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The Jester of Buckingham bringing Middle Ages Silliness back to Britain.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

April Fool's Day Pranks

Well, April Fool's Day is over. The most interesting (although I am bias), funny and generally awesome day of the year has now disappeared for another 12 months. Bit of a shame really.
I am rather pleased though. I was working a lot on April 1st. I performed for some sick children in two hospitals (A job that I have blogged about previously and LOVE!) and then I performed my show in the evening. (More about that shortly)

However, I thought I could not do all of this work on April Fool's Day and not play a prank myself. So, Facebook seemed like the logical option. Quick, easy and exposed to hundreds of people at once. It was the perfect scene to set up my prank and hope for the best. I had already seen a few people with status' that mentioned moving abroad, having babies, winning the lottery and generally extraordinary things. I wanted something that was believable but amazing. Something that would take people by suprise and not allow them to think about what day it was.

One thing that I have mentioned over the years is a desire to work in Vegas. To have my own show in the magic capital of the world would be, simply put, a dream come true. It is something I can aspire to and it gives me a long term goal (who knows, I may make it one day) - many people know this about me and so it seemed like the perfect choice for the subject of the prank.

I set about updating my status to the very simple "Agent just called, Vegas deal went through, off for 12 months as of September" - I figured it is somewhat believable. People know I want to work in Vegas so it is logical I would get an agent to push for that. I had not mentioned any particular deal in the works so people's interest would be spiked and lastly I put a date some way in the future to make people less likely to remember about April 1st. I got some fantastic responses. People replying asking me if it was true, asking if they could stay in the apartment I get, saying they were pleased but would miss me. People even text me to wish me good luck with the shows out there. Some of the messages were so nice I almost felt guilty for it not being true (not the inclusion of almost)

My Dad played a blinder by going along with it. He put a message on my Facebook asking if he could rent out my room and if I could send him food parcels and such. Seeing his name going along with my prank probably helped to seal the deal in the eyes of many of the other Facebook users that saw it.

Finally, at about 11.50 (Even the Jester of Buckingham does not want to be an April Fool!) I replied to my status saying April Fools! to give the game away. Or so I thought. People replied to the message AFTER my comment and still believed it was going ahead. It was not until they read the other comments, after they posted, they realised it was all a hoax. I am flattered that people took such an interest and gave me good wishes and such, but I have to say......

Gotcha!!

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