’t.

Similarly, it was only after months of pressing the wood against the back of my wardrobe daily that I finally accepted it might not take me to Narnia.

A propensity for gullibility in adulthood has sometimes sailed me close to social shame. One such occasion was when I was at university. Having started in my early 20s, and it being a four-year languages degree and the first being language only, I came late to the idiosyncrasies of academic speech. It was only in my second year that, glancing over the footnotes in pieces of research, I noticed a particular reference that always seemed to be cited: ibid.

I asked my older brother about it. What was it? Surely, being cited so often, this book must hold an unimaginable amount of information.

He blinked at me.

Yes indeed, he said. A huge, classical tome. Originally Roman, of course, as indicated by the name. He expanded. Continually being added to, this book held references to just about everything from classical times to now. An encyclopaedia in a way, and only available in academic libraries. Comprising so many volumes, it was usually in a room of its own. Best to book an appointment with the librarian if I wanted to see it.

I gazed at him with the same wonder as when I was a child. My brother was so knowledgeable. He gave me his usual grin back.

Luckily, I asked at the British Library on a quiet day. That meant no witnesses.

“It’s a Roman tome,” I insisted to the librarian. “See the name?”

“Someone’s been pulling your leg, my dear. Ibid is a timesaving term indicating a repeated same source. The same as the source used above.”

She frowned at my confusion and tried again.

“There’s no such book as The Ibid.”

It’s now many years since the haggis and The Ibid. This April Fools’ Day I’ll be on my toes as usual, hoping to spot who’s pulling my leg. And perhaps find an equal to the hoax of all hoaxes, that of the spaghetti on trees.