It followed after two people reported to the local press that they were convinced they had seen one of reptiles. It turned out the signs—although very authentic to look at—were in fact made by pranksters at a local graphic design firm and not by the Highways Department of Bristol City Council.

This week in London authentic looking posters appeared in bus shelters denigrating the police as racist. Printed in the Met’s dark blue colours and using their corporate typeface, the posters seemed to be created by the constabulary, until you read them.

The posters make a number of allegations, these include allegations that the police created the climate to the 2011 riots with the shooting of Mark Duggan. The campaign has also raised issues around the stopping and searching of young black men as a matter of course, rather than their white compatriots.

Spoof signs have always been a part of British culture, along with our ironic sense of humour. Barrow Gurney near Bristol used to have a road-side town-twinning sign that stated the community was twinned with the moon—a reference to a large hospital near the village for the mentally ill. In Cornwall signs appeared directing visitors to Porthemmet in 2007—a fictional beach and the brain child of a local teacher who was making a joke at the expense of holiday makers.

There is even a company called All Posters, which produces authentic looking signs that take their inspiration from another era—with messages such as ‘Coffee, you can sleep when you’re dead’ and ‘Wine, how classy people get wasted’.

It seems the great British public have taste for signs that are not all they seem, which reveals something about the national psyche more than anything else.

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