At dinner with male friends, our highbrow conversation turned to the embarrassment women feel about one of life’s routine bodily functions. My mate had been in a meeting when somebody let slip a fart, a classic silent-but-deadly one. He was pretty sure who the culprit was and sent her an e-mail. “Was that you?” he asked. “Don’t be so childish,” she replied. We’ll take that as a “yes” then.
Aliens studying human beings would start by noting the obvious anatomical differences between the sexes and move on to document their wildly different attitudes to the business of releasing 100ml (3.5oz) or so of nitrogen, hydrogen and methane into the environment. A male of the species is often happy to take responsibility for this act. A woman will claim that she is incapable of such an emission.
The average person farts between 13 and 20 times a day, depending on which expert (and there are quite a few of them) you believe. Women are not exempt. One report has it that women’s farts tend to be more noxious. I can’t establish the veracity of this, but I thought it important that I pass it on.
Women tend to be more subtle about where and when they fart in public. They bottle it up, which is unhealthy. No less an authority than my brother-in-law, a consultant gastroenterologist, often tells us (not always straight after he has himself let rip) that we should adopt a “better out than in” approach. The National Liver and Intestinal Foundation in Holland recommends breaking wind 15 times a day. Not all women are coy. I have a male friend whose mother-in-law used to let Nature’s trumpet sound whenever she stood up to leave the room, disconcertingly at the exact moment that her backside passed him at head height.
A friend’s husband tried to break down barriers between men and women on this subject by telling a somewhat tortuous and not entirely gallant joke about his wife’s alleged duvet-lifting flatulence. The occasion was his wedding speech. Punchline: “She is the wind beneath my wings.” The blokes roared. The women didn’t.
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But while men are generally more relaxed about this subject, particularly in a familiar setting, a public leak of malodorous fumes can still be a cause for anxiety. In early courting days a man will frantically hold everything in out of concern that an injudicious expulsion will cause revulsion. I remember when my girlfriend left early for work one morning. The door slammed and I breathed, as it were, a heavy sigh of relief. Much later, when we were married, she scornfully revealed, at a dinner party, that as she had descended the stairs from her flat that day she had heard what she had taken to be a blast from a Mozart horn concerto.
My fear of the public display of flatulence (PDF) has an earlier origin. It is uncertain what the Harrow School chess team were expecting when they arrived at my suburban comp one evening in 1983, but nowhere in their wildest imaginings can they have thought they would be undone by the secret weapon about to be unleashed after tea in the library.
Half an hour into the match I farted. No ordinary embarrassing parp this, but a slow, resonant, bass thunder that rose, fell away and then grew again to a crescendo. In my memory it lasts for hours. In reality it was only 20 seconds.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that a fart that lasts for 20 seconds is one extraordinary fart. And you’re right. If you’d stuck me in the centre of Yellowstone National Park, I’d have attracted teams of federally funded geologists.
I got humiliating sniggers. I flushed beetroot purple, pretended to have horrific stomach cramps and blamed the egg sandwiches. My opponent was so stunned that he went to pieces and I won. Had Boris Spassky employed such a tactic, his Cold War duel with Bobby Fischer might have ended differently.
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Such an event has not troubled my adult life. But there have been moments – a packed meeting in the Editor’s office after a dodgy Chinese meal; covering an event with the Prince of Wales in India; sitting in the front row at televised press conferences; addressing a lecture hall of students – that have been touch-and-go and prompted the thought that sometimes life can be too much of a gas.