“Most people will believe nearly anything”

Those are the words of professional hoaxer Alan Abel, one of my childhood heroes – who, I’m happy to report, is still going strong today. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s hard at work right now, devising some new way to render the valuable public service of giving people what he calls “a kick in the intellect”.

If Alan Abel didn’t exist, he would probably have invented himself as a publicity stunt. In the distinguished tradition of the fool of antiquity, “Abel challenges the obvious and utters the outrageous”, to quote the New York Times. And they should know: in January 1980 he managed to get that same newspaper to publish a report of his own death which proved to be, let’s say, less than totally accurate in certain material respects.

His book Yours For Decency (originally published in the US in 1966 as The Great American Hoax) is one of the funniest books I have ever read. I enjoy a good laugh, but I have a very low tolerance threshold when it comes to suspension of disbelief. So when I know the story being recounted is real rather than fictitious, I find the whole enterprise vastly more amusing.

In 1959, Abel (an ad man who once floated the concept of renting out advertising space on bald men’s heads), dreamed up a tongue-in-cheek crusade, spearheaded by an imaginary character named G. Clifford Prout Jr., dedicated to clothing cats, dogs, cows and other animals in the name of public decency. His satirical send-up of censorship and hypocrisy in contemporary American society was widely perceived as a serious undertaking. Somehow he managed to keep a straight face (in public) in his superbly deadpan role as “Vice President” of the ironically named Society for Indecency to Naked Animals [sic].

SINA had a prestigious New York mailing address and telephone number. But its “office” actually consisted of a locked broom cupboard with a nameplate on the door. For nearly six years, Abel, his wife Jeanne, and actor Buck Henry in the role of “President” G. Clifford Prout Jr. attracted media attention, some enthusiastic support, and quite a bit of outraged hostility.


Buck Henry and Alan Abel field questions about the SINA hoax during a press conference in New York City (1962).
Photo by Kelly Hart, © Alan Abel.


Alan Abel holding a copy of the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals official magazine (1964).
Photo by Sasch Rubenstein, © Alan Abel.

SINA was just one of a number of hoaxes that Abel has perpetrated on an unsuspecting American public over the years. His success speaks volumes about the media’s readiness to carelessly accept sensational stories at face value, and the hoaxes make illuminating case studies in human gullibility.

Abel’s daughter Jenny has made a film – Abel Raises Cain – as a personal account of her father’s life and work. I haven’t seen it yet, but a reviewer writing in the STAR-TRIBUNE describes it like this: “An affectionate portrait of a gadfly dedicated to lampooning American society’s foibles, the laziness of the media and the tendency in all of us to swallow what we really want to believe but shouldn’t”.

The movie has been screened at film festivals in the US, Canada, New Zealand and other countries, and, as you might have guessed, I’m planning to buy the DVD. You can find out more about Abel Raises Cain here.

Have any of you read Jane Eyre?

It happened during an English Literature class at school when I was about 14 or 15, but I still remember it as if it was yesterday. Like most teenage kids, I dreaded looking silly in front of my classmates – particularly my friend “Fizz” who sat next to me. (In those days, I was known as “Buckets”, incidentally.) Fizz already thought I was crazy for getting a book called Letters of Giuseppe Verdi out of the library, and he also failed to see how I could find a book with a title like Memoirs of an Interpreter interesting.

But this particular day, our teacher, Mr Hodgkins, casually asked the class, in passing: “Have any of you read Jane Eyre?” If I remember correctly, one of the girls immediately put her hand up. A few seconds later, I put my hand up, too. This was an important test for me, you see, because of my religious convictions: I needed to tell the truth at all times and at all costs. Why the few seconds of hesitation, then? You’re probably ahead of me: I hesitated briefly (and humanly) because I didn’t want to look silly in front of Fizz and all the others, obviously. And if you’d been there, you would indeed have heard some sniggering when I put my hand up.

There is, however, one problem with that explanation: despite all appearances, it’s simply not true. It just so happens that fear of possible ridicule was not the reason I hesitated at all in this particular case. In fact, I would have been very proud to “admit” to having read the classic novel by Charlotte Brontë – and, indeed, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by her sister Anne Brontë, if it came to that (so there!). The reason I hesitated was because I was struggling to resolve a serious problem: I didn’t know whether or not I would be telling the truth if I put my hand up, because – get this – I honestly and sincerely didn’t know whether or not I had actually read Jane Eyre (or The Tenant of Wildfell Hall either, if it came to that)!

Confused? You bet I was. No, sorry – I mean: “And so you should be”. But, you see, the fact of the matter was that I had listened to the entire unabridged text of both of those books broadcast over the air as serialisations on BBC radio in the evenings. But I had no recollection of ever having set eyes on a single printed page of either of the two books. So had I read Jane Eyre? Well, I thought to myself, it depends what you mean. Yes. No. And also Yes-and-No. All three at once, in fact. But how do you indicate all that by putting up your hand, not putting up your hand, and putting-up-and-not-putting-up your hand all at the same time? Quite a problem, isn’t it? And there wasn’t a moment to lose! The question sent my mind (and my pulse) racing. Fortunately, I managed to figure out the right response in time. Phew!

If I’d got it wrong, though, maybe I could have emulated what Giuseppe Verdi did once after he made a social gaffe: “In a fury, I took a revolver and fired it into my mouth. It was made of chocolate. And I live – alas! alas!”

Twas the season for bad public relations

“Be deaf! The herald angels do not sing;
Wrong ring the bells: ding ding not dong.
To wish you ill in non-rhyme on this non-Christmas card
Is not easy; it is difficult.”

These lines were penned by Paul Francis Jennings (1918–1989), a British humorist whose weekly columns (originally published in the Observer) were reprinted in books with titles like “Oddly Enough” and “Even Oddlier”. I enjoyed his writings during my schooldays, and his tongue-in-cheek suggestion about sending “non-Christmas cards” really captured my imagination. I even toyed with the idea of sending some to my friends.

One of Paul Jennings’ later books was entitled “I Was Joking, Of Course” – an ironic reference, no doubt, to some documented occasions when certain readers had mistaken his satires for serious journalistic reports. But even he would probably have been astonished to learn, as I myself was several years later, that the non-Christmas card, far from being merely an imaginary animal, really did exist: The sister of a friend of mine once received a “non-Christmas card” from somebody who had stopped keeping Christmas because they had discovered what we used to call “The Plain Truth About Christmas”. Apparently there used to be pre-printed cards that new converts to our church could (if they so wished) send to their family and friends, thus making it easier for them to explain why they would no longer be sending Christmas cards. My friend described this as “not a very good public relations exercise” – but nevertheless, he eventually went on to become a church member himself.

I wonder if any of those cards are still around.

The Big Question

When I was about 9 or 10, my father bought me a book about the theological implications of the Great Pumpkin and related issues. No doubt he wanted to help ensure that my theological education was not going to be informed solely by the publishers of a magazine called The Plain Truth. The book was a paperback, entitled “The Gospel According to Peanuts”. I remember that the publisher was Fontana Books, but I don’t recall the author’s name.

Most of the points the author was trying to make went way above my head, but I did enjoy the cartoons. Amusingly enough – and typical of the “put the cart before the horse” approach that sometimes helped to make my upbringing such fun – I had never even heard of the world-famous Charles M. Schulz cartoons before, so I actually discovered the world of “Charlie Brown and friends” for the first time in a book about theology!

By an amazing coincidence, one of my all-time favourite Peanuts cartoons also happens to be one that deals with the subject of theology, although its implications go much further than that.

It’s the one where Charlie Brown discovers that Snoopy is writing a book about theology and says, “I hope you have a good title.” Snoopy’s reply is priceless: “I have the perfect title: Has It Ever Occurred to You That You Might Be Wrong?”

It’s a good question, isn’t it?

When do I become a sausage?

German tourist sitting in an English café, waiting for his order to arrive:

“I am sitting here since ten minutes. When do I become a sausage?”

(“Bekommen” is German for “to receive”, but it is occasionally confused with the English word “become”.)

Well, as a child I was once almost on the receiving end of not just one sausage but a whole packet of sausages, hurled in my general direction by an irate family member who had just been reading my copy of a book entitled “The United States and British Commonwealth in Prophecy”. Immediately preceding that, I gained a new perspective on the words “I will overturn...” (Ezekiel 21:27 KJV) as I witnessed the kitchen table being upended and some newly purchased groceries sent flying onto the kitchen floor.

Shortly after that, I decided to stop eating sausages.

Logical? An obvious case of cause and effect? Not at all, as it happens. There was no causal connection between the two events. And here’s another surprising fact: there are thousands of people around the world who will have no difficulty understanding exactly what I’m talking about. With that kind of heritage in common, no wonder some of us enjoy keeping in touch.

Did your parents come to this school?

At the age of 11, on an introductory visit to Maldon Grammar School, where I would shortly start attending, I was asked an apparently simple question by my future form teacher: “Did one of your parents come to this school?” I answered, “Yes.” Next question: “Was it your mother or your father?” “My father,” I replied. “And do you know which house he was in?” “No, I don’t know.” Easy as ABC, wasn’t it?

Well, hold on a moment…

You see, in my eagerness to answer truthfully (combined with my well-known ability to misunderstand the most “obvious” things), what I actually meant was: Yes, my father came to this school a couple of weeks ago to attend an introductory evening for parents. (He had had his entire schooling several hundred miles away up in Scotland and had never previously set foot on the premises of Maldon Grammar School in his life!) Maybe, I surmised, they had divided the visiting parents up into sub-groups called “houses” for some obscure reason, but my father certainly hadn’t told me anything about that when describing his visit. So, in the words of Mark Twain, “I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.”

During the summer, I was away visiting relatives in Scotland with my mother and sisters. On our return, my father showed me a letter he had received from the Headmaster, stating: “You child informs me that you are a former pupil of this school but was unable to tell me which house you were in...” – and inviting him to provide the missing information “so that we can continue the family tradition”!

My father, convinced that I would never have said anything like that, had immediately written back acknowledging receipt of the letter, “which I can only assume has been sent as the result of an administrative error”...

So I managed to get some unwelcome attention from the Headmaster, and maybe even appeared to be a liar because I had endeavoured to tell the truth.

And you thought you had problems!

PS: Amusingly enough, I learned later that my score on the entrance exam had been 100%. They tested my “verbal reasoning” skills – but not, apparently, my common sense!