There was a moment in last night’s episode of Celebrity Traitors that I knew I’d be writing about today. And, given that 'Celia Imrie farting' is currently trending, I’m obviously not alone. In a sea of endlessly depressing stuff on screen and in the world, it was a pure moment of 'wait-rewind-that' TV gold.
Celia Imrie - veteran of stage and screen, with everything from Bridget Jones’s Diary and Calendar Girls to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and The Thursday Murder Club under her belt (stop smirking) - has had a long and illustrious career. But last night, as tensions ran high in the Celebrity Traitors candlelit murder cabin, she delivered what’s sure to become her most memorable moment.
We all heard it. No one quite believed it.
Claudia Winkleman - swathed in velvet as per usual - spluttered: “What just happened?” Cue Celia, cool as a cucumber, calmly explaining: “I just farted, Claudia. It's nerves, but I always own up.”
Oh, how we howled. The celebs had lost it so badly that they had to be told to pipe down and focus on the challenge. Not that anyone watching was paying attention to anything else after that. We were too busy crying with laughter.
I was watching with my 12-year-old daughter, who, like most kids her age, thinks toilet humour is peak comedy. I honestly thought we might both combust from giggling. It was a bonding moment that neither of us will forget - completely unfiltered, entirely joyful, and refreshingly real.
Even Kate Garraway - ever the composed morning presenter - shared the moment on Good Morning Britain, saying: “It was so loud! How could someone so elegant, so petite, so gracious let off that sound? And in such a tense moment! It was my favourite part of that whole deeply unpleasant cabin. She’s adorable. We salute her.”
The reaction online was instant. “TV highlight of the year,” people called it. “Give her a BAFTA for that moment of comedy gold.”
In the office this morning, there was only one topic of conversation.
“The fart was lighting up my group chats last night,” said celebrity director Stephen Leng.
“My love for her knows no bounds now,” declared my editor, Kerrie Hughes. “The way Claudia just went, ‘What just happened?’ - I DIED.”
All of which begs the question: Why are we all so delighted by a 70-something national treasure letting one rip on prime-time telly?
Here’s my theory. For women in their forties and beyond, this was a watershed moment. We often discuss how women become less tolerant as they age, but what we don’t say enough is how much more fun we become. There’s so much joy in just not giving a toss.
I laugh way more in my forties than I think I ever did in my so-called 'fun' twenties and thirties. In part, I think it's because the humour now comes from a place of self-deprecation, and seeing the absurdity in life, while letting go of giving two figs about what anyone might think of me or my snort-laugh.
Case in point: I once cried laughing in a meeting with my boss during a very serious work crisis because we’d turned on Zoom filters and both appeared as pirates. Eye patches, beards, the works. Completely absurd. Totally healing. I think of that moment almost every time I join a video call - and I actually wish all of them could be a little more like that.
Now, as a remote worker with an editor also deep into her 'fewer damns to give' era, my workdays are frequently punctuated by snorts of laughter. Recently, she got hilariously confused about Irish funeral etiquette - long story - but I still burst out laughing whenever I think about it, weeks later.
Having been married for 27 years, I can also say that laughing at each other is one of the most enduring, delightful parts of long-term love. My husband recently gave himself a black eye by walking into a clothes airer in the dark, and I’ve been cackling ever since, mainly at the thought of him having to explain to people that his injury was caused not by sport or heroics, but by a violent encounter with laundry. Or better still, a horse.
Then there’s my kids, who never fail to make me laugh and find comic value in the places I least expect. In Sainsbury’s the other day, my youngest could barely breathe because I’d expressed delight at finding a schnitzel in the chiller cabinet. No idea why it was funny, but the joy was off the charts. I only have to hiss ‘schnitzel’ in her direction now, even on a tired Thursday morning school run, and she’s in fits. Last night, before fart-gate had floored us, she performed a full interpretive dance whilst removing her school tights. We both almost passed out.
That's what I think Celia’s telly fart really represents: the kind of unfiltered joy that bonds us but also breaks tension - because, God knows, there's enough of that everywhere you look these days.
It was also a beautiful moment of unapologetic honesty. Celia didn’t pretend it was the chair or her shoe. She gave women everywhere a masterclass in owning it. In my twenties, I once drank an entire cup of tea at my in-laws' house with salt in it instead of sugar because I was too scared of what people would think to admit I’d made a silly mistake. In my thirties, I considered moving house after realising I’d walked around a garden party with a used breast pad stuck to my bum.
But this final year of my forties is punctuated with mistakes, and I've finally learned that the best way to survive them is to be more Celia - to own the moment and squeeze (stop it) a laugh out of it.
There’s also something so deeply life-affirming about a woman who makes no apologies for her body doing what bodies do. We’re so conditioned to make ourselves smaller and more palatable. Don't be too much. (That definitely includes not farting in public.)
So when a woman - particularly a 70-something doyenne of British culture - does exactly that on national telly, in front of a room full of famous people, and shows not a jot of embarrassment - we cheer her on wholeheartedly. Go on, Celia, we all inwardly cried, feeling just that little bit freer. A tiny bit less bothered by the nonsense we’ve been taught to accommodate, tolerate or apologise for. Why shouldn’t we fart when we’re nervous? Or cry at work for that matter? Or find schnitzel utterly hilarious?
For me, Celia Imrie’s TV fart was even more special because I shared the moment with my daughter. She couldn’t believe someone the same age as her grandmothers had done that on the telly. It delighted her. And that delighted me, because as she literally rolled on the floor laughing, I could see all the old rules and constraints slipping away from her.
'It's so good to laugh' is one of my most oft-repeated phrases in my forties, and last night we laughed until we cried. But the tears weren’t about worry, or stress or the troubling state of the world. They were about farts, and that is a moment neither I nor my daughter will forget in a hurry.
