Of course, a much better trick to pull on an American in London is to have him call 0300 123 1212 and ask for "Bobby". If you catch them on a bad day though, the police tend to be a rather unfunny lot. They're even less funny when you use "999".

Seriously though, any nation that can come up with the Spaghetti Trees of Switzerland in 1957 can't be all bad. To me that was the 'Mother of all April Fools'. I guess I can understand high standards in that context.

By the way, sorry about the way your PM got treated by our President while he was over here. I hope he likes his DVDs...