EXCLUSIVE: Comedian Edd Hedges returned home after a charity stand-up performance to find a murderer looking for him.
In 2015, he woke up to a banging at the door and at the end of his bed, staring out of his window, there was a terrified woman standing there, and said to him, “Whatever you do, don’t turn on the lights”.
It emerged that a 23-year-old man had killed his family, stabbing his mother 41 times, and then went to Hedges’ home in a small English village, something the comedian describes as the “most terrifying night on my life”.
This is a true story and it’s now being told in podcast form by true-crime producer Jodi Tovay, , the company behind podcasts such as To Live and Die in LA, and iHeartPodcasts.
Six-part series Wisecrack, which launches today, is a Baby Reindeer-style series that began at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Tovay, who spent nearly six years working in development and production at Discovery, and who is now a principal at Starwipe Productions and Rainbow Heads Productions, took a vacation to Scotland and stumbled into Hedges’s show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to avoid the rain. There, she heard this story.
In the series, Hedges processes that night and turns tragedy into comedy, developing routine that not only covered the crimes, but also the people and places that shaped his childhood.
It’s a podcast that will inevitably be turned into a TV series or a film. Check out the video trailer below.
“I was taking a break from making crime television when Edd’s story found me,” said Tovay, who hosts the podcast. “The moment I heard his set, it stopped me in my tracks. My curiosity took over and I left vacation early and got to work, knowing that everyone needed to hear this immediately.”
“If you want to hear about my father with 8 fingers, how my mother became an accidental meth dealer, and uncover why my neighbor became a murderer, then Wisecrack is for you,” said Hedges. “I tried to deal with the trauma of that night through comedy, but I wasn’t willing to fully drop my guard. This podcast faces it all, head-on.”
“When you think you have heard every type of true crime story, Wisecrack proves you haven’t,” added Donald Albright, Tenderfoot TV Co-founder and CEO. “Comedy and crime are a proven recipe for success, but Wisecrack uses the art of stand-up comedy as a device to tell a narrative story, where every punchline hides something darker. I don’t think podcast listeners have ever experienced anything quite like it.”
