Did you get caught out by any? 2025 has been a bumper year for April Fools. Must be something about the insanity of the times that means half the stories the rest of the year seem like they should have appeared on April 1st.
At the Daily Sceptic we’ve compiled a round-up of the best we’ve spotted – and thrown in a few real stories that in a sane world should also be pranks. See if you can spot the difference. (If you see any we’ve missed email us here.)
- “TTE Recommendations for Future Pandemics” – On Trust the Evidence, Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson bring out recommendations for future public health scares, including: researching how best to keep a mask in place whilst eating and drinking; recruiting a police force to patrol the borders between nations to stop respiratory viruses from crossing without authorisation; and a new law that compels the public to practice meeting with a specific number of people according to the day of the month.
- “Police must tell suspects that arrest is not an April Fool’s joke” – Police officers have been told they must make clear to suspects that they are not playing an April Fool’s Day joke on them on Tuesday, as policing bodies are concerned suspects will assume they are being pranked if they are questioned for offences such as upsetting people on Twitter, according to the Telegraph.
- “Pheasant Awareness Training for Dog Owners” – From January 2026, all dog walkers venturing within three miles of a hedgerow will be required to complete the Pheasant Recognition and Deference Course (PRDC) — a rigorous programme designed to address what Whitehall sources describe as “an alarming deficit of canine respect towards Phasianus colchicus”, reports Country Squire Magazine.
- “British Empire taught Muslims homophobia, claims historian” – Islam was totes relaxed about sodomy until the wicked Christian British Empire came along and inserted homophobia into the Koran (or something like that), according to Diarmaid MacCulloch, Emeritus Professor at Oxford University, reports the Telegraph.
- “Spiked is delighted to announce our new podcast” – The Circle Jerk will feature three voices from across the political spectrum, chewing over the week’s news. Featuring Femi, the one with the mullet from Politics Joe and Rory Stewart’s wife. Available on all major platforms.
- “My mum in India was willing to lose everything to support my trans identity” – A touching story from the BBC, in which nothing says love like bankrupting your poor mother in India to live out out your fantasy of cutting off your bits.
- “Netflix’s Adolescence will be aired for free in secondary schools across Britain – as Director celebrates ‘we did it’” – Netflix’s compelling new documentary about how adolescent knife crime in Britain is being fuelled by ordinary working class white boys from stable families reading the internet is to be shown in school to all white boys in order to further demoralise them, the Government has confirmed, reports the Mail.
- “Senescence” – Following the controversial series Adolescence which divided critics, undeterred, Netflix has released a new mini-series Senescence which, as the name suggests, portrays the issue of toxic masculinity at the other end of the age spectrum. “What sets Senescence apart is its daring exploration of themes rarely touched in modern television — pension envy, late-onset bingo addiction and the psychological impact of daytime TV reruns,” says Dr Roger Watson in the New Conservative.
- “This is absolutely insane” – On X, Dan Wootton reacts to Sadiq Khan’s plan to permanently change the name of London’s Whitechapel station simply to Chapel after a council-funded report claimed “the existing designation reinforces racial stereotypes and gives in to a narrative of colonialism”.
- The Free Speech Union has an announcement to make:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (1st April 2025)
PRESS STATEMENT: The Free Speech Union is Leaving X (Formerly Twitter)
After long and careful deliberation, the Free Speech Union (FSU) has decided to leave X. This decision has not been taken lightly and follows a consultation with the Centre for Decolonising Knowledge at Sussex University, as part of wider efforts to refocus our operational priorities on social justice outcomes and deliver on our five-year plan to become the UK’s first truly ‘anti-racist’ trade union.
Recent developments on the platform make it clear that X no longer aligns with our values. For several months, we have been deeply troubled by the miasma of ‘whiteness’ that has enveloped the platform, dramatically increasing the volume of unfettered commentary, unauthorised satire, and – most distressingly – people disagreeing with us.
This trend towards so-called ‘viewpoint diversity’ has been tolerated – even encouraged – by the platform’s leadership, who appear to believe that ‘free speech’ includes views our General Secretary, Lord Young, finds personally irritating.
The FSU joined Twitter back in 2020 in the belief that it would be a safe space to publicise our successes, criticise government legislation and defend the speech rights of our members. But it has become something else entirely: a chaotic, unpredictable arena in which users engage in counter-speech, commit microaggressions and perpetuate hateful narratives that many of our staff find triggering.
While X’s relatively recent embrace of ‘free speech absolutism’ may appeal to some, we favour social media platforms with a more nuanced approach – ones that interpret Article 10 of the ECHR in the correct way: namely, by going above and beyond the Online Safety Act to silently de-amplify anyone whose politics we don’t share.
At the FSU, we may not agree with what you say about us, but we will defend to the death the right of Big Tech to ban you for saying it.
Effective from midnight on April Fools’ Day, we will be relocating to a platform more in keeping with our core principle of only posting in a progressive echo chamber, alongside other cloistered members of the metropolitan professional classes who regard ‘constant repetition of dogma’ as a synonym for ‘public dialogue’. You will therefore soon be able to find us on BlueSky.
Click here for further details about the FSU and our social media transformation strategy:
Cc: @elonmusk, @X, @GlobalAffairs
- “Vehicle fuel tanks to be limited to 20 litres by 2026, then 10 litres by 2030” – Did you see the new Ed Miliband press release that’s been doing the rounds?
- “Plans to Rename Quality Street ‘Equality Street’ to Mark Five Years Since George Floyd’s Death This Easter Send the Chocolate World into Pure Meltdown” – And of course, Steven Tucker’s hilarious piece for DS this morning.
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Thank you, Will Jones – Enough chuckles to last until tomorrow morning, when Normal Service of the Absurd will resume across all mainstream media outlets.
But will we notice?
I like to delude myself I’ve still got enough senescent marbles left to spot a load of spheroids.
I was convinced the one from labour about us all been better off from today was an April’s Fool but I suspect they actually believed it.
You know the problem is that the country and the west is so fd up now, any one of the above could be true, because its now the reality of everyday life in this country.
”…late-onset bingo addiction…” LOL.
Well it may not have been filmed in April but this is definitely a fool. What a total plank. Does sum up the clown show that is the British police, though;
”Dystopia. Not in the future. Now. Today. As ravaged, deeply corrupt England slowly exits Western Civilisation, this image of a police girl playing in the ruins is emblematic of a once powerful empire in its flickering, dying days.”
https://x.com/PWestoff/status/1906663487675224517
Thumb up for highlighting dystopia, thumb down for Decline and Fall.
I am sure that the inclusion of one of these was actually a joke in itself, I have my favourite but what’s yours (“mine’s a pint” is not an acceptable answer).
The first one can’t be true because they let all and sundry into the country, and still do.
” Police officers have been told they must make clear to suspects that they are not playing an April Fool’s Day joke on them”…….Reminds me of back in 1998 in the local pub, plod walks in and asks for a chair, one small time crook refused to hand him a chair arguing why he wants it……Turns out it was the 18th birthday of some young lady and he started stripping off.
““an alarming deficit of canine respect towards Phasianus colchicus”,I blame the Romans!
” Islam was totes relaxed about sodomy until the wicked Christian British Empire came along and inserted homophobia”
I think you should be referring to India in colonial times that started to stamp out the fags.
I was momentarily taken in by the petrol tank one, as it aligns with the other crazy ideas from Miiliband. But please be careful not to give him any more ideas!!!
Here’s a cracker, not yet confirmed…
Arooj Shah, Oldham Metropolitan Borough to be made a Dame. This is so ridiculous I fear it may be true. “Unofficially” married to Irish Immy who has in the past acted as a getaway driver for Dale Creggan who is known as the man who blew up two young lady police officers.
Oldham – class.
King’s Birthday Honours. Chuckles loves the muzzies.
And Irish Immy is currently coining in taxpayers money providing hotel accommodation for the Calais Yacht Club “visitors.” The shisha bars are obviously very profitable.
There is real problem in producing satire nowadays – the various pronouncements of governments, charities and activists are often so weird that further parody is impossible.
In which case can I ask that for one day a year all virtue signalling, excessive emotional bullying, and other ‘Critical’ speech is suspended?
Let’s make the 1st of April STFU day.
I’ve just read that Toby sat on the Labour benches in the Lords until that slight error was pointed out to him. What at first seemed like an April 1st joke morphed into a jolly good idea. I’m sure the Tory Whip was part of the ‘deal’, but he could have instantly gone down in the record books as holding the fastest ‘crossing the floor’ in history. As one Labour Baroness once told me “we’re all nice in here” so he would have been made welcome I’m sure. And he could launch straight into a new publication, ‘The Parliamentary Sceptic’.
Chuckles duly savoured, thank you again, Dr Jones. This old wrinkly awards Roger Watson’s mini-series Senescence the April Fool Gold Cup, sponsored by the mineral giant Iron Pyrites Inc.
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What clinched it for Senescence was, “the mobility scooter-mounted camera, which gives viewers an unblinking look at the slow, meandering horror of a retirement gone rogue.”
Commendations and Fools’ Gold Stars for the Two Old Geezers, Country Squire, Telegraph, Spiked, Dan Wootton, FSU and the mole at DESNZ. All other entries disqualified for preceding the Fools’ Cup deadline.
BBC Verify and Mail recommended to undertake mandatory Authenticity eLearning ahead of next year’s annual competition. Guardian’s horse reported bolted decades before even reaching the track.
Senescents of the world unite. All our remaning marbles have left to look forward to is passing on to bright young things the time-honoured national attributes of irony, wit and taking the incontinence out of ourselves before the incontinence jumps the gun and does it for us.
Maybe I’m just not in the mood, but April Fools jokes seem like a thing of the past, associated more with a strong common culture rather than a country on the brink of cultural, institutional and perhaps societal collapse.
Police catch real criminals….April Fool.
Allison Pearson. in her Telegraph column today. highlights all the ‘April Fool stories’ that are actually true, including In an even more sinister development, a Hertfordshire county councillor, Michelle Vince, warned by police that she could be investigated if she continued to help the parents who had been arrested for complaining about the head teacher appointment procedure.
The sad thing is, I can’t tell the real ones from the fake! All but the quality street one. Bertie Basset gave it away! Can you update on the rest?