I once took an exam in which I had to write an essay on the connection between intelligence and eccentricity.

I argued that wisdom and foolishness are often closer than we think but the trouble was I had no actual evidence to prove my point.  So, in the true spirit of every student who has not done enough work, I made something up.  Specifically, I concocted the story of an eminent 18th century magistrate in St Albans, whose judgements were acclaimed for their wisdom but whose foolish custom it was to ride to court on a cow.  I named this fictional person after my actual friend Richard Tarrant, to whom I would now, forty years later, like to apologise.

It was hardly the funniest joke ever, but April 1st is a dangerous day to claim to have made the funniest joke ever, because much funnier jokes are happening all around us.  Everybody’s hilarious on April Fools’ Day, from the BBC to the child who put a rubber spider in your bed.

On the other hand, that also makes April 1st a dangerous time to come here and attempt to say anything serious, because April 1st is the day when seriousness is absolutely not the issue.  It’s the precise opposite: April Fools’ is the birthday of the absurd, the anniversary of the ridiculous, the feast day of fun.  It’s the Ken Dodd of days.

Strangely, St Paul wrote a letter to his friends in the city of Corinth in which he made the spectacular claim that Jesus himself is a joke, and possibly the funniest joke of all time.

Paul called it wise foolishness, and like all the best April Fools, there is joy in the gag: the preposterous, hilarious idea that God chooses, as Christians believe, to become a real human person in order to express love and solidarity with all the other real human people.

And if there is joy to be derived from any of the April Fools gags we will read, see and suffer today, I reckon it is in the solidarity that comes with laughter, with delight in not only fooling but being fooled and being foolish.  Because in a serious world, every ridiculous, laughing moment of solidarity reminds us how infinitely better than what divides us are all the foolish human things that bind us together.

The image at the top is by Aelbert Cuyp: Cows, etching, 1640-1665; Gift of Bishop Monrad, 1869; Te Papa Tongarewa (Museum of New Zealand); (1869-0001-95)