Struggling to outdo the corporate world on April Fool’s Day

On this day 20 years ago, I received a phone call from a man with a heavy foreign accent responding to an advertisement I had placed in The Lady magazine for a nanny. I was finding the whole process a bit wearing and had confessed to my husband that there were various people I was ruling out on principle: men, for a start. And anyone who couldn't speak English.

So I told this chap that the position was taken. There was a pause on the other end of the line.

“You’re lying,” he said.

I squirmed and blustered and, after what seemed like an age, the man started to laugh. It was a familiar sound that I had last heard that morning. The jobless foreigner was my husband playing an April Fool's trick on me.

Two decades later I’m still struggling to see the funny side. Being exposed as a gullible, sexist xenophobe at a time when you are witless with worry trying to find someone to look after your children doesn’t feel too good.

Every year since then I have woken on this dreaded day braced for tricks. And braced to find them not remotely funny. But this year I’m planning to do things differently: it is payback time. It is my turn to start making fools of everyone else.

First I toyed with the idea of tricking readers by writing a column in jest that you would take seriously. But what would it be about? It is the year-round job of a columnist to play with readers; most weeks people seem to think I’m joking even when I’m not.

Then I thought about playing a trick on colleagues instead. As I’m new to this sort of thing, I have been researching office pranks online and find most involve doing something silly to the furniture such as hiding chairs and rigging up playground equipment instead.

Hilarious. Only there is a problem with this – apart from the general effort involved. Cool companies do this anyway. At Google’s super-groovy new London offices, it is April Fool’s day every day of the year. There is an AstroTurf croquet lawn and frilly lampshades. There is even a Routemaster bus in reception, which the designer claims “adds authenticity”.

If I think back to the pranks of my childhood, we used to think it was both clever and funny to call the greengrocer and ask to talk to Mr Carrot. To adapt this gag to a financial newspaper, I could call Barclays and ask to speak to Mr Rich Ricci. But if I did that I would be put straight through to the stranger-than-fiction real head of investment banking. And were I to ask him the name of his racehorse, he would have to tell me the beyond-April-Fool's name he has given it: Fatcatinahat.

Now I'm grown up, Rich Ricci and his horse seem too obvious even for a joke. I prefer more obscure odd names such as Mr Curt Custard. Only he turns out to exist as well. Mr Custard is head of "global investment solutions" at UBS and writes for the FT on dates other than this one.

Failing all else, April Fool’s day is surely gagging for a spoof business story, but here again, events got there first. The chief executive of a bank has cut his pay to a dollar? Done: by Vikram Pandit at Citigroup. A man outsources his own job to China to watch cat videos instead? Done: by a programmer in the US. This leaves only one option for amusement: the prank email.

A friend recently sent out a spoof message to his peers impersonating a jargon-talking manager. He invited colleagues to attend a “brown-bag, no-frills thought-leadership away-day” on a Saturday at the Woolwich Travelodge. It was an inspired piece of mushy writing and everyone fell for it. If you are surrounded by guff like this, how are you meant to spot a joke from the real thing?

There is only one thing I can think of that would be a genuinely radical April Fool’s prank in a corporate world that has got so silly. And that would be to send out an email in clear, normal language telling everyone to do something that was both profoundly sensible and deeply unpopular. But now I think of it, that’s also been done. Marrissa Meyer has just told staff at Yahoo to come to work. And everyone thought she was about as funny as I thought my husband was. The only difference is that in her case there was no relief at midday: she really meant it. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2013 )