The year is 1894 and the people of Paris are taking their seats at the Moulin Rouge for a night of raucous laughter and entertainment. The show they are about to enjoy is…unconventional, but incredibly popular. Nurses are standing by in the aisles since it is not unheard of for women to faint during the performance, although that may have more to do with the tight corsets they’re all wearing rather than the hilarity of the show.
But make no mistake, the person who is about to perform for them is, by far, the biggest star at the famed cabaret club, commanding a salary greater than that of France’s most prolific actors. And all he has to do to earn his money is walk up on stage and fart. He is known as Le Pétomane.
Early Years
Le Pétomane was born Joseph Pujol in 1857 in Marseille, France. At first, he seemed destined for a simple and unremarkable life, if not for a strange and unexpected experience he had when he was around ten years old. During a family trip to Toulon on the French Riviera, young Joseph went for a swim in the sea. At one point, he held his breath and dropped entirely beneath the waves. All of a sudden, he felt a rush of ice cold water filling his body, even though his mouth was closed. Panicked, the young boy got out of the sea and, soon after that, about two liters of water shot out of his butt like a geyser.
Afterward, Joseph felt perfectly fine, and even the family doctor later assured him that there was nothing wrong with him. Even so, the unusual incident freaked him out enough that he avoided swimming in the sea from then on.
It wasn’t until almost a decade later, while Joseph Pujol was serving in the army, that he brought up the event again. Presumably, his comrades-in-arms were swapping gross-out stories and Pujol realized that his anecdote would undoubtedly make him the king of the barracks for the night, so he shared the experience that happened to him during that fateful family vacation.
Quite predictably, his buddies dared him to do it again. And he did…the next time he went on furlough to the seaside, Pujol overcame his longstanding fear, entered the cold water and did the same as before, with the same results. Once again, he was completely fine afterward, and after a few more goes, Pujol discovered that he could contract his muscles to suck up water through his butt. Basically, he could give himself an enema at will. Later, with a bit more practice, he could shoot the water out in a powerful jet that could reach almost five meters and could (and we’re quoting here) “wash your walls with a bucket and a squat.”
This was all well and good, but the true gamechanger came when Pujol realized that he could basically do the same thing with air instead of water. Except for the “wash your walls” part. Hard to do that with air. But aside from that, Pujol would fill his body with air and then let loose some of the most epic farts in history.
As impressive as that might be, on its own, being able to fart on command is only good enough to amuse your friends after a few drinks. It is not the kind of thing you could make a career out of. Fortunately for Pujol, he also had a flair for showmanship and theatrics, so he looked for unique and compelling ways of using his amazing new superpower to entertain others. After years of training, he could pass gas uninterrupted for up to 15 seconds. He could also change the pitch and volume of his farts to make them sound like musical notes. Slowly, but surely, he was developing an act that would soon wow audiences all over France. Before all that, though, he needed to get a proper job.
After finishing his military service, Pujol became a baker. His friends and customers were all aware of his fantastical feats of flatulence which were getting better every day. By 1880, he had mastered the control of the release of air to the point where he could produce short melodies from his butt, as well as enunciate letters of the alphabet and produce specific sounds such as the tearing of fabric or the rumbling of thunder. This was often accompanied by dancing, singing, or trombone music (performed the traditional way using the mouth).
Eventually, Pujol concluded that his tooting talents were simply too good to be restricted behind the counter of a bakery. And his customers were probably getting a little tired of their bread always having a funky odor. So he decided that it was time to take his act on the road. From then on, Joseph Pujol would be known as Le Pétomane, roughly translated to the Fartomaniac.
A Star Is Born
Pujol began performing in his native Marseille. At first, people weren’t sure what to make of him. Pujol didn’t exactly have a look that screamed showbiz and, since the world at large was still unfamiliar with the works of Le Pétomane, most theater managers had a tendency of dismissing him before he could really show his stuff. After a while, Pujol learned to be more aggressive, and as soon as he entered the manager’s office, he would immediately bend over and begin farting in the man’s face until he got the gig.
Oddly enough, this strategy worked for him, and Le Pétomane started taking to the stage all throughout the country, performing mainly in small theaters, town fairs, and private functions. However, despite the huge peaks of popularity he would eventually reach, he was not an overnight success. Pujol spent years on tour, mostly in the south of France, before he finally reached Paris in 1892, determined to fart his way to the top. When he arrived, he, once again, had to find a theater that would showcase his fartistry and he had a particular one in mind.
It was called the Moulin Rouge and, although nowadays it is one of the most famed cabaret venues in the world, back then it had only been around for a few years, having been founded in 1889. However, it quickly became a hit with the working and the upper classes of Paris, and by the time Pujol arrived in the capital, it was already one of the city’s trendiest destinations and a popular tourist attraction. We’re not sure how the partnership between Pujol and the management of the Moulin Rouge came to be, but, in 1892, the Moulin Rouge started featuring Le Pétomane.
The Parisian crowds proved very receptive to Pujol’s unique talent and it was during this time that he experienced his greatest success. Between 1892 and 1894, Le Pétomane was the Moulin Rouge’s highest earner and his audiences included high-profile figures and even the occasional European noble. Exact figures about his salary are a bit shaky and we’re not sure how accurate they are, but some places claim that, at the height of his popularity, Pujol was making up to 20,000 francs a week. That was around $3,000 to $3,500 back then, well over $100,000 in today’s money. Whether this was his own earnings or the total revenue generated for the Moulin Rouge, we can’t say.
Le Pétomane’s act also improved over the years, showing that he was a man who took his craft seriously…or about as serious as you can in the circumstances. He gave himself five enemas throughout the day, so that when it was showtime, his farts would be as odorless as possible. Pujol’s audiences paid to see and hear him, not smell him.
When the curtain opened, Le Pétomane walked on stage dressed in a black tuxedo with a white cravat and white gloves. He enjoyed the contrast between a high-class outfit and the lowbrow humor of his act, but the costume was also useful to hide the abdominal contractions he constantly made to produce the sounds. He would start off with a few impressions – the mother-in-law, the bride on her wedding night, maybe a few animals, that sort of thing. He would also blow out candles using his flatuosity, and perform several song renditions, including the French national anthem which Pujol saved for the finale.
At one point, Le Pétomane would walk off stage and return with a tube inserted in his…well, you can guess where. He would then use it to smoke a cigarette and play a flute. Finally, when it was time to end the show, Le Pétomane would extinguish the gas footlights that were used to light the stage one by one.
Leaving the Moulin Rouge
The act made Le Pétomane the star of the Moulin Rouge, but not for very long. In 1894, less than two years after he began performing there, Pujol felt as if he had outgrown the stage that the Moulin Rouge could provide. He was beginning to wonder why exactly the theater was taking a large chunk of the earnings when it was his farts that were putting butts in seats. So he left the Moulin Rouge and established his own theater company called the Théâtre Pompadour. The split was not amicable. In fact, after Le Pétomane performed his first solo show, the Moulin Rouge sued him successfully for breach of contract.
That is one version of the story. Another one says that, one day, Pujol tried to help a down-on-his-luck friend who had a stall in a marketplace by giving an impromptu performance in front of his stall and farting up some business for him. When the Moulin Rouge heard of this, they sued him, prompting Parisian newspapers to joke that, according to his contract, Le Pétomane was only allowed to fart inside the Moulin Rouge. The cabaret club won the lawsuit, but angered Pujol enough that he left when his contract expired and founded his own company.
The animosity between Le Pétomane and his former employer resumed a few years later when, in 1898, he sued them, this time for copying his show by hiring a female farter and promoting her as La Femme-Pétomane. Pujol lost the suit, but had the last laugh when his female counterpart was exposed as a fake who used a bellows hidden underneath her skirt to produce the wind necessary for her act.
Pujol continued performing and refining his act for years afterward, but he never again reached the same heights of popularity. There are only so many times that people can laugh at farts and, after a decade or so, the novelty had worn off and Pétomania was no more. Then, the horrors of World War I replaced humor and frivolity and left Europe a much more serious place with no room for fart jokes. At that point, Le Pétomane abandoned the stage completely, and Joseph Pujol lived out the rest of his years quietly outside the limelight. He went back to the only other career he knew, that of a baker, and opened a biscuit factory.
He died in 1945, aged 88. Allegedly, a Parisian medical school requested his body after his death to study his extraordinary rectum, but Pujol’s family denied their request, stating that “some things in life must simply be treated with reverence.”
