AS ALL-TIME-GREAT April Fools go, television has delivered the most memorable.

Panorama’s famous spaghettitrees spoof has been repeated more often than Come Dine With Me. Well, nearly.

Who could forget the convincingly staged backroom-boys bust-up behind Des Lynam’s shoulder on Grandstand?

And this year, Channel 4 gave us a real classic – a man staring at eggs not hatching in a Perspex box, for two hours.

Wait a sec. Knowing C4, that might not have been a prank.

Turns out it wasn’t. It was Easter Eggs Live, a “unique TV event” even less thrilling than it sounds.

Hard to believe, I know.

Because, fresh from boring the nation to sleep with Bedtime Live, the network’s surpassed itself with a 120-minute, two-night joke without a punchline.

Not that host Mark Evans didn’t try his socks off to inject some high-octane, white-knuckle excitement into the studio hatchery.

“We will keep you posted as the dramas unfold.”

“It’s so mesmerising to watch them develop.”

“This is an extraordinary event.”

It’s a farce, from start to finish, that unravelled every time Evans overdid the hype, beginning with the presenter calling a freshly hatched incubator chick: “Gorgeous.”

Gorgeous? It looked like Warwick Davis had been tarred, feathered, beaten black and blue, gunged, and left in a helpless heap on the floor of ITV’s The Cube.

A hairy tarantula that looked like death on eight sticks and a fruit beetle cocoon made from its own excrement were also “gorgeous”, apparently.

Of course, two hours is a long time to fill when there’s nothing doing.

But I’ve no sympathy for Channel 4, which for some reason has fallen in love with needlessly live TV.

As the continuity woman announced before Sunday’s show: “Anything can happen.”

It didn’t, though. Not even with the spread-betting 50 species they had in egg form.

Point a camera at them and get Evans to promise they’re about to hatch imminently and, as sure as eggs is eggs, they’d freeze like musical statues.

The rare moments something did happen, the director had already given up and cut to a pre-recorded segment, like Jimmy Doherty at “the Oscars of the chicken world”.

Or “Reading and District Championship Poultry Show,” as I’m sure we all prefer to call it.

Easter Eggs Live wasn’t without its moments. Russian astronauts faffing around with quails in space was the funniest minute I’ve seen on telly this year, and a mother duck miraculously leading her ducklings across a busy motorway was pure Buzz Lightyear and co crossing the road to Al’s Toy Barn, in Toy Story 2.

Some of the experts’ insights were priceless: “The giant African land snake comes all the way from Africa,” and, “This is an African egg-eating snake. It eats eggs.”

As was Evans having the nerve to ask an engineer creating the world’s first synthetic egg by removing a quail’s eggshell and replacing it with a man-made one: “What’s the point?”

Most of the time, however, the show seemed to be beating itself up: “This looks like some massive dropping.” “Without saying anything else, you would say it’s bananas.”

It is. Bananas, nuts, an entire fruit-loop cocktail.

But the question remains, will Channel 4 stop making laughably dire live TV shows for the sake of it?

Only one answer to that.

Don’t count your chickens.

Spudulike awards

● The selfless humanity shown by staff and patients’ relatives on BBC2’s Keeping Britain Alive: The NHS In A Day, the best thing on telly right now.

● Ant and Dec spanking The Voice in both the ratings and the pop charts.

● Sky Atlantic repeating the Scorsese-directed pilot episode of Boardwalk Empire.

● Easter Eggs Live’s awesome space quails.

● Corrie finally bidding good riddance to hubby-beater Kirsty.

● Saturday night TV hero Richard Osman announcing on Pointless Celebrities: “Alistair McGowan, Gina Yashere, Julian Clary, Lee Nelson, Stephen K Amos... they’re all pointless.”

● Channel 5 jettisoning Brian “I like it” Dowling as the host of Big Brother. I like it.

Spuduhate awards

● Out-of-control ego Clare Balding doing The Boat Race umpire Matthew Pinsent’s job for him by explaining the coin toss to the crews.

● Everyone on TV who thought a mind-numbingly puerile April Fools jape was side-splittingly hilarious.

● Broadchurch sidetracking itself with a paedophile storyline.

● The Voice presenter Holly Willoughby’s inability to hold it together emotionally at the drop of a sob-story hat.

● Objectionable The Voice judge Jessie J’s grovelling for singers to pick her (sit down, woman).

● The One Show going to the trouble of putting a blindfold and earmuffs on arachnophobe Claudia Winkleman so she could avoid a piece about spiders, but not going the whole hog and taping up the exuberance-overload sufferer’s mouth too.