{"id":195518,"date":"2020-08-05T16:00:49","date_gmt":"2020-08-05T15:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.factstoryhub.com\/?p=195518"},"modified":"2025-02-20T12:51:55","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T12:51:55","slug":"horace-de-vere-cole-facts","status":"publish","type":[],"link":"https:\/\/www.factstoryhub.com\/horace-de-vere-cole-facts\/","title":{"rendered":"Horace De Vere Cole – Prankster Extraordinaire"},"content":{"rendered":"
In the information age, pranksters are a dime a dozen.\n
With the medium of the internet and platforms like YouTube, it\u2019s hard to go a week without hearing about or seeing a prank video.\n
However, back in the pre-internet days, a prankster \u2013 let alone a good one \u2013 was hard to find.\n
Today\u2019s article is about one legendary prankster who lives on in infamy.\n
His name was Horace de Vere Cole, and he was a very bored Irish-born Englishman from a background of wealth and nobility.\n
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Cole studied at Trinity College in Cambridge where he pulled a few different school pranks, the most famous of which became known as the Cambridge Zanzibar hoax.\n In early 1905, during his second year At Trinity College, Cole and his friend Adrian Stephen (Virginia Woolf\u2019s brother) heard that Sayyid Ali bin Hamud Al-Busaid, eighth Sultan of Zanzibar, was visiting England.\n Originally, the two lads wanted to arrange for a fake state visit of the Sultan to Cambridge, although they realized his picture had recently been printed in the press, so there was a risk their fake Sultan would get caught out.\n So they decided that Cole would impersonate the Sultan\u2019s uncle, and sent a telegram to the Mayor of Cambridge asking him to arrange a suitable reception for the Sultan\u2019s uncle and a tour of Cambridge and the Trinity College.\n The two students borrowed some robes and turbans from the theatrical costume designer Willy Clarkson, applied some fake tan and took the train to Cambridge from London.\n When they stepped off the train they were greeted by a luxury carriage which took them to the guildhall where they met the Mayor and Town Clerk.\n They were then taken on a tour of the town by the two, including a tour of the college they were studying at, being seen by some of their friends who didn\u2019t even recognize them!\n After an hour they demanded to be returned to the station, although they couldn\u2019t travel back to London as that would mean breaking the College’s 10 PM campus curfew.\n So when they got to the station they ran out a side exit, took a cab home, and got back into their normal clothes!\n The next day, Cole gave an interview to the Daily Mail detailing the prank which went viral.\n The Mayor was so livid he wanted the two students imprisoned, but the public had loved Cole\u2019s prank and it would have badly damaged the Mayor\u2019s rep so he decided not to.\n Cole relished playing pranks aimed at deflating pompous figures of authority, especially after the Zanzibar prank.\n He targeted politicians, businessmen and military officers.\n He held a striking resemblance to the then-Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald of the Labour Party.\n He once gave a public speech, acting like the PM, where he launched into a massive attack on the Labour Party\u2019s policy, leaving everyone attending very confused and a little concerned!\n On one occasion, Cole got a bunch of his friends to dress up as workmen while he dressed up as a foreman and directed them to dig a giant trench across Piccadilly!\n On another, he dared an old school friend \u2013 newly elected Member of Parliament Oliver Locker-Lampson \u2013 to run ahead of him on a busy street with a 10-yard head start.\n As Locker-Lampson took off and Cole gave chase he yelled out \u201cStop! Thief!\u201d after planting his gold Rolex in his friend\u2019s pocket.\n A nearby policeman tackled the horrified Locker-Lampson and started to arrest him before Cole arrived and explained it was a prank.\n Cole once bought eight strategically-placed tickets to a play he thought to be pretentious and gave the tickets to eight different bald men.\n Before they went in, Cole painted a big black letter on each of their heads so when the lights shone on the audience they spelled out the word “B-O-L-L-O-C-K-S!”\n He also once hosted a dinner party where all the guests discovered during the party that they all had the word “bottom” in their surnames.\n Another popular prank of Cole\u2019s that he did repeatedly was to walk around with a cow\u2019s udder poking out the fly of his trousers.\n Whenever he felt he\u2019d caused enough uproar he would pull out a pair of scissors and chop the appendage off!\nPranks, pranks, and more pranks.\n
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