Just today, I managed to convince two young lads of a Welsh family that The Kelpies (Falkirk, Central Scotland) is an ongoing archeological project and the remaining bodies of the horses is still buried underground.
Their Dads laugh could be heard throughout the postcode when they returned to tell him.
My best take on ‘dad level humour’.
by Slightly_Interested_
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We told an American that the [Martyr’s Memorial in St Giles in Oxford](https://statues.vanderkrogt.net/Foto/gb/gbse131.jpg) was the spire of a church which was so old it had sunk into the ground and that the steps to the [old, underground toilets at St. Giles in Oxford](https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/resources/images/1774820/?type=og-image) were a way to go into the church to see the inside.
A friend managed to convince some tourists from the USofA that the top of Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh had been replaced – there are steel loops inlaid in there (I think from making the trig and view points) that he perusaded them that was how they attached the new summit to the helicopters that brought it in (during the Commonwealth games in 86).
Kind of a reverse tourist thing, but I got caught by a state trooper driving someone else car in Delaware – they were giving me a turn driving their car. It was a Dodge Viper. I was drunk, doing eighty in a fifty zone and weaving. The trooper pulled me out of the car and I convinced him that in Ireland everyone’s insurance was transferable (we were all insured on each other’s cars) and that the centre white line was just an indication of the middle of the road. I also said I’d left my license at home (I didn’t have a license). He let me off with a warning. I think if I’d told him I knew leprechauns he would have believed me. Irish blarney goes a looonnnng way in the states.
Me careful walking in the beacons when it’s damp as Baby dragons hide in the long grass.
They were American and seemed to believe it.
I was in Las Vegas and told them I was junior ambassador of a small town in England with twinned names and here as a minor fact finding ambassadorial role in sharing the namesake of our younger nations new cultures and traditions.
The free dessert was welcomed greatly and I shared my feedback with the great townspeople of Skeg Vegas when I visited…
Drove from Edinburgh airport past those very statues with 2 Spanish visitors. Oh my God what are those, they said. No idea, they weren’t there this morning, I said.
My mate moved towns for uni, and his flatwarming party just happened to take place on the night before the clocks went back. By then, he’d made some friends at uni, including a few foreigners he invited along. We convinced them that Scottish people always had a party to celebrate Daylight Savings.
That everyone in Wales got conscripted into the coal mines from 16-18 years of age.
I convinced a friend that Southwark Cathedral was covered in oyster shells. Can work with any building made of flint.
I told two gullible Yanks that the Kelpies move up and down according to the phases of the moon.
Walking over the Forth bridge, I pretended to see a shark in order to fool my then girlfriend. It was supposed to be for the amusement of the Scottish couple we were visiting, until the lass from Edinburgh said ‘oh my god, where?’
Told someone the story about Arthur’s Stone in Wales. About how it was in his shoe and then he just tossed it out of there and now there is a massive boulder. Went against my belief that people in the world used to be smaller as after seeing it I would hate to have that lodged in my shoe
That mini eggs were tiny, decorated chicken eggs.
I just didn’t want to share my chocolate.
When I started uni and everyone was meeting everyone else, one guy went around telling all of the foreign students that he was George Best.
Had my cousin over from Ireland about 25 years ago. We were both around 11-12ish years old.
We were driving to France for a family holiday. We drove through the Hatfield tunnel and I told him we were in France. He didn’t believe me but I pointed to the TK MAXX store sign and said “look, that store name is in French”. His mind was blown. It went further when I start speaking made up French and he got pissed off because he didn’t understand me. I told him he had to speak it too because we were in France and just copy what I said.
When we finally got on the ferry at Dover over to France, I said we had to divert to America. He of course believed me again.
I still laugh about it. Bless him.
Told some tourists that the [bronze nose](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/The_nose_at_Admiralty_Arch.jpg) embedded high up in Admiralty Arch is a cast of Wellington’s nose and was put there so soldiers on horseback could stroke it on the way to war.
I think I am forgiven though since that is how it was told to me and I just repeated it. In fact it is part of an Art Installation created by artist Rick Buckley in 1997
Told some tourists that the Angel of the North was originally used for human sacrifices, a reusable version of The Wicker Man
And further away, told someone in Venice they needed to use the subway to get to the other side of the water.
As a tourist in Wales at the National Trusts Dolaucothi gold mine we were told the Romans took over the mine and that the mine entrance was made wider so a visiting emperor could access the mine on a horse drawn chariot for an inspection. This was completely made up we told a few years later.
I had the opposite of your question happen. My husband is Canadian and he and his family/friends all refused to believe that pen licence was a thing.
I had to call my mum (a deputy head) to get her to confirm that this indeed was a milestone in British schools.
I love to tell people to be careful in the Highlands in the summer because it’s Haggis mating season.
I once convinced a colleague, before she went holiday, that Spider Monkeys, were called as such because they would give spiders a ride from one tree to another, like a primate hop on-hop off bus service. She then recycled this nugget of information to a tour guide who laughed in her face.
I only know this, because her first day back she got irate at me for making her look like an idiot. 🤣
Cornwall has an entire website for a beach to fuck with tourists. It’s called porthemmet.
Golf was created when the haggis industry switched from hunting for haggis to farming it. Traditionally hunters would creep up to wild haggis and wack them with a wooden club to stun them. This was understandably very fun so when farming became a lot more viable, golf was created to keep these hunters busy, where the haggis would be replaced with a artificially made hard ball.
I, as a Dutch man, convinced the now ex of my sister in law, who was from the U.K., that Heiniken is pronounced ‘Hinniken'(the sound a horse makes in dutch). Due to when the monks who brewed it finished a batch, they rolled it into town on a horse-drawn carriage, and the local townsfolk would hear the horses ‘hinnik’ in the distance.
It was fun when we went to a pub later.
I told a French exchange student staying with us that our cellar was an air raid shelter during the English civil war.
She never made question of it.
They plan to dig down further to reveal the rest of the sculptures.
Told a couple from Texas that the shotguns they heard were haggis hunters (it was actually grouse season).
My wife used to be a tour guide for a castle in Yorkshire, I won’t mention which one or when but she literally made everything she said up on the tours she gave, with a different story each time.
Was visiting Windsor Castle and overheard a guide telling some Americans that questioned what E II R on the coat of arms meant. The guide said it meant “Exit to Right” and then directed them toward the right!!
I was about 12 or 13 and very irritated that I had been dragged to visit a National Trust gardens. It wasn’t long after the first Lord of the Rings film had come out and I was chatting shit to my mum that the grottoes and things were ‘elf homes’. A kid behind me who couldn’t have been older than 8 or 9 heard me and took a breath in wonder and said to his mother ‘elf homes! Did you hear that!’
I was in a bad mood and laughed but then felt a bit guilty that he’d believed my crap.
Walking down the leaning tower of Pisa, about two circuits from the top (so maybe 15 feet) I said to son, in a loud enough voice for the people passing us going up to hear “I think we are about half way down”
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That the Homebase in Brentford, near the Sky studios just off the Great West road, was Tower Bridge.
Not me but a mate who worked in a pub in rural Ireland used to tell yanks that Leprechauns are actually the original, very short, inhabitants of Ireland, and the reason that nobody talks about them due to how embarrassed Ireland is that they have stolen their country, if they buy that, and lots did, then he would tell them how to find the trail to their village.
I’m from Sydney, Australia, and the most common joke I would tell people was about the job of the “pokers”.
Pokers are the people who go out every morning to get the koalas off the Sydney Harbour Bridge before they can safely open it up to traffic.
You see, every night all the wildlife goes out on to the bridge, and climbs up the steel beams because they think they’re trees.
The problem is that koalas sleep during the day, and they can fall out of the trees. Of course, having a koala fall off the bridge and to the road, or a car, is a problem.
So you need these guys with big long poles and nets, who go out and “poke” the koalas off the bridge, catch them, and put them back into the trees.
I told this joke all around the World when I was backpacking.
I once convinced an American in London that we had to tip bus conductors because they were providing a service. “Just tell ‘em to keep the change.” She wasn’t very happy with me the next day. Wish I’d been there to see it play out!
That speedboats go faster downhill
Technically I guess it’s true, however have you ever seen a speedboat doing down hill?
As a wheel of time fan… I approve of that one.
American tourists while I was working on Hadrians wall, they were saying how disappointed they were at how low the wall was.
It’s an odd thing that people come out with sometimes, especially Americans (sorry) the wall was pillaged and used to build half the drywall, churches and tunnels in the north for centuries so yeah, there’s just a bit left. It’s not the Great Wall of china.
I told them people were just much shorter then as a joke, basically hobbits. They took it so seriously and were so fascinated that I just didn’t correct them.
Convinced a group of Americans that the famous Lee & Perrins sauce is pronounced wor-chest-er-sir-shire sauce. They were very proud when I told them they pronounced it perfectly 😅
That the KFC near the tower of London was the first KFC in the whole of the UK and that it was built in the oldeat dungeon of the tower.
Not a tourist per se, but a chap from South Africa that was working in the same place as me for a while. He fancied this woman that worked reception at a nearby dentist that he had been to. He was going to phone up and ask her out, so I told him that British girls love being complimented on their perfume… But in S.E. London the slang word for perfume is minge. He made the call but strangely didn’t get a date out of it.
I once convinced an American man in the uk that the romans weren’t real, by explaining how the aqueducts worked then telling his there was no way that had that kind of knowledge or technology to build them. probably not my best moment but I was drunk at the time and he was an asshole.
We told ourGerman friends that Haggis lived in the mountains of Scotland.
That Haggis had two short legs and two long legs.
This helped them get up and down the slopes.
I once convinced someone that the Great Wall of China has built-in catflaps.
Friend who was familiar with pit ponies in Dartmoor fell for me telling them about the ponies in the underground who were brought down during the war for their protection but escaped and have been loving wild ever since.
Watching them staring out the windows to try and catch a glimpse was too funny.
Told an American friend that the Angel of the North rotated its wings during strong winds to prevent it blowing over.
Added that they were curved like upside down aircraft wings so the wind would actually press it downwards and “make it heavier” so if didn’t take off like the first version which we lost in the historic storm Barry.
Any directions I’ve ever given should probably be considered made-up facts.
I convinced some Americans it was the law to eat fish and chips on a Friday as we are a small island and will be over run by fish if we don’t eat them
I tried to persuade a fellow Brit that the Dungeness crab that was on the menu in San Francisco was indeed from Dungeness, UK and was migratory. I am unsure of wether she believed me.