A man of rare talent.

I'm grateful to the good comrade Gitane for reminding me about Joseph Pujol "Le Petomane", a man of rare talent. Pujol was that most unusual of acts, a professional fartist. Attired  in  suitably adapted evening dress he performed such wonders as playing a number of tunes, sucking up and projecting a stream of water and blowing out a candle. It must have been in the late sixties that I stumbled across a book about this man with the unusual anus and some years later Leonard Rossiter would star in a film  about him. I remember trying to convince people that it was a true story. Pujol became a star of the Moulin Rouge but I don't think that he ever worked the English halls and if he had I'm not sure how English audiences would have responded. Roy Hudd has collected a huge number of stories and anecdotes about the music halls and one of my favourites concerns an old trouper who peering out past the footlights at the audience discerned a lady in the front row - unconcernedly shelling peas!