Inspired by the infamous YouTube videos featuring ‘The Farting Preacher’ I simultaneously created and killed off my very own farting preacher character. He only exists in the confines of this obituary. This is his story.

OBITUARY

Hank in happier times. One mouth mic, one cheek mic.

Hank “Oh, God I Love Jesus” O’Flatulence, aka the self-styled Farting Preacher, sadly gassed away peacefully in his sleep in the early hours of yesterday morning, at his home in Redneck, Texas. Doctors cited bottom complications as the major reason for his demise: the unfortunate physical side effects of a life-long connection betwixt chocolate-starfish and the Almighty.

The first time that the Lord used young Hank Bannen’s (he changed his surname to O’Flatulence in 1972) arse as a conduit for his holy message, it saved Hank’s life. Wounded while trying to subdue an unruly nigger, Hank was thrown down the slope of a mountain, where he would have lain undiscovered until his death were it not for his peculiar anal divinity.

Lineker tries to get in on the act.

Hank recalled, in an interview with Gary Lineker in 1987: ‘I was just lyin’ there, and the wind was knocked out of me. Or so I thought, Gary. I just couldn’t get the words out. And I just knew I was close to death, I could feel God whispering in my ear. My momma and papa were calling out for me, calling out, all of the time, and they walked right by the bush I was lying in, and I thought to myself, God, if you can hear me, please help me, and I will be your servant in this world for the rest of my life.’

Both sides made good on the deal. Hank claims that God chose that moment to send through him a powerful rush of wind that culminated in the most explosive fart that Hank’s father had ever heard, or ever would hear.

‘In fact I shit myself,’ remembered Hank.

The local ‘community’ rallying to help Hank. Shortly before he killed them all.

Young Hank was discovered and found himself on a sacred path that would lead to the foundation of his church and the harnessing of the awesome and Heaven-blessed power of his holy fart-factory. ‘My cheeks are my church and my farts are my sermon,’ was a phrase that Hank would later coin.

Hank met and married his sweetheart, Groin Masterton, whilst a roving missionary for the Church of the Dead N***** in Dallas, Texas. He was 22, she was not yet 20. In fact, she was 14.

‘She had great tits even at that age,’ Hank remarked to the judge during his 1967 trial. He recalled the story to Frank Bruno, who had the opportunity to interview him in 1993: ‘I knew what I was doing was wrong in the eyes of the law, but the only law I followed was God’s Law, and it bowed down to nothing.’

Holy Cow!

Again, Hank sought guidance from the Lord before committing to his path. ‘I asked him, I said, God? God, if I’m bound to take this girl as my wife, you just got to tell me. And she was there with me, and we waited, we waited a few minutes, and I swear that when that burst o’ guff ripped out of me, it sounded like it said “Yes, my son”.’

Masterton later claimed that, in fact, it had sounded like a motorbike. Again, and not for the last time, Hank had shit himself. ‘It just showed how keen the Lord was for this union to happen,’ he told Jocky Wilson in 1979.

Hanks sermons were soon as empty as his colon.

Hank suffered a crisis of faith in 1975 during a prolonged bout of constipation that lasted months. Convinced that the Lord had forsaken him, or that he had done something to anger him, Hank set off on a journey to Asia to immerse himself in the mountainous wilderness. It was his hope hat he would be able to rekindle his faith and purify his soul. Speaking to Ayrton Senna shortly before the Frenchman’s tragic death, Hank admitted that he found it hard to be around people: ‘I would be in a crowded room, or in the church, and I’d hear a fart, and I’d just flip out, you know, lose it. I’d be calling to God, saying “What was that, God?” and going up to people and shaking them, trying to shake loose some more of the Good Lord’s words from their bellies. I guess I was jealous of them, cleanse my soul.’

A nervous breakdown followed during which time Hank ate nothing but boiled cabbage, broccoli and Heinz beans. From that point on people were expressly forbidden from farting in front of Hank lest he ended up in the local mental institution, which was called The Local Mental Institution. ‘It got that bad,’ said Masterton. ‘Even if he smelt one he’d cry.’

His efforts to kick-start his colon were in vain, and the Lord seemed to have turned His back on Hank’s crack.

Mysterious Nepalese nomadic monk, Ho Ya Dansa.

Whilst on his sabbatical in the Nepalese mountains, Hank had the good fortune to meet a nomadic monk called Ho Ya Dansa. This chance encounter between two deeply spiritual people probably saved Hank’s soul. Dansa spent many months teaching Hank to cleanse his mind, to allow God to flow through his body again. With the little English he knew, Dansa implored him to ‘be the fart’, a mantra that Hank would never, ever forget. In an interview with Jim Bowen from Bullseye a few weeks before his death (Hank’s, not Jim’s! Phew, relax! You’d have heard about that!), Hank praised Ho Ya Dansa: ‘He was patient with me, and I thank him. He put me into this stance and he sat there and he waited for 96 hours, Jim, never moved, never blinked, just meditated, he just waited for everything to be alright. And out it came, man… after all those months, out it came.’

Dansa was hideously maimed in the resulting blast and lost half of his face and three-quarters of a testicle. ‘It was God’s will,’ said Hank. ‘Besides, the guy was a l’il yella Ching Chong. These guys don’t even get to Heaven.’

Hank’s in heaven now. And this is what he’s doing.

Hank rarely spoke, except during interviews, for the last decade of his life. His church, The Church of the Holy Contemporary Christian Bowel Movement, had cemented itself in the hearts of Texans, and the church eventually expanded worldwide to rapturous acclaim. During his time as pastor he learned to communicate solely through farting. ‘He was a genius,’ smiles Masterton. ‘Years of practise. He learned to control the inflections, the volume, the pitch, the intonation. We’d talk about everything that way, and there was nothing he couldn’t say. Sometimes the Lord would chip in, like we were having a conference call through his asshole.’

Hank O’Flatulence is survived by his wife, Groin O’Flatulence nee Masterton, and his children Squeaker, Ripper, Puffer, Claw, Trump and David O’Flatulence, who are all gay. Hank never hid the shame he felt for his dirty children. Speaking to Sponge Bob Square Pants in 1999, he said: ‘That hole, man, it’s a conduit for God’s word. That’s God’s mouth. My children are allowing God to be fucked in the face, and that’s something I hope they burn in Hell for like a fat pig on a stick.’

Nutkins: ‘I don’t want to fucking live anymore.’

Showbiz friends were quick to praise the late O’Flatulence. A mournful Rowan Williams masturbated into a pie Floella Benjamin had made out of her own fetid excrement. This later transpired to have had nothing whatsoever to do with Hank’s death. Terry Nutkins shot himself in the eye with snake venom he was so consumed by grief. One of The Saturdays cut off an eyelid and then threw herself onto a concrete sandcastle from 10,000 feet. Prime Minister David Cameron bit off his own elbow and used it to suffocate a poor person, who was later burned. Girls Aloud entered into a machine-gun suicide death pact live onstage once they heard the news. Stephen Hawking changed his voice to a motorbike fart, and then drove through as many war funerals as possible. Bruce Willis, who’d been filming his new summer-smash ‘Pie Hard’, touchingly said of Hank: ‘Who the fuck is Hank O’Flatulence?’ Willis is now set to play him in the upcoming film of his life.

Willis: ‘I smell dead people.’

Masterton is organising a tribute to her deceased husband. ‘We’re going to get millions of people to join hands across all of the states and let off a big one.’ Farts Across America is planned for next month. Worried environmentalists fear that the international community will be up in arms over this stunt, which they predict will add to the anger felt over the Kyoto treaty. ‘This could blow Arkansas all the way to Bolivia and start a new ice age,’ claimed a bearded commie lesbian.

In tribute to his one-time pupil, Ho Ya Dansa is incorporating O’Flatulence’s teachings into whatever the fuck weird religion it is that he follows. Happily, Groin Masterton used some of the proceeds of her late husband’s church to fund an operation for the magnificent monk, who has now had a prosthetic quarter of a testicle appended to his ruptured left ball bag.

‘It’s good to be wholly spherical again,’ said Dansa. ‘Wherever you are, Hank, I’ll think of you every time I take off my underwear.’