September 2, 2025 • 31 mins
On stage, Edd Hedges, a fledgling English comedian, tells a quirky-yet-creepy tale about the scariest night of his life. The audience hangs on every word, including crime producer Jodi Tovay, unaware that this night would spark an investigation that would last nearly a decade.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 2 (00:18):
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Speaker 3 (00:55):
Please welcome to the stage and hedges. Hello, Mine z Ed.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
I woke up to that noise coming from my front
door on the twenty second of July twenty fifteen, and
we're going to talk about that in a minute, But.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
First, hello, how are you you well?
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Good, you seem lovely.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
I've seen you've fucked up the bar, which is nice,
very British of you.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I feel at home.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
This is already my favorite city on the face of
the earth.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Because it was pouring in Scotland, one of those surprise
summer storms that barges in like an uninvited guest, sending
all the tourists running for cover. I was just trying
to make the best of my vacation, so I slipped
into a makeshift comedy club off of Southbridge Street. It
smelled of mildew and beer, but the mood was warm,
(02:02):
all thanks to a man on stage.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
I just normally do straight stand up, but this is
a bit different. Just be calm, it's gonna be fine.
I'm not one of those comedians that picks on people
at all. You know, there's some comedians that come out
on stage and are.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Like, Hey, what's that in your drink? Come? I'm not
that guy.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
I'm gonna tell you a story, right, and it's gonna
be one story all the way through. And there's a
few things I need you to know about this story
before we kick off.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
It's true.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
Everything I'm gonna tell you is completely true. Apart from
three things. There are three lies in this story. I'm
gonna tell three lives. It just helps it move a
little bit better. Is that okay with you?
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Cool? Okay?
Speaker 4 (02:44):
And what I'm gonna do is when I tell a lie,
I'm instantly gonna say that was a lie, and no
one needs to believe a life for long.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
The thing is, I walked in the show that night,
seeking a brief escape, a quick laugh while the rain passed.
What I found was a story, one that would shape
my life for the next nine years.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Whoes since the death of a woman and a man instanced.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Lifeless body slumped on the sofa and covered in her
own congealed.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
So repeatedly stabbed and caused a fatal head injury.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Today forty one stab wounds to the head, neck and torso,
plus fourteen blunt force injuries and defensive wounds.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
And this story, it wasn't a joke. It definitely was
not a joke. From Tenderfoot TV. I'm Jody Tovey and
this is Wisecrack two, Episode one, Knock.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Knock, Hello, Edinburgh, How you doing.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Yea?
Speaker 1 (04:13):
The Edinburgh Fringe is the largest performing arts festival in
the world, attracting some three million people to Scotland's capital
each year.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
One time I was at a bar that closed early.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Because a guy got in a fistfight with his mom.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
That's how it's going down.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
For a few weeks each August, every spare pantry in
broom closet in town is turned into a performing arts venue.
Anyone with a dream of becoming famous rushes to get
their turn in front of the MIC. I was in
town to enjoy the festival, a Scottish vacation, to beat
the Atlanta heat, and to take a breather from my job.
(04:52):
I'm a freelance television producer. Most of my career is
focused on true crime stories, and week after week of
studying the complet ex criminal minds of murderers, well, it
can wear you down. I needed a break when the
storm hit. I ducked into this eighteen thirties drapery warehouse
that had been temporarily transformed into a comedy club, and
(05:17):
that's where I saw Ed Hedges perform for the first time.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
I think, before you crack on the show properly, should
talk about me a little bit, so I'm not just
a weirdo on stage telling you a story.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
My name is Ed.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
Everyone say hello, Ed Hello. I'm a comedian. I'm from
the UK. I'm from a little village, a very small
village just outside of London you wouldn't have heard of.
It's called Saphomore and there's not a lot there, like
four thousand and five thousand people there.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
I'm from a very rural background myself.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
My dad is a farmer and my mum is a cousin,
so it's not like a lot loads going on.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
It's not a super jumping place.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
I spent my whole life until I was eighteen in
this little village, and I was the most popular kid
in the school.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
And that is the first live of the show. See,
so it's gonna look, it's gonna be fine. You're gonna
be fine.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
I sat in the back of the room blotting my
wet hair with a cocktail napkin. The seats were about
half full, I'd say thirty or forty people. I remember
thinking to myself two things. This kid has this tired,
soaked audience eating out of his hand, confident in his
comic timing. And the second thing I remember thinking is
(06:24):
why did he tell us he was going to lie?
Comedy at its roots is about exaggerating reality, distorting the
truth so you can laugh at it. I mean, no
one comes to a comedy show expecting the unvarnished truth.
So why does this comedian feel the need to tell
us that.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
I wasn't the most popular kid in the school. I
was bullied relentlessly in school. I had ADHD, dyslexia and asthma,
so I was into shaking stuff and wheezing.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Right.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
It was awful, and I love that we just got
a woo for asthma. I can only imagine that woo
took every ounce of air you had.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Whoo, thank you.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
And also another thing on top of that is I
was a really chubby kid. I was a proper chubby kid.
I was this little, like chubby ball of energy.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
When I was fifteen.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
Just to put it in context, I was two hundred
and fifty pounds, So yeah, correct response, Just.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Your mom didn't do a good job, did you.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
I don't know that it is anything but two hundred
and fifty pounds. He's actually quite fit, with these soft
brown eyes and a mop of curls. Like many young comedians,
he's got a bit of a mischievous aur, but there's
an undeniable charm about him, the kind that when he grins,
you can't help but smile back.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
The weird thing about it was I was bullied my
entire childhood in the village by one guy. I had
one bully from like kindergarten to the end of my
school career, the same guy, which a lot of people
think is quite sad.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
I think it's sweet. I think they are so nice.
Like he saw me, he was like this, you you're
the one.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
I'm gonna make your life hell for like ten years.
His name was Ryan Goddard, just like a manly named Godard.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
He was perfect. Ryan godd was perfect. He was the perfect.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
He was like Alpha, like specimen. He was pretty, he
had like long blonde hair. He was in great shape.
Gals loved him. He was charismatic. He was the nicest
guy in the world unless you were me. He was athletic,
he was pretty. He always had a tan, even in
winter in the UK, it's unheard of. He was brilliant
(08:50):
at most things, and I simply wasn't.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
I just wasn't.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
The worst thing about it was he lived like four
doors down from me for my entire child, So what
he would do wait at the end of his garden
when I was walking to the school bus and he would.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Just bully me.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
One time, there was like a three week period where
he'd go to the local bakery before school, which is
like a six am commitment, hit by donuts, and he
pelted me with them from the bridge.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
But here's the thing, I'm ashamed to say it. He
got them so early.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
They were really like fresh and good, and every time
they'd hit me, I'd.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Be like, oh, that's good stuff.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
So eventually I got really good at catching the donuts,
and my catching got so good I got on the
cricket team, which is like eh, to the point where Keith,
the cricket coach was like, ed, we're going to give
you a game.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Your catching and breasts have increased massively. I wasn't good.
Ryan was good.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
Brian was like everything I wanted to be, even though
he bullied me, I wanted to be like him. And
he was so good at sport. I was always jealous
that he was good at sport. I've never been good
at sport ever. I've never played a sports game. Really,
I've never won a sport. I've won one award in
my entire life for sports. I'll tell you about it
really quickly. It was called the Jack Petchi Clubman.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Of the Year. You wouldn't have heard of it.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
The award was formulated by a man called Jack Petche.
He's like a businessman in my little area of the
world who was like, I don't want to say disgraced, right,
but he was what I will call a naughty businessman, right, like,
he gave the award to people that had helped out
(10:27):
with sports clubs or sports association in a non sporting way,
and basically what it was meant for was people with
like severe life changing disabilities and really uldly people that
had been a huge.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Part of their community.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
And on the Jack Petchey website to this day, you
can see twelve people that have severe disabilities, some older people,
and then just one chubby kid that can't catch real good.
I was given this award. I couldn't catch because of
the dyslexia and the asthma and the ADHD.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
I just had no hand eye coordination.
Speaker 4 (11:07):
I couldn't read ball, I couldn't catch ball, I couldn't breathe.
Ball wasn't good for me. Right, So I won the
Jack Petsy Award, is what I'm saying. I won the
Jack Petry Award. And the guys comes to my house
and my career coach comes to my house. Now a
few facts about the story. My career coach is a
seventy four year old man in like the early naughties
(11:28):
when this happens.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
He comes to my house.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
He takes a photo of me in my front room
holding the award, proudest day in my life so far.
He goes away, and he then sends that photo to
the editor of the newspaper. The editor of the local
newspaper was a man called David Hedge. David Hedge was
a seventy eight year old man. The reason I'm telling
you their ages isn't through any kind of ages. It's
because in the early noughties these men didn't know how
emails worked. So when Keith sent David the headshot of
(11:54):
me for the newspaper, he said, David, here is Ed.
Hedges are Jack Petche Award winner for this year. I'm
ashamed to be sending you this photo. As you can see,
he's drastically overweight. He has multiple chins and breasts. Well
(12:14):
know what you're thinking, But Ed, how do you know
what the email said? David Hedge saw that email and thought, ah,
here is the photo and article for.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
The front page of the paper.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
It ran for two weeks, but the scars have last
little lifetime.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
The worst part about it.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
Was at the bottom of the email he sent to
David Hedge, he said, should you require a quote from
mister Hedges, here is his full phone number and address.
So for like two and you can google this shit.
Google the Hearts and Essex Observer around two thousand and four.
It's there still because they had my number for like
two weeks. I'd get home from school and my mum
(13:07):
would be on the phone.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
She'd go, bress, darling, it's for you, and.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
I'd have to stand there and be like, thank you
for your compliment on my breast and cricket.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
I didn't have a great song run up.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Suddenly it's not just a comedy show, but as shared
moment of human existence. I grew up in suburban Georgia,
which wasn't always easy for a girl adopted from South Korea.
My experience of looking different and treated terribly in some
cases is pretty unique. I mean, I was put in
speech therapy classes for not sounding Southern enough, but being
(13:46):
bullied and intimidated as a child seems to be an
international language. And Ed's courage to tell his cringey stories
in front of strangers. He gives us permission to laugh
at our painful pasts.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
When I turned eighty and I started comedy and I
moved away from the village, I moved to London and
it changed Like when I moved I had no friends,
and now I have three friends.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
So it was like, thank you, didn't go back. I
didn't go back to my village ever.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Really, my brothers both live outside as the village I'm from,
and i'd see my family when they'd visit my brothers.
And so in twenty fifteen, I'm sitting in my apartment
in London, minding my own business. I've just got back
from a gig. I've got my feet up on the table.
I get a cool I get a call from our
local counselor and they call me and they say, ed,
we've seen it. You're a comedian and you're doing quite well,
and we've seen in newspapers on the internet.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
You're gigging all over the place.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
We want to invite you back to the village to
do a charity show for us. We're building a thing
for the kids at the local school and we need
to raise money, so we're going to do a big
show in the village hall.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
I thought about it and I was like, I.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
Don't like my village, but this could be a really
nice experience to go and see all the people that
I kind of grew up with, but as an adult
that's gone out into the world and sort of achieved something.
I thought that'd be quite cathartic, that might be good
for me, So I said, yeah, I would.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Love to come. I would love to perform.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
So on twenty second of July twenty and fifteen, I
go back to the village.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
I get in about eight.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
The show's at nine, but I get in and I
park outside of the venue.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
I just sort of sit in my car. I'm a
bit nervous to go in. But then I do go in,
and I'm scared.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
Everyone's going to be like a dick to me still,
but they're lovely and I had a brilliant time and
it was great.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
I still stuck around some drinks.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
I drank my old school teachers, some people I used
to know from my childhood.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
About half past ten, I leave the gig and I've
had a drink.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
So I leave my car at the village hall where
the gig was, and I walk down the road into
the village and I go to my parents' house.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
I haven't been there for years and years.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
I go down all the streets that I used to
walk down as a kid, and it's lovely, like it's
the best.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
I'm a growing up now I've traveled the world a
little bit. I've got friends.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
I get to my house about half tenish, twenty to
eleven ish. I walk up to the front door. I
see the key hole. I'm too drunk for that. See
I'm not properly smashed. But it's dark and there's no
street lights in my village. And I just couldn't be
asked for this. So I walk down the side of
my house. There's a big iron gate. I push open
the iron gate into my garden and I go in.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
The back door.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
Because we never locked the back door most of the time,
don't lock the front door. It is that kind of village.
I walk into my house, I got out to my bedroom.
I lay down in my childhood bed, and I fall asleep.
And that is where our story is going to start tonight.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
There's a shift in Ed's voice and a moment of confusion,
an awkward silence as he steers us into unknown territory.
Something about his behavior felt familiar. I'd seen it before
in my work. He was a ball of anxious energy,
never looking up or making eye contact with anyone. The
only thing he had on stage with him was a beer.
(16:57):
No notes or set list. His childhood stories were hilarious,
if meandering, but told with such precision that you knew
he'd live them over and over in his mind. Was
he just nervous to finally try out new material in
front of an audience. My gut told me it wasn't
that simple.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
So I wake up.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
I wake up about twenty minutes after I fell asleep,
and it's a beautiful night. It's one of the prettiest
nights i've seen. The moonlight's coming in through the windows,
and it's just warm. There's a breeze. It's really pleasant.
But I look around the room. I can see everything.
I see the desk grow I wrote jokes trying to
be a comedian as a kid.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
I can see the little bit where I hung up
my school uniform.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
I can see all my school textbooks that my mum
was kept on the bookshelf. And at the end of
my bed, staring out of my window, there is someone standing.
It's my mum. She's standing at the end of my
bed staring out the window. But I can see from
the way the moonlight's sitting her face. She is terrified,
more scared that I've ever seen her in my life.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
She's scared. She's really scared.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
And I go to say, Mum, what's going on, and
before I can, she says the words to me, whatever
you do, do not turn on the.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Lights, my mom.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
She gets confused a lot, like a lot, which is
why on that night when I saw her at the
end of the bed, I wasn't really worried.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
My little village that I'm from.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
I made this recording of Ed said several months after
I first saw him on stage, but it's virtually unchanged
since that night in Scotland. The brilliance of Ed's storytelling
is the second he feels the audience pulling away in
fear or confusion, he brings them right back with humility
and humor.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
I thought she'd got in confused, so she had no
reason to say that. Our village is the quietest place
in the world. It doesn't have a train station, it
has one shop. It had a post office, but it
literally fell down. The worst thing in our village is
like fucking hoodlums, like bored kids. Our hoodlams are a
little bit different. They're wonderful. They're just board teenagers. They
get annoyed. It's a little village called Saffron Walden. They're
(19:20):
responsible from a favorite ever headline, which was hoodlums throw
apples at church Trump Page news weeks. They're brilliant as
a group of four eleven year old boys that call
themselves the Saffron Suliakshan, which is the best gangster name
in the world, and it makes them.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Sound like a packet of biscuits. It's brilliant. They want
to be gangsters, but they don't know how. No one's
ever taught them.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
They tried to mug me when I was a kid.
They tried to mug me and they failed. See if
you can support what they ruined the mugging. A kid
came up to me quite late at night and he went.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Dickhead, why don't you give me your fucking money? Please?
Speaker 4 (20:03):
No, I'm not going to do that. You can't be
a muggle with manners, can you. You can't do a
drive by and then signal the rules. His friend tried
to get some street cred back for his little mate,
but they were posh, so he ruined it. He went listen, Brava,
don't you dare bad mouth my man again? Yeah, don't
you dare disrespect Sebastian.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
No. So I'm in the room.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
I'm staring at my mum and she looks terrified, and
I'm thinking, well, this isn't going to be anything serious,
is it. I know Carol, I know what she's like.
She's easily scared by things. So I decided I'm going
to go and look for my dad. My dad, John
is the kind of silver back alpha of the family.
He's very calm, he's very logical. I go out into
the hallway and it's pretty. It's a pretty night, you know,
(20:54):
when you see light and there's little specks of dust
in the air and it kind of makes everything feel
a little bit magical, that kind of effect. I thought
that was magical until I told the story in Scotland
and a woman.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Was like, you're aware of that's dead skin? And I
was like, eh, yeah. So I'm standing.
Speaker 4 (21:15):
I'm standing on the hallway and I go to walk
to my dad's bedroom, which is down the end of
the house. His window overlooks the front garden, and I
see him. My dad is standing at the window. The
door's open and he's shirtless. He's standing without shut on
hands either side of the window, and I can see
his massive back.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
He's got this big, fu strong back.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
He's in his sixties now, but he's still an absolute unit,
just for years of manual labor. Like he's huge, and
he's sweating heavily, like he's literally the moonlight's kind of
glistening off him. And he's something different about him.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
There's something that I don't fully understand.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
And my dad's a mysterious person as it is, like
he's a very mysterious person.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
He's a very quiet man. He doesn't show a motion
a lot.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
The happiest I've ever seen him is when he got
new windows for the house.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
That was it.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
He got sold in windows by an infomercial of like
a really angry, red faced man that was like, do
you love your family and hate the French?
Speaker 3 (22:12):
And Dad was like, yep, yep, yep.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
The informercial was like, by the Titan seventeen windows, they're bulletproof,
they're bomb proof.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
We live in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 4 (22:22):
Because he's talking about him for weeks and one day
I come home from school and there's a man fitting
the windows.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
We have to get a man to fit the windows.
Side note, because my.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
Dad, while he is an alpha male and like a
physical builder, farmer, laborer guy. He can't do technical things.
He can't work screws, his hands are too big for screwdrivers.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
He ruins every diy thing he does.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
He put a back door handle on our back door,
and he put it on upside down right, which doesn't
sound like a big thing right in your head. Imagine
every single time you go to go in the back door,
there's a moment where you pull the handle down, it
goes chunk and go oh yea, Dad's a prick, and
then you have to put it up and go in it.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
Really, were you down every summer punk punk? Uh?
Speaker 4 (23:04):
So the guy fits the windows and Dad and me
stand back on the lawn and he's like, look them
tight in seventeen glorious. They're strong, they're reliable, they're good
for the family. I was like, I agree, they are
the son you wish you had. And on that night
in front of him, when he was standing at the
window looking at the front garden, I couldn't tell what.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
He was feeling.
Speaker 4 (23:28):
That's scary to me because growing up I've become an
expert in this man.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
I know everything about him.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
I know the way he moves, I know the way
his eyes look when he's a little bit annoyed. I
have to know that because he doesn't say anything. He
never tells us anything as a family, doesn't share a
single thing.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Point in case, my dad's got eight fingers missing two
fingers while off each hands. We didn't learn his lesson.
It's just.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
And until I was seventeen years old, I didn't mention it.
Like occasionally I passed my brother on the hallway at
Christmas as a kid and I'd be like, Jack, have
you seen dad's hands? And go yeah, And we wouldn't
just wouldn't mention dad's weird hooky hands.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
I was seventeen, I got invited to a house party.
He dropped me off. Proudest day of his life.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
His son was going to a house party to meet girls.
He's going to be a normal boy for once. I
get to the house party and I get dropped off
for eight thirty, get dropped off at eight thirty. At
eight forty, I convinced myself that the pretty girls are
talking about me in the garden.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
I cry, and I'm picked up at nine. So we're
driving home.
Speaker 4 (24:40):
We're driving home, me and John in complete silence, and
I want to talk to him. I want to talk
to my dad. I've had a few drinks and I'm
a little bit tipsy. I just want to connect with
him in some way. We don't have a lot to
talk about.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Me and John. We don't share any interests.
Speaker 4 (24:52):
He's a proper, proper alpha sports mail and I'm me
so I'm not a real man. I don't know if
you can tell by the everything about me, but I
don't really connect with him. And I'm trying to think
of what I can say to him. And I see
his hands on the steering wheel and I'm.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Like, ask about that.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
I start to think about how to ask that question,
because you can't just be like, what's that? Because he
might have like an armed flashback and we'll end up
in a ditch. So and thinking about how you asked
that question, how you word that without triggering him, how
you'd be respectful to any potential trauma that he has.
I'm trying to think this over and he sees me
fidgeting in my seat and he goes, what the fuck
is wrong with you?
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Edward? And I panic and said, where have your fingers gone?
Speaker 1 (25:28):
John?
Speaker 4 (25:40):
It's not how you asked that question, guys, he said.
I cut off and I went and we didn't talk
about it again. Didn't talk about it again, didn't talk
about it again. Doesn't share anything, doesn't tell anyone anything,
Never let anyone in, never show weakness, keep your own
shit to yourself, do your work hard, pay for your family.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Die. That's his thing. Get windows and you're done, right.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
That's all he worries about, right. He just doesn't let
us know anything. And I'm staring at him on the hallway,
and then I hear the banging. It's coming from the
front door. It's the loudest thing I've ever heard in
my life. It's literally vibrating up through the banister where
(26:27):
I stand at the top of the stairs, and it
scares me at first. It scares me really badly, and
I think about it. I think about it logically. It's
roughly the time the pub's close. I've just done a
show in town. It's probably a drunk guy that's been
like I want to speak to Ed, and he's come
to the front door. He's banging on the door. My
parents are getting on a bit. They're probably a bit scared.
(26:49):
They're probably just a bit worried about who it could be.
So they're looking out the window. They're not used to this.
What I'll do, I'll go downstairs, I'll answer the door.
I'll be like, mate, go away, this is too noisy.
So start to walk down the stairs. I get three
steps down and my dad's hand comes over the banister,
grabs me by the scruff of the neck, pins me
against the wall, and he leans into my ear and
(27:09):
he says, do not move, and do not make a sound.
He's holding me so tightly against the wall I can
hear the plaster ball behind me start to crack. And
he would do this a lot. His anger was It
was bad. It was really bad. Dad's temper just comes
out of nowhere. A lot of the times his outburst
(27:33):
were silly little things. Sometimes they were a lot more severe,
and that would be bad. I missed a lot of
school as a kid because I had black eyes, bust lips,
cut eyebrows, bruises on my back.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
I broke my hand, and it was bad. It was difficult.
My dad had this thing.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
Whenever he'd have an outburst, he'd always make pancakes the
next day. It sounds silly, but it's the only meal
he knows how to make. And he didn't want to
have to say sorry, because then he has to acknowledge
what he did. So if he did something bad the
next morning, he'd wake up at five am, make a
load of pancakes, leave him on the table. I'd wake
up in the morning. I'd eat him everything. I'll be fine.
That was the thing. If you eat the pancakes, everything
(28:11):
is fine. Unwritten rule. I had to be so smart.
He didn't express his emotions. He didn't tell anyone anything,
so you had to read everything he did.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
I'm an expert in the man. That's what I'm trying
to say. I'm an expert in the man. Had to be.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Suddenly. Behind all the sarcasm and wit, you can see
the young chubby boy physically and mentally terrified by the
men who inhabit his childhood. His bully, his friends, even
his own father couldn't recognize his gentle spirit. And you
can't help but feel for him.
Speaker 4 (28:49):
And the reason I'm telling these stories because I need
you to know. I couldn't tell what was happening. I'm
confused because he's not angry. He's pinning me against the
wall and he's not angry at all. I can't tell
what he is. My mom comes out of my room,
and she says, John, put him down. He lets go
of me. I slide down the wall. I stand up
(29:11):
and I walk into a room a little bit teary.
I'd a little bit shaken up. I shut the door
behind me in my room, and I think, right, what
has happened here? Banging's ringing through the house. Whoever's in
the front garden, whatever's in the front garden at this stage,
I don't know how many people, how many things, what
it could be. But my dad is looking at it
and he won't go downstairs. Doesn't make sense, So I think,
(29:38):
all right, I'm gonna call the police. I find out
what's going on. And the way the police work in
our village, because it's quite small, we have one police
officer that drives around all the villages all the time
and basically just looks after farming matters, to be honest,
Like a farmer will call up and be like, there
is a ghost in my garden and it's a sheet
and everything's fine.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
I call the police. It rings a couple of times.
Someone answers. I said, Hey, my name's Ed.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
I'm calling from forty Bentfield Avenue. Someone's banging on our
front door. I think it's a drunk, but my parents
are acting really weird and it's kind of shaken me up.
Could you send an officer down just to check this out?
And the person the other on the phone says, I'm sorry,
where did you say you were calling from? I said
forty Bentfield Avenue, just in sophomoreten. And the officer says,
(30:18):
mister Hedges, we're very aware of the situation. Please barricade
yourself inside the house and do not engage with anyone
you meet, and then they hang up.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
This season on Wisecrack.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
I never told people the name. I never wanted to
invite people to the village. The thing that struck me
most about it was the sheer quantity of bloodshed. It
literally was a blood bath. That doesn't sound like a place,
that sound like a police officer me, you don't do that.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
So when I found out, you know, boy what happened,
it was more holy shit.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
He did it, and he's got really defensive and was like, oh,
you don't trust me, and I was like, ah, that
sounds like what liars do when they're.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Caught out on a lie.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
I don't understand what happened to trigger that guy, because
it was hyperactive, but he wasn't a killer.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
Get your knives or does yourn't knives and put them away,
put them somewhere else.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
This is one of those things where you take my
word or you.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Don't, so you're saying this isn't safe. I personally would
not go there, or please bring someone with you. Episode
two will release next week, but you can binge the
rest of the season right now, completely add free by
subscribing to tenderfoot Plus on Apple Podcasts or at tenderfootplus
(31:52):
dot com.
Wisecrack is released weekly and brought to you absolutely free.
But if you want to hear the whole season right now,
it's available and free on Tenderfoot Plus. For more information,
check out the show notes enjoy the episode.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast,
and do not represent those of iHeartRadio, Tenderfoot TV, or
their employees. This podcast also contains subject matter which may
not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Please welcome to the stage and hedges. Hello, Mine z Ed.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
I woke up to that noise coming from my front
door on the twenty second of July twenty fifteen, and
we're going to talk about that in a minute, But.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
First, hello, how are you you well?
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Good, you seem lovely.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
I've seen you've fucked up the bar, which is nice,
very British of you.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I feel at home.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
This is already my favorite city on the face of
the earth.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Because it was pouring in Scotland, one of those surprise
summer storms that barges in like an uninvited guest, sending
all the tourists running for cover. I was just trying
to make the best of my vacation, so I slipped
into a makeshift comedy club off of Southbridge Street. It
smelled of mildew and beer, but the mood was warm,
(02:02):
all thanks to a man on stage.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
I just normally do straight stand up, but this is
a bit different. Just be calm, it's gonna be fine.
I'm not one of those comedians that picks on people
at all. You know, there's some comedians that come out
on stage and are.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Like, Hey, what's that in your drink? Come? I'm not
that guy.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
I'm gonna tell you a story, right, and it's gonna
be one story all the way through. And there's a
few things I need you to know about this story
before we kick off.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
It's true.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
Everything I'm gonna tell you is completely true. Apart from
three things. There are three lies in this story. I'm
gonna tell three lives. It just helps it move a
little bit better. Is that okay with you?
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Cool? Okay?
Speaker 4 (02:44):
And what I'm gonna do is when I tell a lie,
I'm instantly gonna say that was a lie, and no
one needs to believe a life for long.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
The thing is, I walked in the show that night,
seeking a brief escape, a quick laugh while the rain passed.
What I found was a story, one that would shape
my life for the next nine years.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Whoes since the death of a woman and a man instanced.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Lifeless body slumped on the sofa and covered in her
own congealed.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
So repeatedly stabbed and caused a fatal head injury.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Today forty one stab wounds to the head, neck and torso,
plus fourteen blunt force injuries and defensive wounds.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
And this story, it wasn't a joke. It definitely was
not a joke. From Tenderfoot TV. I'm Jody Tovey and
this is Wisecrack two, Episode one, Knock.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Knock, Hello, Edinburgh, How you doing.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Yea?
Speaker 1 (04:13):
The Edinburgh Fringe is the largest performing arts festival in
the world, attracting some three million people to Scotland's capital
each year.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
One time I was at a bar that closed early.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Because a guy got in a fistfight with his mom.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
That's how it's going down.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
For a few weeks each August, every spare pantry in
broom closet in town is turned into a performing arts venue.
Anyone with a dream of becoming famous rushes to get
their turn in front of the MIC. I was in
town to enjoy the festival, a Scottish vacation, to beat
the Atlanta heat, and to take a breather from my job.
(04:52):
I'm a freelance television producer. Most of my career is
focused on true crime stories, and week after week of
studying the complet ex criminal minds of murderers, well, it
can wear you down. I needed a break when the
storm hit. I ducked into this eighteen thirties drapery warehouse
that had been temporarily transformed into a comedy club, and
(05:17):
that's where I saw Ed Hedges perform for the first time.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
I think, before you crack on the show properly, should
talk about me a little bit, so I'm not just
a weirdo on stage telling you a story.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
My name is Ed.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
Everyone say hello, Ed Hello. I'm a comedian. I'm from
the UK. I'm from a little village, a very small
village just outside of London you wouldn't have heard of.
It's called Saphomore and there's not a lot there, like
four thousand and five thousand people there.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
I'm from a very rural background myself.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
My dad is a farmer and my mum is a cousin,
so it's not like a lot loads going on.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
It's not a super jumping place.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
I spent my whole life until I was eighteen in
this little village, and I was the most popular kid
in the school.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
And that is the first live of the show. See,
so it's gonna look, it's gonna be fine. You're gonna
be fine.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
I sat in the back of the room blotting my
wet hair with a cocktail napkin. The seats were about
half full, I'd say thirty or forty people. I remember
thinking to myself two things. This kid has this tired,
soaked audience eating out of his hand, confident in his
comic timing. And the second thing I remember thinking is
(06:24):
why did he tell us he was going to lie?
Comedy at its roots is about exaggerating reality, distorting the
truth so you can laugh at it. I mean, no
one comes to a comedy show expecting the unvarnished truth.
So why does this comedian feel the need to tell
us that.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
I wasn't the most popular kid in the school. I
was bullied relentlessly in school. I had ADHD, dyslexia and asthma,
so I was into shaking stuff and wheezing.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Right.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
It was awful, and I love that we just got
a woo for asthma. I can only imagine that woo
took every ounce of air you had.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Whoo, thank you.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
And also another thing on top of that is I
was a really chubby kid. I was a proper chubby kid.
I was this little, like chubby ball of energy.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
When I was fifteen.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
Just to put it in context, I was two hundred
and fifty pounds, So yeah, correct response, Just.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Your mom didn't do a good job, did you.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
I don't know that it is anything but two hundred
and fifty pounds. He's actually quite fit, with these soft
brown eyes and a mop of curls. Like many young comedians,
he's got a bit of a mischievous aur, but there's
an undeniable charm about him, the kind that when he grins,
you can't help but smile back.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
The weird thing about it was I was bullied my
entire childhood in the village by one guy. I had
one bully from like kindergarten to the end of my
school career, the same guy, which a lot of people
think is quite sad.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
I think it's sweet. I think they are so nice.
Like he saw me, he was like this, you you're
the one.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
I'm gonna make your life hell for like ten years.
His name was Ryan Goddard, just like a manly named Godard.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
He was perfect. Ryan godd was perfect. He was the perfect.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
He was like Alpha, like specimen. He was pretty, he
had like long blonde hair. He was in great shape.
Gals loved him. He was charismatic. He was the nicest
guy in the world unless you were me. He was athletic,
he was pretty. He always had a tan, even in
winter in the UK, it's unheard of. He was brilliant
(08:50):
at most things, and I simply wasn't.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
I just wasn't.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
The worst thing about it was he lived like four
doors down from me for my entire child, So what
he would do wait at the end of his garden
when I was walking to the school bus and he would.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Just bully me.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
One time, there was like a three week period where
he'd go to the local bakery before school, which is
like a six am commitment, hit by donuts, and he
pelted me with them from the bridge.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
But here's the thing, I'm ashamed to say it. He
got them so early.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
They were really like fresh and good, and every time
they'd hit me, I'd.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Be like, oh, that's good stuff.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
So eventually I got really good at catching the donuts,
and my catching got so good I got on the
cricket team, which is like eh, to the point where Keith,
the cricket coach was like, ed, we're going to give
you a game.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Your catching and breasts have increased massively. I wasn't good.
Ryan was good.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
Brian was like everything I wanted to be, even though
he bullied me, I wanted to be like him. And
he was so good at sport. I was always jealous
that he was good at sport. I've never been good
at sport ever. I've never played a sports game. Really,
I've never won a sport. I've won one award in
my entire life for sports. I'll tell you about it
really quickly. It was called the Jack Petchi Clubman.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Of the Year. You wouldn't have heard of it.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
The award was formulated by a man called Jack Petche.
He's like a businessman in my little area of the
world who was like, I don't want to say disgraced, right,
but he was what I will call a naughty businessman, right, like,
he gave the award to people that had helped out
(10:27):
with sports clubs or sports association in a non sporting way,
and basically what it was meant for was people with
like severe life changing disabilities and really uldly people that
had been a huge.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Part of their community.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
And on the Jack Petchey website to this day, you
can see twelve people that have severe disabilities, some older people,
and then just one chubby kid that can't catch real good.
I was given this award. I couldn't catch because of
the dyslexia and the asthma and the ADHD.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
I just had no hand eye coordination.
Speaker 4 (11:07):
I couldn't read ball, I couldn't catch ball, I couldn't breathe.
Ball wasn't good for me. Right, So I won the
Jack Petsy Award, is what I'm saying. I won the
Jack Petry Award. And the guys comes to my house
and my career coach comes to my house. Now a
few facts about the story. My career coach is a
seventy four year old man in like the early naughties
(11:28):
when this happens.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
He comes to my house.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
He takes a photo of me in my front room
holding the award, proudest day in my life so far.
He goes away, and he then sends that photo to
the editor of the newspaper. The editor of the local
newspaper was a man called David Hedge. David Hedge was
a seventy eight year old man. The reason I'm telling
you their ages isn't through any kind of ages. It's
because in the early noughties these men didn't know how
emails worked. So when Keith sent David the headshot of
(11:54):
me for the newspaper, he said, David, here is Ed.
Hedges are Jack Petche Award winner for this year. I'm
ashamed to be sending you this photo. As you can see,
he's drastically overweight. He has multiple chins and breasts. Well
(12:14):
know what you're thinking, But Ed, how do you know
what the email said? David Hedge saw that email and thought, ah,
here is the photo and article for.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
The front page of the paper.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
It ran for two weeks, but the scars have last
little lifetime.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
The worst part about it.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
Was at the bottom of the email he sent to
David Hedge, he said, should you require a quote from
mister Hedges, here is his full phone number and address.
So for like two and you can google this shit.
Google the Hearts and Essex Observer around two thousand and four.
It's there still because they had my number for like
two weeks. I'd get home from school and my mum
(13:07):
would be on the phone.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
She'd go, bress, darling, it's for you, and.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
I'd have to stand there and be like, thank you
for your compliment on my breast and cricket.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
I didn't have a great song run up.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Suddenly it's not just a comedy show, but as shared
moment of human existence. I grew up in suburban Georgia,
which wasn't always easy for a girl adopted from South Korea.
My experience of looking different and treated terribly in some
cases is pretty unique. I mean, I was put in
speech therapy classes for not sounding Southern enough, but being
(13:46):
bullied and intimidated as a child seems to be an
international language. And Ed's courage to tell his cringey stories
in front of strangers. He gives us permission to laugh
at our painful pasts.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
When I turned eighty and I started comedy and I
moved away from the village, I moved to London and
it changed Like when I moved I had no friends,
and now I have three friends.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
So it was like, thank you, didn't go back. I
didn't go back to my village ever.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Really, my brothers both live outside as the village I'm from,
and i'd see my family when they'd visit my brothers.
And so in twenty fifteen, I'm sitting in my apartment
in London, minding my own business. I've just got back
from a gig. I've got my feet up on the table.
I get a cool I get a call from our
local counselor and they call me and they say, ed,
we've seen it. You're a comedian and you're doing quite well,
and we've seen in newspapers on the internet.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
You're gigging all over the place.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
We want to invite you back to the village to
do a charity show for us. We're building a thing
for the kids at the local school and we need
to raise money, so we're going to do a big
show in the village hall.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
I thought about it and I was like, I.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
Don't like my village, but this could be a really
nice experience to go and see all the people that
I kind of grew up with, but as an adult
that's gone out into the world and sort of achieved something.
I thought that'd be quite cathartic, that might be good
for me, So I said, yeah, I would.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Love to come. I would love to perform.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
So on twenty second of July twenty and fifteen, I
go back to the village.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
I get in about eight.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
The show's at nine, but I get in and I
park outside of the venue.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
I just sort of sit in my car. I'm a
bit nervous to go in. But then I do go in,
and I'm scared.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
Everyone's going to be like a dick to me still,
but they're lovely and I had a brilliant time and
it was great.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
I still stuck around some drinks.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
I drank my old school teachers, some people I used
to know from my childhood.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
About half past ten, I leave the gig and I've
had a drink.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
So I leave my car at the village hall where
the gig was, and I walk down the road into
the village and I go to my parents' house.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
I haven't been there for years and years.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
I go down all the streets that I used to
walk down as a kid, and it's lovely, like it's
the best.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
I'm a growing up now I've traveled the world a
little bit. I've got friends.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
I get to my house about half tenish, twenty to
eleven ish. I walk up to the front door. I
see the key hole. I'm too drunk for that. See
I'm not properly smashed. But it's dark and there's no
street lights in my village. And I just couldn't be
asked for this. So I walk down the side of
my house. There's a big iron gate. I push open
the iron gate into my garden and I go in.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
The back door.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
Because we never locked the back door most of the time,
don't lock the front door. It is that kind of village.
I walk into my house, I got out to my bedroom.
I lay down in my childhood bed, and I fall asleep.
And that is where our story is going to start tonight.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
There's a shift in Ed's voice and a moment of confusion,
an awkward silence as he steers us into unknown territory.
Something about his behavior felt familiar. I'd seen it before
in my work. He was a ball of anxious energy,
never looking up or making eye contact with anyone. The
only thing he had on stage with him was a beer.
(16:57):
No notes or set list. His childhood stories were hilarious,
if meandering, but told with such precision that you knew
he'd live them over and over in his mind. Was
he just nervous to finally try out new material in
front of an audience. My gut told me it wasn't
that simple.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
So I wake up.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
I wake up about twenty minutes after I fell asleep,
and it's a beautiful night. It's one of the prettiest
nights i've seen. The moonlight's coming in through the windows,
and it's just warm. There's a breeze. It's really pleasant.
But I look around the room. I can see everything.
I see the desk grow I wrote jokes trying to
be a comedian as a kid.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
I can see the little bit where I hung up
my school uniform.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
I can see all my school textbooks that my mum
was kept on the bookshelf. And at the end of
my bed, staring out of my window, there is someone standing.
It's my mum. She's standing at the end of my
bed staring out the window. But I can see from
the way the moonlight's sitting her face. She is terrified,
more scared that I've ever seen her in my life.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
She's scared. She's really scared.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
And I go to say, Mum, what's going on, and
before I can, she says the words to me, whatever
you do, do not turn on the.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Lights, my mom.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
She gets confused a lot, like a lot, which is
why on that night when I saw her at the
end of the bed, I wasn't really worried.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
My little village that I'm from.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
I made this recording of Ed said several months after
I first saw him on stage, but it's virtually unchanged
since that night in Scotland. The brilliance of Ed's storytelling
is the second he feels the audience pulling away in
fear or confusion, he brings them right back with humility
and humor.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
I thought she'd got in confused, so she had no
reason to say that. Our village is the quietest place
in the world. It doesn't have a train station, it
has one shop. It had a post office, but it
literally fell down. The worst thing in our village is
like fucking hoodlums, like bored kids. Our hoodlams are a
little bit different. They're wonderful. They're just board teenagers. They
get annoyed. It's a little village called Saffron Walden. They're
(19:20):
responsible from a favorite ever headline, which was hoodlums throw
apples at church Trump Page news weeks. They're brilliant as
a group of four eleven year old boys that call
themselves the Saffron Suliakshan, which is the best gangster name
in the world, and it makes them.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Sound like a packet of biscuits. It's brilliant. They want
to be gangsters, but they don't know how. No one's
ever taught them.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
They tried to mug me when I was a kid.
They tried to mug me and they failed. See if
you can support what they ruined the mugging. A kid
came up to me quite late at night and he went.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Dickhead, why don't you give me your fucking money? Please?
Speaker 4 (20:03):
No, I'm not going to do that. You can't be
a muggle with manners, can you. You can't do a
drive by and then signal the rules. His friend tried
to get some street cred back for his little mate,
but they were posh, so he ruined it. He went listen, Brava,
don't you dare bad mouth my man again? Yeah, don't
you dare disrespect Sebastian.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
No. So I'm in the room.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
I'm staring at my mum and she looks terrified, and
I'm thinking, well, this isn't going to be anything serious,
is it. I know Carol, I know what she's like.
She's easily scared by things. So I decided I'm going
to go and look for my dad. My dad, John
is the kind of silver back alpha of the family.
He's very calm, he's very logical. I go out into
the hallway and it's pretty. It's a pretty night, you know,
(20:54):
when you see light and there's little specks of dust
in the air and it kind of makes everything feel
a little bit magical, that kind of effect. I thought
that was magical until I told the story in Scotland
and a woman.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Was like, you're aware of that's dead skin? And I
was like, eh, yeah. So I'm standing.
Speaker 4 (21:15):
I'm standing on the hallway and I go to walk
to my dad's bedroom, which is down the end of
the house. His window overlooks the front garden, and I
see him. My dad is standing at the window. The
door's open and he's shirtless. He's standing without shut on
hands either side of the window, and I can see
his massive back.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
He's got this big, fu strong back.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
He's in his sixties now, but he's still an absolute unit,
just for years of manual labor. Like he's huge, and
he's sweating heavily, like he's literally the moonlight's kind of
glistening off him. And he's something different about him.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
There's something that I don't fully understand.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
And my dad's a mysterious person as it is, like
he's a very mysterious person.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
He's a very quiet man. He doesn't show a motion
a lot.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
The happiest I've ever seen him is when he got
new windows for the house.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
That was it.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
He got sold in windows by an infomercial of like
a really angry, red faced man that was like, do
you love your family and hate the French?
Speaker 3 (22:12):
And Dad was like, yep, yep, yep.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
The informercial was like, by the Titan seventeen windows, they're bulletproof,
they're bomb proof.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
We live in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 4 (22:22):
Because he's talking about him for weeks and one day
I come home from school and there's a man fitting
the windows.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
We have to get a man to fit the windows.
Side note, because my.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
Dad, while he is an alpha male and like a
physical builder, farmer, laborer guy. He can't do technical things.
He can't work screws, his hands are too big for screwdrivers.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
He ruins every diy thing he does.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
He put a back door handle on our back door,
and he put it on upside down right, which doesn't
sound like a big thing right in your head. Imagine
every single time you go to go in the back door,
there's a moment where you pull the handle down, it
goes chunk and go oh yea, Dad's a prick, and
then you have to put it up and go in it.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
Really, were you down every summer punk punk? Uh?
Speaker 4 (23:04):
So the guy fits the windows and Dad and me
stand back on the lawn and he's like, look them
tight in seventeen glorious. They're strong, they're reliable, they're good
for the family. I was like, I agree, they are
the son you wish you had. And on that night
in front of him, when he was standing at the
window looking at the front garden, I couldn't tell what.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
He was feeling.
Speaker 4 (23:28):
That's scary to me because growing up I've become an
expert in this man.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
I know everything about him.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
I know the way he moves, I know the way
his eyes look when he's a little bit annoyed. I
have to know that because he doesn't say anything. He
never tells us anything as a family, doesn't share a
single thing.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Point in case, my dad's got eight fingers missing two
fingers while off each hands. We didn't learn his lesson.
It's just.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
And until I was seventeen years old, I didn't mention it.
Like occasionally I passed my brother on the hallway at
Christmas as a kid and I'd be like, Jack, have
you seen dad's hands? And go yeah, And we wouldn't
just wouldn't mention dad's weird hooky hands.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
I was seventeen, I got invited to a house party.
He dropped me off. Proudest day of his life.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
His son was going to a house party to meet girls.
He's going to be a normal boy for once. I
get to the house party and I get dropped off
for eight thirty, get dropped off at eight thirty. At
eight forty, I convinced myself that the pretty girls are
talking about me in the garden.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
I cry, and I'm picked up at nine. So we're
driving home.
Speaker 4 (24:40):
We're driving home, me and John in complete silence, and
I want to talk to him. I want to talk
to my dad. I've had a few drinks and I'm
a little bit tipsy. I just want to connect with
him in some way. We don't have a lot to
talk about.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Me and John. We don't share any interests.
Speaker 4 (24:52):
He's a proper, proper alpha sports mail and I'm me
so I'm not a real man. I don't know if
you can tell by the everything about me, but I
don't really connect with him. And I'm trying to think
of what I can say to him. And I see
his hands on the steering wheel and I'm.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Like, ask about that.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
I start to think about how to ask that question,
because you can't just be like, what's that? Because he
might have like an armed flashback and we'll end up
in a ditch. So and thinking about how you asked
that question, how you word that without triggering him, how
you'd be respectful to any potential trauma that he has.
I'm trying to think this over and he sees me
fidgeting in my seat and he goes, what the fuck
is wrong with you?
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Edward? And I panic and said, where have your fingers gone?
Speaker 1 (25:28):
John?
Speaker 4 (25:40):
It's not how you asked that question, guys, he said.
I cut off and I went and we didn't talk
about it again. Didn't talk about it again, didn't talk
about it again. Doesn't share anything, doesn't tell anyone anything,
Never let anyone in, never show weakness, keep your own
shit to yourself, do your work hard, pay for your family.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Die. That's his thing. Get windows and you're done, right.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
That's all he worries about, right. He just doesn't let
us know anything. And I'm staring at him on the hallway,
and then I hear the banging. It's coming from the
front door. It's the loudest thing I've ever heard in
my life. It's literally vibrating up through the banister where
(26:27):
I stand at the top of the stairs, and it
scares me at first. It scares me really badly, and
I think about it. I think about it logically. It's
roughly the time the pub's close. I've just done a
show in town. It's probably a drunk guy that's been
like I want to speak to Ed, and he's come
to the front door. He's banging on the door. My
parents are getting on a bit. They're probably a bit scared.
(26:49):
They're probably just a bit worried about who it could be.
So they're looking out the window. They're not used to this.
What I'll do, I'll go downstairs, I'll answer the door.
I'll be like, mate, go away, this is too noisy.
So start to walk down the stairs. I get three
steps down and my dad's hand comes over the banister,
grabs me by the scruff of the neck, pins me
against the wall, and he leans into my ear and
(27:09):
he says, do not move, and do not make a sound.
He's holding me so tightly against the wall I can
hear the plaster ball behind me start to crack. And
he would do this a lot. His anger was It
was bad. It was really bad. Dad's temper just comes
out of nowhere. A lot of the times his outburst
(27:33):
were silly little things. Sometimes they were a lot more severe,
and that would be bad. I missed a lot of
school as a kid because I had black eyes, bust lips,
cut eyebrows, bruises on my back.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
I broke my hand, and it was bad. It was difficult.
My dad had this thing.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
Whenever he'd have an outburst, he'd always make pancakes the
next day. It sounds silly, but it's the only meal
he knows how to make. And he didn't want to
have to say sorry, because then he has to acknowledge
what he did. So if he did something bad the
next morning, he'd wake up at five am, make a
load of pancakes, leave him on the table. I'd wake
up in the morning. I'd eat him everything. I'll be fine.
That was the thing. If you eat the pancakes, everything
(28:11):
is fine. Unwritten rule. I had to be so smart.
He didn't express his emotions. He didn't tell anyone anything,
so you had to read everything he did.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
I'm an expert in the man. That's what I'm trying
to say. I'm an expert in the man. Had to be.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Suddenly. Behind all the sarcasm and wit, you can see
the young chubby boy physically and mentally terrified by the
men who inhabit his childhood. His bully, his friends, even
his own father couldn't recognize his gentle spirit. And you
can't help but feel for him.
Speaker 4 (28:49):
And the reason I'm telling these stories because I need
you to know. I couldn't tell what was happening. I'm
confused because he's not angry. He's pinning me against the
wall and he's not angry at all. I can't tell
what he is. My mom comes out of my room,
and she says, John, put him down. He lets go
of me. I slide down the wall. I stand up
(29:11):
and I walk into a room a little bit teary.
I'd a little bit shaken up. I shut the door
behind me in my room, and I think, right, what
has happened here? Banging's ringing through the house. Whoever's in
the front garden, whatever's in the front garden at this stage,
I don't know how many people, how many things, what
it could be. But my dad is looking at it
and he won't go downstairs. Doesn't make sense, So I think,
(29:38):
all right, I'm gonna call the police. I find out
what's going on. And the way the police work in
our village, because it's quite small, we have one police
officer that drives around all the villages all the time
and basically just looks after farming matters, to be honest,
Like a farmer will call up and be like, there
is a ghost in my garden and it's a sheet
and everything's fine.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
I call the police. It rings a couple of times.
Someone answers. I said, Hey, my name's Ed.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
I'm calling from forty Bentfield Avenue. Someone's banging on our
front door. I think it's a drunk, but my parents
are acting really weird and it's kind of shaken me up.
Could you send an officer down just to check this out?
And the person the other on the phone says, I'm sorry,
where did you say you were calling from? I said
forty Bentfield Avenue, just in sophomoreten. And the officer says,
(30:18):
mister Hedges, we're very aware of the situation. Please barricade
yourself inside the house and do not engage with anyone
you meet, and then they hang up.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
This season on Wisecrack.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
I never told people the name. I never wanted to
invite people to the village. The thing that struck me
most about it was the sheer quantity of bloodshed. It
literally was a blood bath. That doesn't sound like a place,
that sound like a police officer me, you don't do that.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
So when I found out, you know, boy what happened,
it was more holy shit.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
He did it, and he's got really defensive and was like, oh,
you don't trust me, and I was like, ah, that
sounds like what liars do when they're.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Caught out on a lie.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
I don't understand what happened to trigger that guy, because
it was hyperactive, but he wasn't a killer.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
Get your knives or does yourn't knives and put them away,
put them somewhere else.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
This is one of those things where you take my
word or you.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Don't, so you're saying this isn't safe. I personally would
not go there, or please bring someone with you. Episode
two will release next week, but you can binge the
rest of the season right now, completely add free by
subscribing to tenderfoot Plus on Apple Podcasts or at tenderfootplus
(31:52):
dot com.
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