'Leroy farted!'

[snopes]

Comment: My mom swears she remembers seeing an episode of "Kids Say the
Darndest Things" where a couple of children started giggling. When Art
Linklater asked them what was so funny, one of them responded "Leroy
farted!". The show then went abruptly off the air.

It sounds plausible, but it also sounds like that persistent Groucho Marx
"cigar" urban legend.

A cursory search on the internet only brought up people who also swears
that it's true (which, maybe it is).

[snopes]

Again, I have to ask: Do people not understand the concept of film/videotape? Or do they think that every unscripted program from the 1950-60s was aired live?

- snopes

Originally Posted by snopes

Comment: My mom swears she remembers seeing an episode of "Kids Say the
Darndest Things" where a couple of children started giggling. When Art
Linklater asked them what was so funny, one of them responded "Leroy
farted!". The show then went abruptly off the air.

It sounds plausible, but it also sounds like that persistent Groucho Marx
"cigar" urban legend.

A cursory search on the internet only brought up people who also swears
that it's true (which, maybe it is).

My dad swears up and down that this happened on the Cousin Cliff show back when he was a kid (the exact story...the name was Leroy and everything). And he tells it with such enthusiam and it makes him laugh so much and smile so lightheartedly that I'll let him keep believing this one. No harn, no foul.

ETA: Quick Google search attributes this incident to Kids Say, Trooper Terry, Happy Dan, Howdy Doody, Captain O'Hap's Popeye Clubhouse, and Cowboy John. Add that to my dad's version with Cousin Cliff.....

[Rufus R. Jones]

Add to that list kiddie show hosts "Mr. Knozit" (Columbia SC) and Fred Kirby (Charlotte NC). A classmate told me about Mr. Knozit's "Lerooy" back in the early 70s, and a co-worker told me about Fred Kirby's about 10 years ago (but saying that it had happened many years early, since by that time Kirby was dead).

[Rufus R. Jones]

Two things to add:

1) Each time I heard the story, it was pronounced as “Leroy fahted!”

2) Many years ago (20+), I had a book of bloopers, which I no longer have, and I don’t remember the name. It consisted mainly of photographs of the parties involved, and their words in a balloon, as in a comic book. I don’t think it was particularly well-researched, and it was more of a compilation of reported bloopers. Anyway, I remember only a few purported bloopers, but one was a photograph of (presumably) some kiddie show host holding a microphone to a young Caucasian boy, asking him what was so funny. The kid’s response was “I farted!”