Le Pétomane Made a Fortune Farting on Stage at the Moulin Rouge

In the 1890s, the highest-paid performer in France was not Sarah Bernhardt. It was a former baker from Marseille who did impressions with his backside. His name was Joseph Pujol. He went by Le Pétomane, which translates to something like “fartomaniac.” At his peak he pulled in around 20,000 francs a week. Bernhardt, the most celebrated actress in Europe, was on roughly 8,000. So France had a look at its two biggest stars and decided quite firmly which one it preferred.

He Found Out By Accident, In the Sea

The origin story is exactly as undignified as you’d hope. As a boy, Pujol went swimming and accidentally drew seawater up into himself. Instead of being alarmed, he apparently found this fascinating. Then he worked out he could take water in and push it back out at will.

Later, in the army, he turned it into a party trick. His fellow soldiers gave him the nickname that stuck, built from péter, to fart, and maniaque. Then he went home to Marseille and became a baker, entertaining customers behind the counter. That could easily have been the whole story. But he wanted a proper stage.

The Trombone Didn’t Work Out

Here’s my favorite detail in the entire thing. Pujol’s first attempt at show business involved a trombone. He got up on stage in Marseille and played it, like a normal person pursuing a normal career in music. Audiences made their preference clear fast. They wanted the other instrument. So he leaned in and became a sensation across provincial France. By 1892 he was ready for Paris.

He turned up at the Moulin Rouge and told director Charles Zidler he was the next great phenomenon of Paris. Zidler, reasonably, asked what his specialty was. Pujol demonstrated. Accounts say it included an impression of Zidler’s mother-in-law. Zidler hired him on the spot.

What the Act Actually Was

This is the part people get wrong. Pujol wasn’t producing digestive gas. He was drawing ordinary air in and expelling it under muscular control, which meant the whole performance was genuinely odorless. He said as much on stage, in the most French way possible. His parents, he told audiences, had ruined themselves scenting his rectum.

The routine itself was a proper variety act. He came out in a red cape, black satin, and white gloves, looking like a serious dramatic performer. Then he did impressions. A tiny, shy one for a bride on her wedding night. A ten-second effort meant to sound like a dressmaker ripping two yards of calico. Thunderstorms. Cannon fire. He could blow out a candle from across the stage.

The Moulin Rouge had to station nurses in the theatre during his shows. Not for him. For the audience. Corsets in that era laced tight enough that sustained laughter became a genuine respiratory problem. Some women fainted outright. Management needed staff on hand to deal with it.Getting a paying customer so hysterical she stops breathing is, whatever else you say about it, a hell of a review.

He Had to Prove It

People accused him of faking, which meant he had to submit to actual verification. Pujol stripped for doctors and let them examine him. He also gave men-only performances in underwear cut with a hole in the back. Anyone suspicious could watch the process directly. It held up. There was no device, no trick. He also did private shows for people who didn’t fancy being seen at a fart recital. That list reportedly included the future King Edward VII and King Leopold II of Belgium.

The Moulin Rouge Sued Him Over a Gingerbread Stall

The end came via one of the pettiest lawsuits in French legal history. A friend asked Pujol to help drum up business at his market stall. Pujol obliged, in the only way he knew how. The Moulin Rouge found out and took him to court. His contract, they argued, only permitted this inside their building. They won. He paid damages and left, and the club lost its biggest earner.

Their replacement was a female performer doing the same act. She turned out to be hiding a bellows under her skirts. Pujol, who had literally stripped for physicians to prove his was real, must have found that deeply satisfying. He opened his own venue and worked happily for another two decades. Then the First World War started, so he quit the stage and went back to baking. He died in 1945, aged 88, with ten children.