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Speaker 3: Please welcome to the stage and hedges. Hello, Mine z Ed.
Speaker 4: I woke up to that noise coming from my front
Speaker 4: door on the twenty second of July twenty fifteen, and
Speaker 4: we're going to talk about that in a minute, But.
Speaker 3: First, hello, how are you you well?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Good, you seem lovely.
Speaker 4: I've seen you've fucked up the bar, which is nice,
Speaker 4: very British of you.
Speaker 3: I feel at home.
Speaker 4: This is already my favorite city on the face of
Speaker 4: the earth.
Speaker 1: Because it was pouring in Scotland, one of those surprise
Speaker 1: summer storms that barges in like an uninvited guest, sending
Speaker 1: all the tourists running for cover. I was just trying
Speaker 1: to make the best of my vacation, so I slipped
Speaker 1: into a makeshift comedy club off of Southbridge Street. It
Speaker 1: smelled of mildew and beer, but the mood was warm,
Speaker 1: all thanks to a man on stage.
Speaker 4: I just normally do straight stand up, but this is
Speaker 4: a bit different. Just be calm, it's gonna be fine.
Speaker 4: I'm not one of those comedians that picks on people
Speaker 4: at all. You know, there's some comedians that come out
Speaker 4: on stage and are.
Speaker 3: Like, Hey, what's that in your drink? Come? I'm not
Speaker 3: that guy.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna tell you a story, right, and it's gonna
Speaker 4: be one story all the way through. And there's a
Speaker 4: few things I need you to know about this story
Speaker 4: before we kick off.
Speaker 3: It's true.
Speaker 4: Everything I'm gonna tell you is completely true. Apart from
Speaker 4: three things. There are three lies in this story. I'm
Speaker 4: gonna tell three lives. It just helps it move a
Speaker 4: little bit better. Is that okay with you?
Speaker 3: Cool? Okay?
Speaker 4: And what I'm gonna do is when I tell a lie,
Speaker 4: I'm instantly gonna say that was a lie, and no
Speaker 4: one needs to believe a life for long.
Speaker 1: The thing is, I walked in the show that night,
Speaker 1: seeking a brief escape, a quick laugh while the rain passed.
Speaker 1: What I found was a story, one that would shape
Speaker 1: my life for the next nine years.
Speaker 2: Whoes since the death of a woman and a man instanced.
Speaker 3: Lifeless body slumped on the sofa and covered in her
Speaker 3: own congealed.
Speaker 2: So repeatedly stabbed and caused a fatal head injury.
Speaker 3: Today forty one stab wounds to the head, neck and torso,
Speaker 3: plus fourteen blunt force injuries and defensive wounds.
Speaker 1: And this story, it wasn't a joke. It definitely was
Speaker 1: not a joke. From Tenderfoot TV. I'm Jody Tovey and
Speaker 1: this is Wisecrack two, Episode one, Knock.
Speaker 3: Knock, Hello, Edinburgh, How you doing.
Speaker 4: Yea?
Speaker 1: The Edinburgh Fringe is the largest performing arts festival in
Speaker 1: the world, attracting some three million people to Scotland's capital
Speaker 1: each year.
Speaker 3: One time I was at a bar that closed early.
Speaker 4: Because a guy got in a fistfight with his mom.
Speaker 3: That's how it's going down.
Speaker 1: For a few weeks each August, every spare pantry in
Speaker 1: broom closet in town is turned into a performing arts venue.
Speaker 1: Anyone with a dream of becoming famous rushes to get
Speaker 1: their turn in front of the MIC. I was in
Speaker 1: town to enjoy the festival, a Scottish vacation, to beat
Speaker 1: the Atlanta heat, and to take a breather from my job.
Speaker 1: I'm a freelance television producer. Most of my career is
Speaker 1: focused on true crime stories, and week after week of
Speaker 1: studying the complet ex criminal minds of murderers, well, it
Speaker 1: can wear you down. I needed a break when the
Speaker 1: storm hit. I ducked into this eighteen thirties drapery warehouse
Speaker 1: that had been temporarily transformed into a comedy club, and
Speaker 1: that's where I saw Ed Hedges perform for the first time.
Speaker 4: I think, before you crack on the show properly, should
Speaker 4: talk about me a little bit, so I'm not just
Speaker 4: a weirdo on stage telling you a story.
Speaker 3: My name is Ed.
Speaker 4: Everyone say hello, Ed Hello. I'm a comedian. I'm from
Speaker 4: the UK. I'm from a little village, a very small
Speaker 4: village just outside of London you wouldn't have heard of.
Speaker 4: It's called Saphomore and there's not a lot there, like
Speaker 4: four thousand and five thousand people there.
Speaker 3: I'm from a very rural background myself.
Speaker 4: My dad is a farmer and my mum is a cousin,
Speaker 4: so it's not like a lot loads going on.
Speaker 3: It's not a super jumping place.
Speaker 4: I spent my whole life until I was eighteen in
Speaker 4: this little village, and I was the most popular kid
Speaker 4: in the school.
Speaker 3: And that is the first live of the show. See,
Speaker 3: so it's gonna look, it's gonna be fine. You're gonna
Speaker 3: be fine.
Speaker 1: I sat in the back of the room blotting my
Speaker 1: wet hair with a cocktail napkin. The seats were about
Speaker 1: half full, I'd say thirty or forty people. I remember
Speaker 1: thinking to myself two things. This kid has this tired,
Speaker 1: soaked audience eating out of his hand, confident in his
Speaker 1: comic timing. And the second thing I remember thinking is
Speaker 1: why did he tell us he was going to lie?
Speaker 1: Comedy at its roots is about exaggerating reality, distorting the
Speaker 1: truth so you can laugh at it. I mean, no
Speaker 1: one comes to a comedy show expecting the unvarnished truth.
Speaker 1: So why does this comedian feel the need to tell
Speaker 1: us that.
Speaker 4: I wasn't the most popular kid in the school. I
Speaker 4: was bullied relentlessly in school. I had ADHD, dyslexia and asthma,
Speaker 4: so I was into shaking stuff and wheezing.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: It was awful, and I love that we just got
Speaker 4: a woo for asthma. I can only imagine that woo
Speaker 4: took every ounce of air you had.
Speaker 3: Whoo, thank you.
Speaker 4: And also another thing on top of that is I
Speaker 4: was a really chubby kid. I was a proper chubby kid.
Speaker 4: I was this little, like chubby ball of energy.
Speaker 3: When I was fifteen.
Speaker 4: Just to put it in context, I was two hundred
Speaker 4: and fifty pounds, So yeah, correct response, Just.
Speaker 3: Your mom didn't do a good job, did you.
Speaker 1: I don't know that it is anything but two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty pounds. He's actually quite fit, with these soft
Speaker 1: brown eyes and a mop of curls. Like many young comedians,
Speaker 1: he's got a bit of a mischievous aur, but there's
Speaker 1: an undeniable charm about him, the kind that when he grins,
Speaker 1: you can't help but smile back.
Speaker 4: The weird thing about it was I was bullied my
Speaker 4: entire childhood in the village by one guy. I had
Speaker 4: one bully from like kindergarten to the end of my
Speaker 4: school career, the same guy, which a lot of people
Speaker 4: think is quite sad.
Speaker 3: I think it's sweet. I think they are so nice.
Speaker 3: Like he saw me, he was like this, you you're
Speaker 3: the one.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna make your life hell for like ten years.
Speaker 4: His name was Ryan Goddard, just like a manly named Godard.
Speaker 3: He was perfect. Ryan godd was perfect. He was the perfect.
Speaker 4: He was like Alpha, like specimen. He was pretty, he
Speaker 4: had like long blonde hair. He was in great shape.
Speaker 4: Gals loved him. He was charismatic. He was the nicest
Speaker 4: guy in the world unless you were me. He was athletic,
Speaker 4: he was pretty. He always had a tan, even in
Speaker 4: winter in the UK, it's unheard of. He was brilliant
Speaker 4: at most things, and I simply wasn't.
Speaker 3: I just wasn't.
Speaker 4: The worst thing about it was he lived like four
Speaker 4: doors down from me for my entire child, So what
Speaker 4: he would do wait at the end of his garden
Speaker 4: when I was walking to the school bus and he would.
Speaker 3: Just bully me.
Speaker 4: One time, there was like a three week period where
Speaker 4: he'd go to the local bakery before school, which is
Speaker 4: like a six am commitment, hit by donuts, and he
Speaker 4: pelted me with them from the bridge.
Speaker 3: But here's the thing, I'm ashamed to say it. He
Speaker 3: got them so early.
Speaker 4: They were really like fresh and good, and every time
Speaker 4: they'd hit me, I'd.
Speaker 3: Be like, oh, that's good stuff.
Speaker 4: So eventually I got really good at catching the donuts,
Speaker 4: and my catching got so good I got on the
Speaker 4: cricket team, which is like eh, to the point where Keith,
Speaker 4: the cricket coach was like, ed, we're going to give
Speaker 4: you a game.
Speaker 3: Your catching and breasts have increased massively. I wasn't good.
Speaker 3: Ryan was good.
Speaker 4: Brian was like everything I wanted to be, even though
Speaker 4: he bullied me, I wanted to be like him. And
Speaker 4: he was so good at sport. I was always jealous
Speaker 4: that he was good at sport. I've never been good
Speaker 4: at sport ever. I've never played a sports game. Really,
Speaker 4: I've never won a sport. I've won one award in
Speaker 4: my entire life for sports. I'll tell you about it
Speaker 4: really quickly. It was called the Jack Petchi Clubman.
Speaker 3: Of the Year. You wouldn't have heard of it.
Speaker 4: The award was formulated by a man called Jack Petche.
Speaker 4: He's like a businessman in my little area of the
Speaker 4: world who was like, I don't want to say disgraced, right,
Speaker 4: but he was what I will call a naughty businessman, right, like,
Speaker 4: he gave the award to people that had helped out
Speaker 4: with sports clubs or sports association in a non sporting way,
Speaker 4: and basically what it was meant for was people with
Speaker 4: like severe life changing disabilities and really uldly people that
Speaker 4: had been a huge.
Speaker 3: Part of their community.
Speaker 4: And on the Jack Petchey website to this day, you
Speaker 4: can see twelve people that have severe disabilities, some older people,
Speaker 4: and then just one chubby kid that can't catch real good.
Speaker 4: I was given this award. I couldn't catch because of
Speaker 4: the dyslexia and the asthma and the ADHD.
Speaker 3: I just had no hand eye coordination.
Speaker 4: I couldn't read ball, I couldn't catch ball, I couldn't breathe.
Speaker 4: Ball wasn't good for me. Right, So I won the
Speaker 4: Jack Petsy Award, is what I'm saying. I won the
Speaker 4: Jack Petry Award. And the guys comes to my house
Speaker 4: and my career coach comes to my house. Now a
Speaker 4: few facts about the story. My career coach is a
Speaker 4: seventy four year old man in like the early naughties
Speaker 4: when this happens.
Speaker 3: He comes to my house.
Speaker 4: He takes a photo of me in my front room
Speaker 4: holding the award, proudest day in my life so far.
Speaker 4: He goes away, and he then sends that photo to
Speaker 4: the editor of the newspaper. The editor of the local
Speaker 4: newspaper was a man called David Hedge. David Hedge was
Speaker 4: a seventy eight year old man. The reason I'm telling
Speaker 4: you their ages isn't through any kind of ages. It's
Speaker 4: because in the early noughties these men didn't know how
Speaker 4: emails worked. So when Keith sent David the headshot of
Speaker 4: me for the newspaper, he said, David, here is Ed.
Speaker 4: Hedges are Jack Petche Award winner for this year. I'm
Speaker 4: ashamed to be sending you this photo. As you can see,
Speaker 4: he's drastically overweight. He has multiple chins and breasts. Well
Speaker 4: know what you're thinking, But Ed, how do you know
Speaker 4: what the email said? David Hedge saw that email and thought, ah,
Speaker 4: here is the photo and article for.
Speaker 3: The front page of the paper.
Speaker 4: It ran for two weeks, but the scars have last
Speaker 4: little lifetime.
Speaker 3: The worst part about it.
Speaker 4: Was at the bottom of the email he sent to
Speaker 4: David Hedge, he said, should you require a quote from
Speaker 4: mister Hedges, here is his full phone number and address.
Speaker 4: So for like two and you can google this shit.
Speaker 4: Google the Hearts and Essex Observer around two thousand and four.
Speaker 4: It's there still because they had my number for like
Speaker 4: two weeks. I'd get home from school and my mum
Speaker 4: would be on the phone.
Speaker 3: She'd go, bress, darling, it's for you, and.
Speaker 4: I'd have to stand there and be like, thank you
Speaker 4: for your compliment on my breast and cricket.
Speaker 3: I didn't have a great song run up.
Speaker 1: Suddenly it's not just a comedy show, but as shared
Speaker 1: moment of human existence. I grew up in suburban Georgia,
Speaker 1: which wasn't always easy for a girl adopted from South Korea.
Speaker 1: My experience of looking different and treated terribly in some
Speaker 1: cases is pretty unique. I mean, I was put in
Speaker 1: speech therapy classes for not sounding Southern enough, but being
Speaker 1: bullied and intimidated as a child seems to be an
Speaker 1: international language. And Ed's courage to tell his cringey stories
Speaker 1: in front of strangers. He gives us permission to laugh
Speaker 1: at our painful pasts.
Speaker 4: When I turned eighty and I started comedy and I
Speaker 4: moved away from the village, I moved to London and
Speaker 4: it changed Like when I moved I had no friends,
Speaker 4: and now I have three friends.
Speaker 3: So it was like, thank you, didn't go back. I
Speaker 3: didn't go back to my village ever.
Speaker 4: Really, my brothers both live outside as the village I'm from,
Speaker 4: and i'd see my family when they'd visit my brothers.
Speaker 4: And so in twenty fifteen, I'm sitting in my apartment
Speaker 4: in London, minding my own business. I've just got back
Speaker 4: from a gig. I've got my feet up on the table.
Speaker 4: I get a cool I get a call from our
Speaker 4: local counselor and they call me and they say, ed,
Speaker 4: we've seen it. You're a comedian and you're doing quite well,
Speaker 4: and we've seen in newspapers on the internet.
Speaker 3: You're gigging all over the place.
Speaker 4: We want to invite you back to the village to
Speaker 4: do a charity show for us. We're building a thing
Speaker 4: for the kids at the local school and we need
Speaker 4: to raise money, so we're going to do a big
Speaker 4: show in the village hall.
Speaker 3: I thought about it and I was like, I.
Speaker 4: Don't like my village, but this could be a really
Speaker 4: nice experience to go and see all the people that
Speaker 4: I kind of grew up with, but as an adult
Speaker 4: that's gone out into the world and sort of achieved something.
Speaker 4: I thought that'd be quite cathartic, that might be good
Speaker 4: for me, So I said, yeah, I would.
Speaker 3: Love to come. I would love to perform.
Speaker 4: So on twenty second of July twenty and fifteen, I
Speaker 4: go back to the village.
Speaker 3: I get in about eight.
Speaker 4: The show's at nine, but I get in and I
Speaker 4: park outside of the venue.
Speaker 3: I just sort of sit in my car. I'm a
Speaker 3: bit nervous to go in. But then I do go in,
Speaker 3: and I'm scared.
Speaker 4: Everyone's going to be like a dick to me still,
Speaker 4: but they're lovely and I had a brilliant time and
Speaker 4: it was great.
Speaker 3: I still stuck around some drinks.
Speaker 4: I drank my old school teachers, some people I used
Speaker 4: to know from my childhood.
Speaker 3: About half past ten, I leave the gig and I've
Speaker 3: had a drink.
Speaker 4: So I leave my car at the village hall where
Speaker 4: the gig was, and I walk down the road into
Speaker 4: the village and I go to my parents' house.
Speaker 3: I haven't been there for years and years.
Speaker 4: I go down all the streets that I used to
Speaker 4: walk down as a kid, and it's lovely, like it's
Speaker 4: the best.
Speaker 3: I'm a growing up now I've traveled the world a
Speaker 3: little bit. I've got friends.
Speaker 4: I get to my house about half tenish, twenty to
Speaker 4: eleven ish. I walk up to the front door. I
Speaker 4: see the key hole. I'm too drunk for that. See
Speaker 4: I'm not properly smashed. But it's dark and there's no
Speaker 4: street lights in my village. And I just couldn't be
Speaker 4: asked for this. So I walk down the side of
Speaker 4: my house. There's a big iron gate. I push open
Speaker 4: the iron gate into my garden and I go in.
Speaker 3: The back door.
Speaker 4: Because we never locked the back door most of the time,
Speaker 4: don't lock the front door. It is that kind of village.
Speaker 4: I walk into my house, I got out to my bedroom.
Speaker 4: I lay down in my childhood bed, and I fall asleep.
Speaker 4: And that is where our story is going to start tonight.
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker 1: There's a shift in Ed's voice and a moment of confusion,
Speaker 1: an awkward silence as he steers us into unknown territory.
Speaker 1: Something about his behavior felt familiar. I'd seen it before
Speaker 1: in my work. He was a ball of anxious energy,
Speaker 1: never looking up or making eye contact with anyone. The
Speaker 1: only thing he had on stage with him was a beer.
Speaker 1: No notes or set list. His childhood stories were hilarious,
Speaker 1: if meandering, but told with such precision that you knew
Speaker 1: he'd live them over and over in his mind. Was
Speaker 1: he just nervous to finally try out new material in
Speaker 1: front of an audience. My gut told me it wasn't
Speaker 1: that simple.
Speaker 3: So I wake up.
Speaker 4: I wake up about twenty minutes after I fell asleep,
Speaker 4: and it's a beautiful night. It's one of the prettiest
Speaker 4: nights i've seen. The moonlight's coming in through the windows,
Speaker 4: and it's just warm. There's a breeze. It's really pleasant.
Speaker 4: But I look around the room. I can see everything.
Speaker 4: I see the desk grow I wrote jokes trying to
Speaker 4: be a comedian as a kid.
Speaker 3: I can see the little bit where I hung up
Speaker 3: my school uniform.
Speaker 4: I can see all my school textbooks that my mum
Speaker 4: was kept on the bookshelf. And at the end of
Speaker 4: my bed, staring out of my window, there is someone standing.
Speaker 4: It's my mum. She's standing at the end of my
Speaker 4: bed staring out the window. But I can see from
Speaker 4: the way the moonlight's sitting her face. She is terrified,
Speaker 4: more scared that I've ever seen her in my life.
Speaker 3: She's scared. She's really scared.
Speaker 4: And I go to say, Mum, what's going on, and
Speaker 4: before I can, she says the words to me, whatever
Speaker 4: you do, do not turn on the.
Speaker 3: Lights, my mom.
Speaker 4: She gets confused a lot, like a lot, which is
Speaker 4: why on that night when I saw her at the
Speaker 4: end of the bed, I wasn't really worried.
Speaker 3: My little village that I'm from.
Speaker 1: I made this recording of Ed said several months after
Speaker 1: I first saw him on stage, but it's virtually unchanged
Speaker 1: since that night in Scotland. The brilliance of Ed's storytelling
Speaker 1: is the second he feels the audience pulling away in
Speaker 1: fear or confusion, he brings them right back with humility
Speaker 1: and humor.
Speaker 4: I thought she'd got in confused, so she had no
Speaker 4: reason to say that. Our village is the quietest place
Speaker 4: in the world. It doesn't have a train station, it
Speaker 4: has one shop. It had a post office, but it
Speaker 4: literally fell down. The worst thing in our village is
Speaker 4: like fucking hoodlums, like bored kids. Our hoodlams are a
Speaker 4: little bit different. They're wonderful. They're just board teenagers. They
Speaker 4: get annoyed. It's a little village called Saffron Walden. They're
Speaker 4: responsible from a favorite ever headline, which was hoodlums throw
Speaker 4: apples at church Trump Page news weeks. They're brilliant as
Speaker 4: a group of four eleven year old boys that call
Speaker 4: themselves the Saffron Suliakshan, which is the best gangster name
Speaker 4: in the world, and it makes them.
Speaker 3: Sound like a packet of biscuits. It's brilliant. They want
Speaker 3: to be gangsters, but they don't know how. No one's
Speaker 3: ever taught them.
Speaker 4: They tried to mug me when I was a kid.
Speaker 4: They tried to mug me and they failed. See if
Speaker 4: you can support what they ruined the mugging. A kid
Speaker 4: came up to me quite late at night and he went.
Speaker 3: Dickhead, why don't you give me your fucking money? Please?
Speaker 4: No, I'm not going to do that. You can't be
Speaker 4: a muggle with manners, can you. You can't do a
Speaker 4: drive by and then signal the rules. His friend tried
Speaker 4: to get some street cred back for his little mate,
Speaker 4: but they were posh, so he ruined it. He went listen, Brava,
Speaker 4: don't you dare bad mouth my man again? Yeah, don't
Speaker 4: you dare disrespect Sebastian.
Speaker 3: No. So I'm in the room.
Speaker 4: I'm staring at my mum and she looks terrified, and
Speaker 4: I'm thinking, well, this isn't going to be anything serious,
Speaker 4: is it. I know Carol, I know what she's like.
Speaker 4: She's easily scared by things. So I decided I'm going
Speaker 4: to go and look for my dad. My dad, John
Speaker 4: is the kind of silver back alpha of the family.
Speaker 4: He's very calm, he's very logical. I go out into
Speaker 4: the hallway and it's pretty. It's a pretty night, you know,
Speaker 4: when you see light and there's little specks of dust
Speaker 4: in the air and it kind of makes everything feel
Speaker 4: a little bit magical, that kind of effect. I thought
Speaker 4: that was magical until I told the story in Scotland
Speaker 4: and a woman.
Speaker 3: Was like, you're aware of that's dead skin? And I
Speaker 3: was like, eh, yeah. So I'm standing.
Speaker 4: I'm standing on the hallway and I go to walk
Speaker 4: to my dad's bedroom, which is down the end of
Speaker 4: the house. His window overlooks the front garden, and I
Speaker 4: see him. My dad is standing at the window. The
Speaker 4: door's open and he's shirtless. He's standing without shut on
Speaker 4: hands either side of the window, and I can see
Speaker 4: his massive back.
Speaker 3: He's got this big, fu strong back.
Speaker 4: He's in his sixties now, but he's still an absolute unit,
Speaker 4: just for years of manual labor. Like he's huge, and
Speaker 4: he's sweating heavily, like he's literally the moonlight's kind of
Speaker 4: glistening off him. And he's something different about him.
Speaker 3: There's something that I don't fully understand.
Speaker 4: And my dad's a mysterious person as it is, like
Speaker 4: he's a very mysterious person.
Speaker 3: He's a very quiet man. He doesn't show a motion
Speaker 3: a lot.
Speaker 4: The happiest I've ever seen him is when he got
Speaker 4: new windows for the house.
Speaker 3: That was it.
Speaker 4: He got sold in windows by an infomercial of like
Speaker 4: a really angry, red faced man that was like, do
Speaker 4: you love your family and hate the French?
Speaker 3: And Dad was like, yep, yep, yep.
Speaker 4: The informercial was like, by the Titan seventeen windows, they're bulletproof,
Speaker 4: they're bomb proof.
Speaker 3: We live in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 4: Because he's talking about him for weeks and one day
Speaker 4: I come home from school and there's a man fitting
Speaker 4: the windows.
Speaker 3: We have to get a man to fit the windows.
Speaker 3: Side note, because my.
Speaker 4: Dad, while he is an alpha male and like a
Speaker 4: physical builder, farmer, laborer guy. He can't do technical things.
Speaker 4: He can't work screws, his hands are too big for screwdrivers.
Speaker 3: He ruins every diy thing he does.
Speaker 4: He put a back door handle on our back door,
Speaker 4: and he put it on upside down right, which doesn't
Speaker 4: sound like a big thing right in your head. Imagine
Speaker 4: every single time you go to go in the back door,
Speaker 4: there's a moment where you pull the handle down, it
Speaker 4: goes chunk and go oh yea, Dad's a prick, and
Speaker 4: then you have to put it up and go in it.
Speaker 3: Really, were you down every summer punk punk? Uh?
Speaker 4: So the guy fits the windows and Dad and me
Speaker 4: stand back on the lawn and he's like, look them
Speaker 4: tight in seventeen glorious. They're strong, they're reliable, they're good
Speaker 4: for the family. I was like, I agree, they are
Speaker 4: the son you wish you had. And on that night
Speaker 4: in front of him, when he was standing at the
Speaker 4: window looking at the front garden, I couldn't tell what.
Speaker 3: He was feeling.
Speaker 4: That's scary to me because growing up I've become an
Speaker 4: expert in this man.
Speaker 3: I know everything about him.
Speaker 4: I know the way he moves, I know the way
Speaker 4: his eyes look when he's a little bit annoyed. I
Speaker 4: have to know that because he doesn't say anything. He
Speaker 4: never tells us anything as a family, doesn't share a
Speaker 4: single thing.
Speaker 3: Point in case, my dad's got eight fingers missing two
Speaker 3: fingers while off each hands. We didn't learn his lesson.
Speaker 3: It's just.
Speaker 4: And until I was seventeen years old, I didn't mention it.
Speaker 4: Like occasionally I passed my brother on the hallway at
Speaker 4: Christmas as a kid and I'd be like, Jack, have
Speaker 4: you seen dad's hands? And go yeah, And we wouldn't
Speaker 4: just wouldn't mention dad's weird hooky hands.
Speaker 3: I was seventeen, I got invited to a house party.
Speaker 3: He dropped me off. Proudest day of his life.
Speaker 4: His son was going to a house party to meet girls.
Speaker 4: He's going to be a normal boy for once. I
Speaker 4: get to the house party and I get dropped off
Speaker 4: for eight thirty, get dropped off at eight thirty. At
Speaker 4: eight forty, I convinced myself that the pretty girls are
Speaker 4: talking about me in the garden.
Speaker 3: I cry, and I'm picked up at nine. So we're
Speaker 3: driving home.
Speaker 4: We're driving home, me and John in complete silence, and
Speaker 4: I want to talk to him. I want to talk
Speaker 4: to my dad. I've had a few drinks and I'm
Speaker 4: a little bit tipsy. I just want to connect with
Speaker 4: him in some way. We don't have a lot to
Speaker 4: talk about.
Speaker 3: Me and John. We don't share any interests.
Speaker 4: He's a proper, proper alpha sports mail and I'm me
Speaker 4: so I'm not a real man. I don't know if
Speaker 4: you can tell by the everything about me, but I
Speaker 4: don't really connect with him. And I'm trying to think
Speaker 4: of what I can say to him. And I see
Speaker 4: his hands on the steering wheel and I'm.
Speaker 3: Like, ask about that.
Speaker 4: I start to think about how to ask that question,
Speaker 4: because you can't just be like, what's that? Because he
Speaker 4: might have like an armed flashback and we'll end up
Speaker 4: in a ditch. So and thinking about how you asked
Speaker 4: that question, how you word that without triggering him, how
Speaker 4: you'd be respectful to any potential trauma that he has.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to think this over and he sees me
Speaker 4: fidgeting in my seat and he goes, what the fuck
Speaker 4: is wrong with you?
Speaker 3: Edward? And I panic and said, where have your fingers gone?
Speaker 1: John?
Speaker 4: It's not how you asked that question, guys, he said.
Speaker 4: I cut off and I went and we didn't talk
Speaker 4: about it again. Didn't talk about it again, didn't talk
Speaker 4: about it again. Doesn't share anything, doesn't tell anyone anything,
Speaker 4: Never let anyone in, never show weakness, keep your own
Speaker 4: shit to yourself, do your work hard, pay for your family.
Speaker 3: Die. That's his thing. Get windows and you're done, right.
Speaker 4: That's all he worries about, right. He just doesn't let
Speaker 4: us know anything. And I'm staring at him on the hallway,
Speaker 4: and then I hear the banging. It's coming from the
Speaker 4: front door. It's the loudest thing I've ever heard in
Speaker 4: my life. It's literally vibrating up through the banister where
Speaker 4: I stand at the top of the stairs, and it
Speaker 4: scares me at first. It scares me really badly, and
Speaker 4: I think about it. I think about it logically. It's
Speaker 4: roughly the time the pub's close. I've just done a
Speaker 4: show in town. It's probably a drunk guy that's been
Speaker 4: like I want to speak to Ed, and he's come
Speaker 4: to the front door. He's banging on the door. My
Speaker 4: parents are getting on a bit. They're probably a bit scared.
Speaker 4: They're probably just a bit worried about who it could be.
Speaker 4: So they're looking out the window. They're not used to this.
Speaker 4: What I'll do, I'll go downstairs, I'll answer the door.
Speaker 4: I'll be like, mate, go away, this is too noisy.
Speaker 4: So start to walk down the stairs. I get three
Speaker 4: steps down and my dad's hand comes over the banister,
Speaker 4: grabs me by the scruff of the neck, pins me
Speaker 4: against the wall, and he leans into my ear and
Speaker 4: he says, do not move, and do not make a sound.
Speaker 4: He's holding me so tightly against the wall I can
Speaker 4: hear the plaster ball behind me start to crack. And
Speaker 4: he would do this a lot. His anger was It
Speaker 4: was bad. It was really bad. Dad's temper just comes
Speaker 4: out of nowhere. A lot of the times his outburst
Speaker 4: were silly little things. Sometimes they were a lot more severe,
Speaker 4: and that would be bad. I missed a lot of
Speaker 4: school as a kid because I had black eyes, bust lips,
Speaker 4: cut eyebrows, bruises on my back.
Speaker 3: I broke my hand, and it was bad. It was difficult.
Speaker 3: My dad had this thing.
Speaker 4: Whenever he'd have an outburst, he'd always make pancakes the
Speaker 4: next day. It sounds silly, but it's the only meal
Speaker 4: he knows how to make. And he didn't want to
Speaker 4: have to say sorry, because then he has to acknowledge
Speaker 4: what he did. So if he did something bad the
Speaker 4: next morning, he'd wake up at five am, make a
Speaker 4: load of pancakes, leave him on the table. I'd wake
Speaker 4: up in the morning. I'd eat him everything. I'll be fine.
Speaker 4: That was the thing. If you eat the pancakes, everything
Speaker 4: is fine. Unwritten rule. I had to be so smart.
Speaker 4: He didn't express his emotions. He didn't tell anyone anything,
Speaker 4: so you had to read everything he did.
Speaker 3: I'm an expert in the man. That's what I'm trying
Speaker 3: to say. I'm an expert in the man. Had to be.
Speaker 1: Suddenly. Behind all the sarcasm and wit, you can see
Speaker 1: the young chubby boy physically and mentally terrified by the
Speaker 1: men who inhabit his childhood. His bully, his friends, even
Speaker 1: his own father couldn't recognize his gentle spirit. And you
Speaker 1: can't help but feel for him.
Speaker 4: And the reason I'm telling these stories because I need
Speaker 4: you to know. I couldn't tell what was happening. I'm
Speaker 4: confused because he's not angry. He's pinning me against the
Speaker 4: wall and he's not angry at all. I can't tell
Speaker 4: what he is. My mom comes out of my room,
Speaker 4: and she says, John, put him down. He lets go
Speaker 4: of me. I slide down the wall. I stand up
Speaker 4: and I walk into a room a little bit teary.
Speaker 4: I'd a little bit shaken up. I shut the door
Speaker 4: behind me in my room, and I think, right, what
Speaker 4: has happened here? Banging's ringing through the house. Whoever's in
Speaker 4: the front garden, whatever's in the front garden at this stage,
Speaker 4: I don't know how many people, how many things, what
Speaker 4: it could be. But my dad is looking at it
Speaker 4: and he won't go downstairs. Doesn't make sense, So I think,
Speaker 4: all right, I'm gonna call the police. I find out
Speaker 4: what's going on. And the way the police work in
Speaker 4: our village, because it's quite small, we have one police
Speaker 4: officer that drives around all the villages all the time
Speaker 4: and basically just looks after farming matters, to be honest,
Speaker 4: Like a farmer will call up and be like, there
Speaker 4: is a ghost in my garden and it's a sheet
Speaker 4: and everything's fine.
Speaker 3: I call the police. It rings a couple of times.
Speaker 3: Someone answers. I said, Hey, my name's Ed.
Speaker 4: I'm calling from forty Bentfield Avenue. Someone's banging on our
Speaker 4: front door. I think it's a drunk, but my parents
Speaker 4: are acting really weird and it's kind of shaken me up.
Speaker 4: Could you send an officer down just to check this out?
Speaker 4: And the person the other on the phone says, I'm sorry,
Speaker 4: where did you say you were calling from? I said
Speaker 4: forty Bentfield Avenue, just in sophomoreten. And the officer says,
Speaker 4: mister Hedges, we're very aware of the situation. Please barricade
Speaker 4: yourself inside the house and do not engage with anyone
Speaker 4: you meet, and then they hang up.
Speaker 1: This season on Wisecrack.
Speaker 3: I never told people the name. I never wanted to
Speaker 3: invite people to the village. The thing that struck me
Speaker 3: most about it was the sheer quantity of bloodshed. It
Speaker 3: literally was a blood bath. That doesn't sound like a place,
Speaker 3: that sound like a police officer me, you don't do that.
Speaker 4: So when I found out, you know, boy what happened,
Speaker 4: it was more holy shit.
Speaker 3: He did it, and he's got really defensive and was like, oh,
Speaker 3: you don't trust me, and I was like, ah, that
Speaker 3: sounds like what liars do when they're.
Speaker 2: Caught out on a lie.
Speaker 4: I don't understand what happened to trigger that guy, because
Speaker 4: it was hyperactive, but he wasn't a killer.
Speaker 2: Get your knives or does yourn't knives and put them away,
Speaker 2: put them somewhere else.
Speaker 3: This is one of those things where you take my
Speaker 3: word or you.
Speaker 1: Don't, so you're saying this isn't safe. I personally would
Speaker 1: not go there, or please bring someone with you. Episode
Speaker 1: two will release next week, but you can binge the
Speaker 1: rest of the season right now, completely add free by
Speaker 1: subscribing to tenderfoot Plus on Apple Podcasts or at tenderfootplus
Speaker 1: dot com.