CLASSIC: Roland the Farter and the Weird World of Professional Flatulence

Fellow ridiculous historians, you have statistically farted about five to ten minutes before you tuned in.

And it in.

Tune it in.

Yeah, there he is, Yes me, No, we love farts. It's fun farting, humor doing it. It feels good, it feels right, y'all. It's human and that's been And there was once a time in ridiculous history when farting was not only a fun thing to do and joke about, but an actual profession.

Let's roll the tape. Oh my gosh, wait, do you guys know any good fart jokes. I know a joke about a guy who farts on an elevator, but it's wrong on so many levels. Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. First things first, everyone, no matter who you are, from a king to a popper, everyone farts. Not the fart would be not only medically fascinating, but it would

Isn't there a book about this? Everybody farts?

There should be surely there is no. I think that's poops Everybody Poops is the children's book, but Everybody Farts would be a great follow up.

Surely there should be one, and that should be a series, a series that we could write. Noel, that's you, oh Man, and you're Ben, and as apparently you also fart.

Yes, yes, even our super producer Casey Pegri. It's just a medical fact that people do this. However, the vast majority of human beings do it purely.

As a.

Labor of love. Purely is a thing that happens in the human body.

It's sort of a regulatory process, right, It keeps your systems and check your guts and all that. Right.

Yeah, most of us are amateure farmers. However, there are a very very small number of people who have managed to become professional flatialist.

It's true, Ben, it's true. And this dates back much farther than you might think. Or maybe I don't know, Maybe it's exactly as far as you might think. Maybe it's even less far than you would think. But where we're gonna start today's story is in the medieval times. Like the restaurant you know where you go and you eat a turkey leg and they got the horses and the show like and the cable guy.

And you cheer for whichever team you're assigned to.

Yeah, it turns out that restaurant concept based on an actual history oracle period.

Right, Oh yeah, right, it's not the medium level of evil the way that some people might assume.

Yeah, I thought that for a long time. You spelled really funny too, like med. I guess it's one of those words I can never properly spell. But we digress. I do at least Ben tell us about fartistry in medieval times.

I'm glad you asked Noel travel with us, folks to the reign of King Henry the Second. There's a great line about King Henry the Second from historicuk dot com the very first sentence of the poor guy's biography, Henry two seems to struggle to make an impactable and popular history.

That's the first sentence, and that is also printed on his gravestone. Ouch, that's not true, but that'd be funny.

That would be funny and sad. So King Henry Two, who reigned from the December of eleven fifty four to eleven eighty nine, was known for several different, hugely important things in the course of the history of the United Kingdom. But did you know, fellow ridiculous historians, that he also had a notoriously popular gesture.

That's right, and we're gonna invoke a word here that every time I see it printed, I think it's a different word. The word that it actually is is flatulist. The word I always think it is when I see it on paper is floutest. Both do involve making sounds by expelling air from their bodies, but the flatualist is a little bit different. It is, as we've alluded to, a professional farter. But what's really cool about this is it requires a pretty specific set of skills, doesn't it been.

That's right, So this guy Noel was known as Roland the Farter. He had several other nicknames. They are in French. At this point, I'd like to ask for some help from you, Casey. Could you help us out with some of Roland the Farter's French nicknames?

Yeah, so that would be Roland la sarcere, Roland la fartere, and Roland la Piturey's.

But off the record, while the court is not in session, I have a couple more questions, Casey, could you translate some of these for us into into English.

So, uh, roland la fartere fartre pretty self explanatory, right there. Fart roland, la piture peture derived from pete, which is the French verb to fart pass gas. So p e t e r is the verb form, and then peture is just that kind of personified. And then the last one, roland la sarcer comes from Old French. And I'm getting this from a book called on Farting, Language and Laughter in the Middle Ages by v Allen. And in that book they write that it's a variation sarce, a variation

Well, you know, they do say you ever heard somebody say something was tight as a sieve? Yeah, maybe they're talking about you know, also leaks like a siev. Oh wow, okay, yeah, maybe no one says tight as.

Hey, let's start it.

Let's start.

I think it starts today.

Yeah, I've excented you. Well, you know, because a siev just lets certain things pass through so maybe you know it's about the action of passing, because you know passing of the guest. I have a question for you, Ben, and I think you have an answer for me. With this gester being a British gester, an English gester, why's he got all these French nicknames? Ah?

Great question. You see, although Henry two was King of England, he never learned the English language himself because his family came over from Normandy in ten sixty six, which means that they spoke Norman French. Now Henry was intelligent, he spoke Latin as well, which was the language of the elite at the time, just as French was. So his court would have a lot of business conducted on Francais.

All right, So let's pop into this Latin section. Here there is a book, a document, a collection of ledgers called the English Liber Feodorum, which translates roughly to the Book of Fees. And this is where we get the information that we know about Roland because it was an account of all the payments that went to various members of the court, but unfortunately didn't have any dates. It just had personnel and what they were paid, and you know what their particular skill was or the action that

That translates in English to one jump, one whistle, and one fart. And this happens every Christmas.

Every Christmas because they had a big old shindig soire thing.

And what does he get in return for this very specific physical stunt.

Yeah, Henry the second must have been a huge fan of this guy, because he was awarded with like lands and an estate.

Right, Yes, he was granted a manor house Hemmingstone in Suffolk and depending on which source you read, either thirty acres of land or a hundred, which is a heck of a variation.

Yeah, but that obvious. He didn't keep particularly good records back in those days, so you know.

Yeah, And we do know that although Roland the Fart really did exist and really did carry out this very specific act of a jump, a whistle and a fart once a year executed, at the same time, we know

No, there's no way. And was this like his big finish, the jump in the whistle on the fire or was this you know, it sounds like he was sort of a member of a particular type of performer that would have had a variety of skills, not just being able to jump whistle and far simultaneously, but this was his particular kind of like signature move.

Yeah, he would pull off.

And the fact that he was credited like that in a legal document that speaks volumes.

Well, that was the only thing that he legally had to do. But surely there was a bit of showmanship. There was a bit of lead into it, you know, probably a couple of politically sensitive hot take kind of jokes, because Jester's ough pi such a unique and powerful role in a court. We also know that Roland was not the only professional flatialists. We know that there are practices involving did I see these pictures to you of Japan in the Edo period? I'm just gonna show this to you.

Noel. Oh, that's a whole genre of art. I've seen like these prints, these Japanese wood cut prints of like dudes just you know, with crazy explosive fart lines coming out of there usually bear behind, right.

There's this artistic trope of in Japan of depicting farts both as satire and as weapons of battle. The word war would be he gossen h e ash g A S s e n. There were also the Brugador or farters of Ireland, and there were seven rule other a ritualistically important or professionally paid flatialists throughout history. Unfortunately, we do know a lot about one of the most famous, I would say the most famous flatialist in history.

Talk about lat Yes, yes, La pet that's right, La Petro Main aka Joseph Pougeol, who was a young Frenchman from Marseilles, I believe, isn't that right, Marseille.

Marseille, Marseille. Yeah, that's been Casey on the Case, Part.

Two, Part two, and we've got a third one coming up. But don't don't you, don't you worry. And that was in eighteen fifty seven, by the way, that that he was born. Yeah, he was. He was the son of a baker, and baking becomes another one of his passions throughout his life. But he there's a really great story about young Pougeol. When he was a young man, he was swimming in the sea and realized that he was actually taking in water up his uh is uh anus.

I was going to say Australia for the euphemism, but or his rectum, we could just go into the scientific term series it's yeah uh. And this happened as he was inhaling. There's a great depiction of this off damninteresting dot com written by Alan Bellows. He returned to shore and he freaked out, understandably feeling this water in the wrong place or an unexpected place, and he immediately goes back to shore where he is astonished to see quote

Yeah, he could actually do this with with air in addition to water, which makes sense, but you know, how cool is it to be able to realize this is something he could control and not just a fluke, because I'm sure he was kind of, you know, understandably freaked out by it. And then all of a sudden it became like empowering. It's like I can do this, you know, for fun. Yeah, And and oh what fun he had.

Yeah. He found that he could deliberately suck water in through this area of his body and then project it back out, even creating a spout that went on for several meters. He thought, you know, this is cool, but let's see if I can do the same thing with air. And in addition to discovering that he could do the same thing with air, he also learned that with the right contortion rhythm, he could reproduce some songs. And again, he's a young person at this point, he's still in school.

I can only imagine, can only imagine. I bet the teachers loved him.

No, no, they might have. They probably laughed about it outside of the classroom.

We haven't even talked about the fact that farts are are funny.

Still, farts are funny because they're something a little bit naughty that applies to everyone.

Yeah, you know what I mean.

It's a very equalizer like death. And as Alan wrote in the in the book that Casey had mentioned earlier, farts had a We're seen as a reminder of mortality back in the day, right, so they occupy this important role. We learned so many fart facts for today's episode, fun far facts, fun fart facts.

Just so.

We learned that the oldest joke in the world is a joke about farts, which maybe we can get to at the end of the story. It's not really related to this, but it is interesting also objectively, I don't think it's that funny. I think something's lost in the translation. But back to the Petal Main, before he becomes this professional artist, he joined the army.

Yeah, and I've seen it in a couple of different places that he actually got that nickname from his army buddies. They bestowed it upon him. And as we learned from Roland, the fart or the peture right, this means fart. But it took it a step beyond where Roland's name was. It took it to the level of an artist, the fartist. Yes, he became known as the fartiste, and when he left military service, he opened a bakery in his hometown and

Yeah, that's one of the common beliefs about them. They contain fiber which makes people regular, right, so that could play a role. We also we had a long list in some old episode of brain Stuff of all the different foods that are thought to be fart inducing foods. So of course beans, right, and brand muffins could be on there.

I don't know.

I hesitate to ask people to write in and tell us about their experience brand muffins in this regard?

Why why don't hesitates? We welcome your brand stories with open arms. So what was his performance all about, Ben.

I'm glad you asked Noel. Initially it was met with a lot of skepticism fart history, said the French audience members. What on earth could this be. Surely it's a one time gig, but he won the audience over. He was a big success. I think now it's time to let the badger ount of the bag. We have an example of some of his work, don't wait.

We do we do? This is what one of his performances might have sounded like, let's roll the tape.

What doing that? Ola found.

No name and we heard it up. I think we've heard it up.

This is what Let's stop there. You could hear it in full.

I can't help I'm such a child. I just think I just can't help but laugh.

Well, it's his it's his also his real job. I'm sure he'd be glad to hear that his craft is respected well in twenty eighteen.

And what you realized he is, he's like he's doing bits in between them. He's he's setting up the different types of right arts that.

He's doing, giving context like any good impressionists. Let's if we can stop the let's uh, let's defer to Casey Pegram. Casey, can you help us out with I know that audio is really rough, but could you give us any guesses at what the petal manas saying in these.

Yeah? So you guys sent me this clip, and at first I didn't know if I was going to be able to get much of anything out of it, but I did eventually kind of decode a few different other phrases, and then I was able to plug those into Google and actually find a complete transcript of the entire thing courtesy of somebody on a Reddit. Then that reddit person was Ariat that was on the r today. I learned

No man uh.

And then immediately after he says lamemn, which is the same dry being failed. So wait what he gambled and he lost?

I think? Is the.

Yeah, yeah, there's there's a little some extra at the end of that one.

Was there something about giraffes?

Yeah? Yeah.

The draft one is bizarre, so la pete dela and metical debut. Part of the standing up draft or the draft as it's standing up, it cuts one.

And that's been Casey on the Case Part three, Part three. We're a Part three and I'm loving every second of it. He also the petal man, not our man, Casey. He also played songs, and he blew out candles, and we should mention I guess some of the song stuff, because that's what seems tough to me. Right, Even if you can expel gas on command, getting the right tone is different.

Well, Ben, it's a lot like whistling, my friend. I mean, you're whistling. You make different challenges by changing the tightness or looseness of your lips. So I would imagine the same would apply to the butt.

We're being very like, I'm proud of us for being as diplomatic. We're doing our best as we are at this point. It's tough, so we said. The crowd reacted favorably despite their initial skepticism. So what happened? What happened to Laptomol after this first show?

Well, he was a hit. He was a massive hit, right, Yeah, And he parlayed that first performance into a pretty lucrative contract at the famous Mulin rouge.

Yeah, the same one that you've heard about in film. And the show started to get a hint danger, right, because people were laughing so much that some women would pass out because of their laughter and their tight corsets. And then one guy had a heart attack and died.

That's terrible, but you know, farting is objectively hilarious, and I guess that's an okay way to go.

Well, they capitalized on it in the marketing. They put up signs and they had nurses stationed around the theater, and the signs would be like, this may be dangerous.

Now let's point something out, okay before we go any further. Sure, this might be grossing you guys out, and I can understand that. But let's not forget that lepetut Man. Remember that first story about the intake of the water. Yes, well, he basically was able to give himself kind of an automatic enema, right, and he did that up to three times a day. He was apparently a health food and

Not.

His effort was devoted entirely to his craft, so his farts did not smell bad.

That's an interesting point. Yet, Now he did smoke cigarettes from both ends, so was it completely healthy?

I think everybody smoked cigarettes, and I think that was just a rite of passage for being French.

It would be abnormal not to at this point in history, right, And it's true his expellations really did not generate a noticeably terrible smell. And just to clarify as the Grand Final, when he's playing the songs, he has an ocarina attached to the end of a hose and he plays through the ocarina and the audience sings along with him, a little bit of crowd work at the end.

And he's a real seasoned pro.

And he gets an exclusive contract with mulin Rouge. Did we mention that part?

No, I just said it was a contract, but yeah, exclusive is right. And it caused him a little bit of trouble because he, I think, did a piece of his act like on the street for somebody, or like a private fart serenade, Yeah, to promote a friend's new business in eighteen ninety five, and that did not go over well with the proprietars of the mulon Rouge.

Yeah, the owner of the theater sued him for breach of contract because of this public serenade. His contract allowed him only to do this sort of performative farting. It's a weird term, performative farting in the mulin Rouge theater itself. And this might make the owner of the theater sound like a real pill. But it's important to note for context. At the time of this lawsuit, Le pental Mount is the highest paid entertainer in the entirety of France. He's

Yeah, we actually off. Mike tried to run this through the handy dandy inflation calculator, but it could not crunch the numbers this time, the timeframe and the currency exchange was a little too much for the inflation calculator to crunch.

Old Flady can't win them all, but the inflation calculator will return in future episodes. You have our word. So he gets sued by the owner of the Mulan Rouge, and he doesn't take this sitting down, because that's not part of the act. He instead fights the situation in court. But while this is going on, the Mulan Rouge decides to replace him with a different performer.

Now it's really really a rough time. I'm for old La Petu Man because they replaced him with a lady f artist named it was just left.

Me.

Yeah, yeah, who turned out to be a fraud fatale.

It's right. Yeah, Apparently under her enormous petticoats, she was hiding a bellows that was being worked I'm guessing by her foot or.

Maybe like thigh master rule. Yeah, but couldn't you see that he's moving.

And adding insult to injury. Her act was a one to one ripoff of his act, and it it. You know, it was quite a kerfuffle.

Yeah, it was. It was quite a to do for sure. No Joseph Parole, not to be defeated, said, you know what, I'm going to open my own theater. God knows I have the money in the capitol to do so. So he opens his own theater and begins working for him himself, and for years and years and years he is doing quite well. He builds up a name, people go to see the world famous Le Petromint, and things are rolling smoothly along until World War One occurs in nineteen fourteen.

Yeah, I don't know. I guess. I guess things just got kind of dark and people just weren't in the same mirthful spirits they used to be, where farts would would make them, you know, have heart attacks in the aisle, they were having heart attacks from like serious stuff, like you know, having bombs dropped on them and things, and just living in utter fear and terror.

And additionally, his two sons were disabled in World War One. So he packs up his career as a professional flagelist and he reopens a bakery, which he was doing at the beginning of the story. And guess what he's known for, Noel, Is it the brand Muffins? It is the brand Muffins. He lives to the ripe old age of eighty eight years old and expires in nineteen forty five.

Yeah, and leaves behind him a legacy of fartestry that has actually been carried on today by a pretty admittedly small group. But there is one guy who is carrying this mantle, and I mean an appearance on the BBC in nineteen ninety seven. He goes by the name of mister Methane and uses the same technique the whole idea of inhaling air into the sphincter and pushing it back

Well, he certainly certainly presents it as such. An we can talk a little bit about the science of this too, but first let's let's play a clip of mister Methane if we've got one handy.

Oh, by the way, this clip was banned from the BBC on the grounds of bad taste. According to this this YouTube clip here, you'd be the judge, a man a mud party of my hatstead. Still, somebody told me his name was phil.

O my hot stead. Still his name was phil.

And when just just set the tone. And this guy is wearing green spandex a with a purple cape and a green little face mask, and that is mister Methane and Frank Skinner performing did Run Run, which is backed by the band the Skinnerettes, for BBC Television nine ninety seven, but apparently it did not make it to air. I want to confirm that, but that is what I'm reading here.

He is not for the record singing. He is just providing the the wind for this. Praised as a true genius, a huge star by Howard Stern. He's appeared on numerous different programs, not just the BBC, but he's on Francis Scott Talent, Britain Scott Talent. Simon Cowell called him a disgusting.

Creature, did in fact call then that's true.

But he also mister Methane, not Simon, got to the German version of the show Dos Super Talent. He made it to the semi finals. The winner was actually a dog.

You know, the Germans are into that stuff.

You can read the entire story from his perspective at his website, which is still up mister Methane dot com.

He also has a Facebook page where he has six and ninety five likes. So, you know, an admittedly niche talent, but very much you know, carrying on the torch of you know, past heroes like Roland the fartr and La pate Main.

And since we promised it in the beginning, we can go ahead. While while we're on the subject of farts, tell you the world's oldest joke. It has been traced back to nineteen hundred BCE, and it is Samerian. These the s Marians lived and was now southern Iraq. And here it goes. Tell us if you think it still translates something which has never occurred since time immemorial, semi colon. Here a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap. That's it, that's the joke.

Yeah, I don't I don't understand.

I don't get it either. It feels like maybe there's some social commentary that applied more to that time than it does the twenty eighteen. But it's it's neat that the world's oldest joke is a fart joke. I suppose, Yeah, yeah, you said you like fart humor.

I just don't think. I don't know. I would rather hear hear a fart than that joke.

And someone who did not like poop humor. This might surprise some of us to learn, was Le Petelm himself. He did not want to denigrate or diminish the quality of his artistry and impressions.

Yeah, he was a fartiste. He had been working on this craft for many years. I don't even think we said that that from the time he found out about his talent to the time he actually graced the stage for the first time. He had been like working on this stuff for like five years or something, and you know, work shopping him.

Yeah, picture him staying up late night at the bakery just humming songs to himself and trying to figure out where he could slip the right fart in. And you know, no, I think this was a pretty good one. This is this is some fascinating stuff. I gotta speak up in defense of farts though.

I wonder how many times we said the word fart in this episode.

Well, we've certainly said the word more often than hopefully either of us have actually farted during this recording.

Well, I don't know, man, didn't you have a stat about how often in a day people fart and they don't even realize it. It's not like they're like big, you know, boisterous ones. It's just like that kind of regulation of your gas.

Yeah, Like I said in the top of the show, it's about a leader to one point five leaders of gas per day, and most people will tend to fart on average about thirteen to twenty one times.

So we're all on this together.

We're all in this together. And as I was setting up in defense of farts, if you ever feel guilty for laying a particular stinker, remember your farts are going to be manufactured by the bacteria that lives within your body. About seventy five percent of your farts are created in your lower intestine, not by you. So the true culprit of a smelly fart is not you, but your bacteria.

But you're saying that the legit way. It's not even your fault because you're really just farting your farts farts.

Right, which leads us to a bigger question, who or what are we farting inside of?

Let us know what you think. You can write to us at Ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com. You can check us out on Facebook and Instagram, or we are Ridiculous History and we should thank everybody.

Yeah, we'd also like to before we go to our

You're welcome, Ben goodbye. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.