Fat, fat the water rat; fifty bullets in your hat."

I first heard it on Family Affair. I immediately struck me as something you would hear a mobster say.

Nice reply. Noddy hasn't been around for something like a decade

she passed in 2008 ...

Very sad that's she's gone. I loved her posts and her imagination.

I wonder if the rhyme is just an old nursery rhyme. Many of the old ones are still used today

Thank you

"In the last scene eveyone was reconciled, and even Jody was playing with the poor kids, singing the Boom Boom Boom Chicka Boom song. They were both wearing old worn clothes, that undoubtably Mr. French had to go buy from a Goodwill."

Just watched that very episode and it ended as you described except the kids were back to the "Fat,Fat, the Water Rat" chant. I love this show, despite all the tragedies in the later histories of some of its cast members. And this particular episode is one of my favourites.

It's one of those old playground taunts that circulated orally for decades before showing up in media. Similar "fatty" chants (like "Fatty, fatty, two by four") were common in the U.S. and elsewhere. No single definitive "author" exists—it's folk material. The TV show picked up on it.

Over here it's all about "My Friend Billy."

Couldn't get in the bathroom door.
So he did it on the floor,
Ate it up and made some more!

Another playground taunt, used when someone was suspected of harboring romantic thoughts about another:

Joe and Janey in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G!
First comes love, then comes marriage,
Then come kids in a baby carriage!

My friend Billy
Has a ten foot willy
And he showed it to the lady next door.

She thought it was a snake
So she hit it with a rake
And now it's only two foot four.

Red red
You wet the bed
Wiped it up with gingerbread
And ate it