No notes for the day but I did take a few pictures, just not the usual kind
As told to Felix Bazalgette The first time I crashed a funeral was in 2017, on behalf of the deceased. I had been working as a private investigator and he was a client. He had a terminal illness and had hired me to look into a financial matter, but soon we started talking about bigger stuff: regrets and things left unsaid.
He was angry with his best friend who he said was trying to sleep with his wife, but my client didn't feel able to confront him about it. I joked that I could do it for him, and we had a laugh imagining what that would be like. Three weeks later, he messaged me, saying he did want it done at his funeral; he would pay me £10k.
That was the start of my career as a funeral crasher. During the service, I remember looking down at my phone, about to begin my interruption, and thinking: "Is this going to go over well?" But I pulled myself together, stood up and said: "Excuse me, my name is Bill Edgar, I am the Coffin Confessor. Your loved one has something that's left unsaid and this is what it is." Everyone applauded when I called out the best mate, and he left when I told him to.
After that, people began to hear about me and got in touch asking me to do similar jobs; they would even come up to me at funerals I had crashed to hire me for future ones. I revealed all sorts of secrets: affairs, grudges, gifts. A dying member of a biker gang wanted me to tell his crew that he was secretly gay: at his funeral, I told them his lover was sitting among the mourners. I crashed a wake to tell a man that his late wife had hidden a large amount of money in the house.
I still work as a private investigator, but the funeral-based jobs have more variety: good, bad, funny, sad. It's nice knowing you can stick up for someone and carry out their dying wishes. I hadn't planned the name Coffin Confessor: it was something I blurted out the first time and it stuck.
I have had a difficult life: I was abused as a child, lived on the street as a teenager and was sent to a maximum security prison at 17. Professionally, I've been a bodyguard for high-profile individuals and worked undercover as a private investigator. So crashing a funeral wasn't the most daunting thing I've faced.
But I don't take it lightly - I have a gameplan, which is to get the crowd on my side from the outset. I tell them that their loved one has left something unsaid, and if they don't want to hear it they can leave. After that, everyone wants to hear what it is. After I've delivered the message, I remind everyone that any problems are between them and their loved one - that is, don't shoot the messenger.
I have been busy since the pandemic. I think people have started to think about death more. I was being contacted about all sorts of things. TV characters featured a lot - people wanted me to go to their funerals dressed as Bart Simpson, Starsky or Hutch, and the robot from Lost in Space. Things also got deep: people started asking me questions about death as though I were a psychic. I had to tell them that I've got no idea about the afterlife. I speak for the dead, that's all; I don't speak to them.
It's not just funerals - I also crashed the reading of a will. A woman got tired of her kids arguing about who would get what, so she wrote them out of it. She booked me in to arrive with the new will at the last minute; they weren't very happy. But the jobs aren't always controversial. I delivered flowers, wine and a round-the-world plane ticket as an anniversary gift to a man from his wife who had died the previous month.
This new line of work has changed my life. I have published a book, and signed a contract to make a film about me. But it has also opened my eyes to the fact that so many people find it hard to be themselves. Thousands have sent me their secrets and their deepest wishes; things they want me to say after they're gone.
It's made me think about my own funeral. I want to go out with a bang -to have my coffin filled with fireworks so they go off in the furnace. And I don't want to leave secrets behind. I want to tell everyone everything about my life while I'm still here. Bill Edgar
I don't remember exactly why I wanted to keep that but re-reading it now this sentence in particular stands out:
it has also opened my eyes to the fact that so many people find it hard to be themselves.
I hope that when my time comes that i won't need his services on account of having learned to be myself.
