Get Thee To The Confessionals!

Mischievous Catholic boarding school students get caught pulling a big prank that the German media fell hook, line and sinker for.

Reports that a Catholic boarding school had objected to new sweet wrappers for portraying "fruits in sexual positions" turned out to be based on a prank by schoolboys, shame-faced officials said.

Germany's tabloid press had trumpeted the allegations of "sugar candies depicted as having sex with lemons" on the wrappers of new Maoam candies by the Bonn-based Haribo confection company.

The source of the complaints was a letter from St Blasien Jesuit College near Bonn, stating that wrappers in bright yellow, red and green colours show lemons, limes, strawberries, cherries and oranges playfully engaging in sex.

"We are shocked at the shameless presentation of sexual practices on the wrapping," wrote the college in a letter complaining about the new packaging of Moaom fruit chews.

But the letter turned out to have been a hoax perpetrated by pupils at the school who admitted writing it and posting it on the Internet "as a joke".