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On April Fool’s day, 1977, Geoffrey Taylor and Philip Davies, ‘Special Reports’ writers at The Guardian, featured a 7-page supplement on ‘San Serriffe’, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean comprising two large islands, shaped like a semi-colon, surrounded by a smaller series of islands.

The two large islands, ‘Caissa Superiore’ and ‘Caissa Inferiore’ (Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse) were described geographically and culturally “in the style of contemporary reviews of foreign countries, commemorating the tenth anniversary of the island’s independence, complete with themed advertisements from major companies”. The capital, Bodoni, was served by Port Elrod and Port Clarendon; the island’s leader General Pica, the south-westerly tip of Lower Caisse was named Thirty Point, and there is even a golf club at Port Baskerville. The dominant population are the ‘colons’, descendants of colonists, although there is also a significantly large proportion of the mixed race ’semi-colons’. Further typographical puns included the city ‘Cap Em’, the ‘Shoals of Adze’ and Serriffean cultural highlights ‘The Ampersand (‘&’ sign) String Quartet’ and popular cooking ingredient ‘Swarfela’ (Printing equipment cleaning product).

David McKie writes “The impact of the seven-page survey was quite astonishing. The office all day was bedlam as people pestered the switchboard with requests for more information. Both travel agencies and airlines made official complaints to the editor, Peter Preston, about the disruption as customers simply refused to believe that the islands did not exist. Veterans of that time say there’s never been a day like it in terms of reader response.” (We should bear in mind typographical puns would not have been as widely understood before the mass dissemination of computers).

Indeed, the San Serriffe article inspired a secondary body of literature, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest hoaxes of all time – credited with generating the enthusiasm for April Fools Hoaxes in the media and certainly taking its place in the common cultural heritage of literary humour.

Well done that man.