Belgium — Words of the week

Not to be confused with ‘flautist’ (that could be embarrassing), a flatulist is a professional farter. (Look, I wanted to take a break from railing against the patriarchy, okay? It’s very tiring.)

Professional farting has a surprisingly rich history, going all the way back to medieval times, and possibly even earlier. ‘The City of God’, a book of Christian philosophy written in Latin by Saint Augustine of Hippo in the early 5th century AD, mentions some performers who had ‘such command of their bowels, that they can break wind continuously at will, so as to produce the effect of singing’. I’m not sure what that has to do with Christian philosophy, but never mind.

Possibly the most famous flatulist was Roland the Farter, who lived here in England in the 12th century. He was a jester for King Henry II, and each year performed ‘Unum saltum et siffletum et unum bumbulum’, or ‘one jump, one whistle and one fart’ for the king’s court at Christmas. For services to farting, Roland was given Hemingstone Manor in Suffolk (which is just up the road from where I am now) and 30 acres (12 hectares) of land.

Another famous flatulist was Le Pétomane (real name Joseph Pujol) who was born in 1857. He was known for his remarkable control of his abdominal muscles, which meant he could fart at will. Apparently he wasn’t passing intestinal gas like us unprofessional farters do though – he was actually ‘inhaling’ air into his rectum and then controlling its release with his anal sphincter muscles (apparently he could even suck water up there and then blow it back out). Some of the highlights of his stage act including making sound effects of cannon fire and thunderstorms with his bum, as well as playing ‘O Sole Mio’ and ‘La Marseillaise’ on an ocarina through a rubber tube in his anus. He could also blow out a candle from several yards away. His audience included Edward VII, King Leopold II of Belgium and Sigmund Freud.

Flatulists haven’t really managed to make the leap to modern-day entertainment, with one notable exception. If you’re a fan of ‘Britain’s Got Talent’, you might remember Mr Methane, who claims to be the only performing farter in the world. Mr M (real name Paul Oldfield) gave up a career as a train driver in Sheffield to become a flatulist, and went on to appear as a guest on ‘The Howard Stern Show’ in the States, even performing a series of fart acts on Broadway.

Crime might not pay, kids, but it seems farting definitely does.

Mr Methane in action on BGT – watch it if you dare (I couldn't get to the end).

Shaped like a sausage. That’s what it means. Because the Latin word for ‘sausage’ is ‘botulus’. I can’t believe it’s not more popular. Now, you might be thinking that’s because it sounds like ‘botulism’, a rare but serious illness that attacks the body's nerves and causes difficulty breathing and muscle paralysis until your heart stops and you die. And you would be right.

Botulism was first identified in 1822 by someone called Justinus Kerner, a German poet and doctor. His doctoring was apparently better than his poetrying (the only one I can find is about a saw – yes, the things you chop wood with), and when lots of his patients started dying of a horrible illness that paralysed every part of their bodies, he realised they’d all been chowing down on cheap sausages. So he decided to call this new illness botulism, or ‘sausage disease’. He also rightly worked out that these sausages must contain a toxin which he called ‘botulinum’.

Fast forward to 1895 and a funeral in Belgium. Three of the guests at the wake drop dead from food poisioning (which cut out the middleman funeral-wise), and the culprit was found to be some ham they’d all eaten. The ham was sent to the University of Ghent where someone put it under a microscope and identified the bacteria whodunnit. And in a strange case of medical serendipity, it turns out the little bastards were sausage-shaped.

Turn that frown upside down with some biological warfare

Now called ‘clostridium botulinum’, this bacteria is so bloody lethal that it’s up there with anthrax as one hell of a biological weapon, causing almost instant death by paralysis. So surely it must be banned, right? Wrong. Because a little bit of instant paralysis can actually be a very good thing, at least if you’re a woman (or man – but mainly woman) of a certain age or a Kardashian. Because sausage poison has since been rebranded as, you’ve guessed it, botox. The world is a funny place, isn’t it?

PS: If you’ve ever wondered why sausages are sometimes called hotdogs, it’s because in 19th-century America many people believed sausages were made of, you’ve guessed it, dog meat. So they called them hotdogs. Simple, but gross. And hopefully not true today.