I saw the late great
Dave Allen on TV the other day, arguing that the thing that has created the most laughter in the whole history of the world is the fart. This is undoubtedly true. It may not be the funniest thing, but in all cultures and I guess all time periods back to cave man times (and maybe even monkey times) the fart has always been amusing.
I made a similar point to Vic Reeves when I met him a few months back.
Today I did a silent fart which obviously isn't immediately amusing, leaving out the sound which is at least 80% of what makes a bottom burp amusing. Sometimes the smell or the consequences of the smell is what causes amusement. For instance Dave Allen told the story of a man farting in the same lift as him and then nipping out the door, so that when the lift went up the people who got on at the next floor assumed Allen was the culprit. That is funny. But it is mainly the sound that is amusing. I am a comedian. I know.
Even though my silent fart did not smell too badly (and in any case I was alone, I would never fart in company. NEVER!) it made me think of the old schoolyard phrase, "Silent, but violent" which eloquently described the situation of the quiet, yet pungent guff and rhymed as well. All the best children's observations on bum whispers involved poetry. "He who smelt it dealt it," being one of the others, as well as the riposte, "He who made the rhyme, committed the crime", though a clever child could argue that by responding in rhyme the second person had implicated themselves in the trouser trump mystery.
But throughout my school days I remember it annoyed me that there was no rhyme foe the situation where you did a loud fart which surprisingly had no odour. I tried to think of one along the lines of "loud, but cowed" but obviously although that rhymes it doesn't describe the scenario at all. As a child I never found the correct description for this event, but today as a 38 year old man gave it some thought, for an hour or so, which I do not consider a waste of time. To be honest I nearly concluded that there was no combination of three words that would suffice and that the young me had battled in vain for all that time trying to discover the Holy Grail. It occupied me as I lay in bed trying to sleep... nothing really rhymes with noisy or cacophonous. "Explosive and corrosive" would be a good description for a loud and pungent pant announcement, but that is not what I ( a 38 year old man remember) was after here. But I am not a professional writer and comedian for nothing, and the Telegraph is wrong to suggest (as it did this week) that I have never been funny as this entry clearly shows, because after only spending most of my day thinking about this on and off, it came to me. The rhyming description of this occurrence and any school children reading this must now take note and make sure you popularise this at the appropriate time. This is what I came up with and really all that I achieved today. It is "flagrant, but unfragrant" (or not fragrant if think there is no such word as unfragrant and do not mind the rbyme breaking the unofficial three word rule set up by the silent, but violent precedent).
I am proud of myself and you should be proud to know me.
