The appearance of Mr Methane on Britain's Got Talent recently brought back a few memories. I'd got wind, so to speak, that the UK's only professional flatulist was appearing. But I did not anticipate just how cruel and nasty the judges would be and how even the audience would turn against him like a legion of Roman Emperors sending an admittedly rather skinny gladiator to his fate. A real bummer. Simon Cowell told the 43-year-old: "Paul, you are without doubt the most hideously offensive person I have ever met". I doubt if that will worry Mickey Methane, from Macclesfield, whose real name is Paul Oldfield. He has been a consummate self publicist since I became the first journalist to write about him back in 1990 when he was 23. And however bilious the panel's comments, Mr Methane will be revelling in the PR value of his brief appearance on high profile national television. I took the first photograph of him to appear in the Manchester Evening News, sitting in my lounge astride my then six-year-old daughter's rocking horse. I don't think she ever used it afterwards. Paul, who is 6ft 7in tall, left school at 17 and did a variety of jobs including being a car park attendant and train driver. Five years later he devised his signature routine which you can see here and one of his first television appearances was on the James Whale Show. On another occasion, on foreign TV this time, he met Sweden's new female foreign minister Margaretha af Ugglas and promptly gave a rendition of God Save the Queen, the sound emanating from his back passage. Alimentary, my dear minister. Asked by me in a lifestyle quiz if he could recall his first kiss he said: "Yes, it was a Salford kiss and put my lights out." Thereafter, Mr Methane would ring periodically offering a range of daft stories. Some were usable, like the time he was booked as the cabaret at the Christmas Party of a major seller of women's perfume. When the managing director found out he went berserk and cancelled the party, yielding another national newspaper page lead. Paul continued his rounds of student gigs and zany foreign nightclub spots but he never got a sniff of the big time, unlike his great hero Le Petomane. The story ideas dwindled and eventually the calls stopped. My career as an unpaid PR for the Sultan of Stink was behind me. Paul once told me his ultimate ambition was to run a farm in the Lake District. I wonder if the appeal was the thought of all that muck spreading.
Monday 11 May 2009
Mr Methane
The appearance of Mr Methane on Britain's Got Talent recently brought back a few memories. I'd got wind, so to speak, that the UK's only professional flatulist was appearing. But I did not anticipate just how cruel and nasty the judges would be and how even the audience would turn against him like a legion of Roman Emperors sending an admittedly rather skinny gladiator to his fate. A real bummer. Simon Cowell told the 43-year-old: "Paul, you are without doubt the most hideously offensive person I have ever met". I doubt if that will worry Mickey Methane, from Macclesfield, whose real name is Paul Oldfield. He has been a consummate self publicist since I became the first journalist to write about him back in 1990 when he was 23. And however bilious the panel's comments, Mr Methane will be revelling in the PR value of his brief appearance on high profile national television. I took the first photograph of him to appear in the Manchester Evening News, sitting in my lounge astride my then six-year-old daughter's rocking horse. I don't think she ever used it afterwards. Paul, who is 6ft 7in tall, left school at 17 and did a variety of jobs including being a car park attendant and train driver. Five years later he devised his signature routine which you can see here and one of his first television appearances was on the James Whale Show. On another occasion, on foreign TV this time, he met Sweden's new female foreign minister Margaretha af Ugglas and promptly gave a rendition of God Save the Queen, the sound emanating from his back passage. Alimentary, my dear minister. Asked by me in a lifestyle quiz if he could recall his first kiss he said: "Yes, it was a Salford kiss and put my lights out." Thereafter, Mr Methane would ring periodically offering a range of daft stories. Some were usable, like the time he was booked as the cabaret at the Christmas Party of a major seller of women's perfume. When the managing director found out he went berserk and cancelled the party, yielding another national newspaper page lead. Paul continued his rounds of student gigs and zany foreign nightclub spots but he never got a sniff of the big time, unlike his great hero Le Petomane. The story ideas dwindled and eventually the calls stopped. My career as an unpaid PR for the Sultan of Stink was behind me. Paul once told me his ultimate ambition was to run a farm in the Lake District. I wonder if the appeal was the thought of all that muck spreading.
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