My Foolish Attempt At Fooling April Fools (or 'MFAAFAF')

This morning the status on my facebook fanpage read:

Joe Craig is delighted that he's been taken on by top boxing coach Paul Walmsley. This is a real chance to get to the top in the ring!

Nobody believed it or took any notice. Apparently it's either too believable, or too ridiculously UNbelievable that I might be turning to professional boxing.

But the real story of my attempt at an April Fool's Day joke is perhaps told by the message I just left for a Mr Lee Pullen on his (excellent and very entertaining) website:

Hi Lee,

I've enjoyed reading through your website this afternoon. Because it's so well written and funny, it gave me the impression that you might get a kick out of hearing how I found the site...

In a lazy attempt at an April Fool's joke, I wanted to announce on facebook that I was making a serious attempt at professional boxing and had been taken on by a top level coach.

It was just the first thing that came into my head.

I'm not the type of person or physique you might normal associate with boxing, so something made me think it would be funny. And I have enough young, gullible readers (I write children's books) for me to think I might fool a few people. In the end I didn't, but that's irrelevant.

Anyway, I needed the name of a real boxing coach to make my story credible. So I looked for one online, and it turns out there's a top boxing coach called Lee Pullen. So I googled 'Lee Pullen' to make sure that boxing was the first thing that came up (in case anyone decided to check my boxing story). But it wasn't - you were.

So there you go. A slightly amusing tale that now I think about it probably wasn't worth all this typing. Hopefully you'll get a kick out of knowing you were nearly part of my April Fool's entertainment. In the end I went with a different name though. So, um, you didn't make the final cut.

Nonetheless, I have enjoyed your website.

Good luck with your writing and if you ever need a children's author for anything (god knows what that might be) then drop me a line.

Cheers,

Joe