BBC falls for Blenheim Palace's April Fool Woodstock prank

The BBC has admitted it fell for an April Fool that claimed the Woodstock music festival was inspired by a gathering 200 years earlier in the Oxfordshire town of the same name.

Local news website BBC Oxford reported a claim by archivists at Blenheim Palace, which is situated in the UK’s Woodstock, that they had discovered evidence of a festival that took place there in 1769, some 200 years before the 1960s hippy gathering.

The story was posted to more than 55 million people via the BBC’s accounts on Twitter, before bosses realised the error, deleted the post and replaced it with a link to an updated story.

In the updated story, the corporation acknowledged it had been taken in, quoting a Blenheim Palace spokesman saying that while the estate had “a great history of music concerts … this one was designed for April 1”.

The people behind the spoof at Blenheim included a clue to hint that the story might not be what it seemed, saying the 200 people at the 1769 event included “a singer by the name of Vincent Furnier”.

Eagle-eyed readers would have noticed that this is the real name of the rock star Alice Cooper, who was born in 1948.

Dr Alexa Frost, an archivist for Blenheim Palace, was quoted as claiming that its festival may have been the first such event in history, which the BBC reported as “doubtless inspiration” for the US festival.

“We’re already in conversation with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC who are eager to find out more so that they can update their own archives and displays,” Dr Frost added.

A BBC spokesperson said the article fell short of editorial standards and was updated when the mistake was picked up.