Is it typically a UK thing? Or do other countries have to suffer idiot co-workers with their hilarious practical jokes on this day!?

It's in the US, too. It's based on something from fairly ancient France (Edit: okay, that's overstating it -- I think it was the 16th Century; do a search on ``april fool gregorian'' and you'll get some ``useful'' data), so I expect that it's widely European, and the US has is because it was there before we came from England and elsewhere.

Well, here in Sweden it's mostly newpapers and TV news that are involved. Phony ads in the papers are pretty common too.

A classic (from many years ago) was that you could make a B/W TV show colo[u]rs by stretching a nylon stocking over the tube...

/Michael

I wonder of Donald Rumsfeld will play a joke at a 4/1/03 press conference. "Saddam's dead!" or "We nuked to Baghdad."

Yeah, that'd go over a treat.

not

Don't you remember when Ronald Reagan declared that ``we will being bombing [Russia] in five minutes''?

That went over like gangbusters.