Sit down and shut up, because Bill is here. He's a commanding figure from the Gold Coast, who's not fond of many people, and when he's talking you better listen, because he has something important to say.
Today, he has something to confess. Who is Bill, and what is he concealing?
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Do you have a familiar stranger in your life, someone you see regularly on the train or at the gym or the supermarket. You don't know anything about them. Their life is but a mystery to you. They might look like a normal person, but they may have a dungeon in their house, or have a connection to Hollywood, or they may have even been famous in a past life. That's where I come in. Hi, I'm at Simone and I'm finding the most interesting people who may present as very regular people. I'm ready to squeeze out another confession. Head.
Hi, my name's Bill. I'm from the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. I live on a hobby phone with my wife. We have two children six grandchildren under the age of five. I love the ocean, the sun, the sand, and I enjoy animals more than people. However, I am conceding feeling something from you, Art Simone, but I'm ready to confess.
Hello. Bill, how are you going very well?
And thank you for having me?
Oh, thanks for coming on the podcast here today. Now. You're nice and clean cut, you're well lit, you look like you know what you're doing. You're on the Gold Coast. How long have you been there for your whole life or.
Our whole life. Yeah, I came up when I was probably two or three years of age.
Okay, sidetrack though, what's your favorite Gold Coast theme park?
Go? Oh, it has to be wet mild.
Oh, that's a very uncommon answer. Maybe that's a clue. I'm going to write that down. Wet things. Okay, wet things could be important. I personally am a movie world person, but I think that's just because, you know, I feel like I have star quality and star power, and I feel like I just belong in movie world. Do you like the sun? Are you okay with that?
I love the surf, sull and sand.
Oh okay, I don't only like surf, sun as I actually only like none of those things. But maybe we'll have lots in common. Who knows. Who knows. So what I'm gonna do is ask you three questions, and from the answers to those three questions, I have to work out what it is that you're concealing from me here today. Are you ready? Bill?
I'm ready?
All right, Bill? Okay. First question, what is a motto you live by?
Sit down, shut up, or fuck off?
Sit down, shut up or fuck off. Okay, now, is that something you've had to say a lot in your life?
Quite a lot?
And where did you first come across this? Rather to the point motto always placed.
In a position of having to say it, and it's just been an ongoing thing since.
Okay, all right, Look, I wish I could use that. I work in a lot of nightclubs with a lot of easy people, and I tell you what, it'd be lovely to bark that at some Okay. Question number two in alternate universe, who would you be and what would your profession be?
Oh, you know what, I'd still be me, but I'd be a cleaner because I'm always cleaning up other people's shit.
Cleaner. Okay, cleaner. Well, you're coming across very authoritative. Authoritative, authoritative now I'm having on those days. I may look like I have a big brain because my hair is so big, but it's actually filled with plastic bags and if you're in the room with me, you'd be able to hear them anyway. Question number three, our final question is what is your take on the meaning of life? To avoid death?
What the fuck.
The meaning of life is? Not to die at all? Okay? Avoid death? Wow? Okay, They've really set me up with a lot of information. Should really pull apart here today, Bill. Okay, so I'm getting that you have to tell a lot of people what to do, and you're cleaning up things, so you'd be a good cleaner cleaning up. That sounds like messy situations, but could be any type of messy situation, not actual mess okay, messy lives, messy people, messy wives, okay, and avoiding death. How else could you avoid death? Not to live in the first place.
What's a bit?
But you're here in front of me, so that's interesting. Okay, Okay, right, are you like an ambo? Like that's all that's coming to mind? Bill, I'm just going to go for that. Bill, Are you an ambo?
No, I'm not.
Duh.
Excuse me. My name's Bill Edgar and I am the coffin confessor. Sit down, shut up or fuck I'm hired by the decease before they die to tell those that were loved how much they were loved, and those that my clients love to hate to fuck off.
What what the fuck is that? Bill? You're a coffin confessor. I'm saying that like I know what it is, but I'm very confused. Is he into coffins? Does he sell them? Does he feel them? Who is he confessing to? All right, we're here with Bil who is not an ambo. He is but a coffin confessor. And if you're like me, you probably have no idea what the hell he's talking about. So please, Bill, can you give me a top line of what a coffin confessor is? What that entails?
Well, basically, I'm engaged by the decease to turn up at the funeral and to let the secrets out of the closet. Every person on the planet has a skeleton in the closet, and I reveal them at the funeral and be it good, bad, funny or said it doesn't matter then whether you like me or loath me, you won't forget me.
So you gate crashed funerals to deliver news on behalf of the deceased.
That's correct.
Wow, Okay, before we go into that, is this something that has that you've seen happen in other places and you're like, I could do that? Or did you make this up yourself?
Yeah? So I'm the only coffin confessor on the planet. There's no one else like me, and it created in twenty and eighteen. As it started as a joke, I told a dying man that I crash his funeral for him, and he took me up on the offer, and from there it went from one funeral to another to another and then another doors open where I'd be going to viewings and pinpricking the body to make sure he's dead, or placing items in coffins, or gain your people's homes and sweeping them of items they don't want their family and friends to find after they've done.
Do you know what, though, it's quite a useful service because now that you've mentioned sweeping a house of items, a lot of people in their lives, maybe not me, may have certain objects in their house that they might not want I don't know their mother seeing, or maybe any other relatives seeing. So I am exactly that makes complete sense of our bill. Top draw on my bedside? Can you just burn that?
Please? Can you?
I don't want to see that? Please?
Wow.
Now have you always been a good secret keeper?
I believe so. I've been a private investigator for about fourteen years now, so I do keep secrets and I hold them dearly because you know, it's my job. It's a trust that people rely on me.
I said earlier that we've got nothing in common, and we've just really cemented that even more because the world that I come from, there is no secrets kept whatsoever. You try to get a room of drag queens together and everyone has got I know absolutely everything about everyone else by the end of the night. So I think I would personally be a terrible Actually, i'd be good at the confessing maybe if I got maybe if they got given the gossip the morning of the funeral, and then I could rock up and be like, so, I bet you bet you didn't know this. Oh that's right to say. What's it like delivering secrets? You know? Do you have a sassy side?
No, I don't have a sassy side. I have a look, my integrity is everything. I go in and I sit amongst mourners, family and friends, and I stand up at a specific time that my client and I have basically worked out, and I'll interrupt the service by standing up and saying, excuse me, my name's Billaid guy, I'm the coffin professor city and shut up. Well fuck off, this is your loved one laying in the coffin and they've left something unset. If you want to hear it, stay and listen. If you don't chuck off.
Do people look at you when you arrive at the funeral and like they're start out and being like, who the fuck is this guy sitting in here? Like as there have been a scenario where you've us to leave before you can even deliver the news that you have to.
Oh yeah, some people get a bit upset, But as soon as I get the crowd on my side, the crowd usually hushould send down and ask them to leave because they want to hear. They want to hear what they loved. One left une said, I'm just a messenger.
You must be a good guy because they're dead. So if you don't shut up to the funeral and do it, who's going to know because you're the only one that knows the secret. So wow, you you must be a really top notch bloke. If you're you're like, no, I'm still gonna go do my job because I'll tell you what. Some of us wake up in the morning and if we don't have if our boss is dead, what's the point.
Yeah, I get it, but we all die, and I know more people dead than alive. Now, so I'm going where they're going, and there's no way I'm going to rip the dead off.
Now that you mentioned that that could be a good horror movie. Anyway, so you said it started, you know as AA. How did people then start to catch on about this service and find out about you?
Well, I I basically read aloud exactly what my client once said. Because it's their letter, they sign it. I have a contractual agreement and a video of me and my client. But once I finished reading, I placed the letter back in the envelope, place it on the coffin, and I leave. So I don't know if the funeral continues or not. I just walk out. Now, this first particular crash, I left, and the young girl came out and she said, excuse me, Bill, and my dad would be proud, thank you so much for doing that. The second lady that came out asked me and insisted that I see her auntie, who was in palliative care. And I decided to go and see her, and she asked me to crash her funeral. And from that funeral, there was a reporter there and the reporter made a headline story, just a little one, and then I was on Good Morning Britain. And after thirty minutes of been on Good Morning Britain, I had fourteen and a half thousand requests from the UK.
Does that mean you get to travel a lot to get to some funerals or do you Sometimes it's not about showing up in Perine, might be just delivering some news, whether that is by the mail or by you know.
Exactly a lot of times the overseas stuff is either via zoom or a face to face you know, teleconference or something like that. But to mean I do have to travel overseas, I've got a lot going on in the entertainment industry. So there there's quite a lot going on.
Could you guess, now, guess how many different people's information you've got like on the backburner, ready to deliver it when the time is right.
Oh, one hundred and nearly a thousand and nothing. Yeah. And the other thing too is as a private investigator, and I know the internet world very well. I'm an old school I write everything down as well, so I don't trust the Internet. I don't trust you know, the back doors of internet. So you know, I make sure it's all written down and it's hidden safely and securely. And that's the trust that my clients have in me.
Have the police. Then, if someone's confessed to a crime, for example, police giving me a rough time to try and get some more information out. And how does the situation like that work?
Okay, So if someone confesses a crime to me, I have to report it. You're obliged to report it. However, if they write it down, put it in a post envelope and post it to me, or I post it in myself and I don't open it, I don't know the crime, so I don't have to report it until the day of the feral.
Right, Okay, Well there's a way around it all, isn't there? There always is? Yes, how do you know if some of them have carcked it? Like do you have to like fully? Like because a bitteres aren't even a thing anymore? Like how do you how do you keep track to be like, oh shit, I've missed the fear and I don't even know what's happening. Like how do you I understand the ones that are knocking on death's door you can keep an eye out for how do you watch out those the other ones?
Every person that's engaged my services has a confident Okay, great, that knows that I'm engaged. They don't know what I do.
Or think something to do with the will or something I don't know well exactly.
Yeah, they know I'm going to do so, they know I'm the coffin confessor. They just don't know what it is. And it could, like I say, it be good, bad, funny or sad.
So and when you sit down have a meeting with your client and they tell you what they want you to do, there wouldn't be much in the world that shocks you. But is there still some things you're like, Oh, okay, did you get caught by surprise? Sometimes even now.
No, I don't think so. I think I've seen everything and I've heard everything. I mean, obviously there might be an item at a house that I wouldn't have suspected. Like you know, there was a lady recently who was quite an elderly lady, and she named her toy Clive after a husband had passed away some years ago. And Clive was no small fella. That'll be surprised.
All right, when I'm going you get rid of Clive, please send him out to pasture, all right, bloody? How well, good honor though, good honor that, But that is quite true because I feel, you know, I feel like some of we have packs with our best years to go. If anything happens, just go and fix this please. So it's nice that it's just a service, But how do you prove to someone that you are trustworthy? Because I have trust issues? And how do I know that if I call you up and I give you a little bit of gossip or a little secret, a little bit of news to deliver, that I can trust you.
Look, it comes down to morals, integrity, and ethics, and that's what I have. I mean, it's proof now since twenty and eighteen, I have not let a secret out. I won't do it until the funeral. Sometimes I don't even know what the secret is until I met the funeral and I have in the envelope myself.
That's going to be fun. You must look forward to those days you're like, oh, I get to open envelope, you know whatever one, two, three, four today or what's it going to be exactly?
And especially like sometimes someone will confess to a crime, so.
Oh god, this is heaven. This is like maybe drag queens, are you franchised maybe drag Quay wouldn't really good at this.
I have a lot of trust issues.
I don't know I felt real Has there any been moments where you felt in danger or threatened by other people because of what you do?
Only one particular funeral where I revealed that the guy was gay and he was a bikey, and the other boys said that I was going to end up in the grave with him. Mission they didn't like what they heard. But again, if those people really knew and loved that man, they already knew they really did. So again, it's not like I'm saying anything new to some people at the funeral service. You know some of them already know. It's just a big reveal.
Really yeah, I guess what you kind of delivered to is, you know, infamously and like you've heard of messages being delivered when the will is being announced or red out or anything. So it's not an entirely new concept, but you seem to be modernizing it a little bit more and making a bit more personal and more in your face performative and fun. So, of course there's a lot of darkness around death, but what are some of the fun things you've been able to do, or the funny requests or the ones that you've really enjoyed doing, you.
Know what, you know, even the bad ones I enjoyed doing. The more I'll get it, through it out of it. Nowadays, it's pretty cool just to be the only person that's invited to a funeral by the actual decease. I'm probably the only person on the planet that's inbted by anybody that's died. So but I've got to say the one that sticks in my memory is it is probably the funniest. And I don't know the circumstances around why it was so funny, but the gentleman, he'd been petrified that he wasn't going to be in the casket, it was going to be somebody else, because many years ago at his grandmother's funeral, they brought the wrong casket and wrong body. They actually buried the wrong body and everything, and he was shocked that, Yeah, I worried that was going to happen, and so he asked me to walk up to the coffin and check that it was him in the casket midway through the service. Midway midway, so I had to work out what coffin he was in, and how to open it, because not all coffins are the same. They're very difficult to open some of them that have locks and latches and secret little compartments. So I had to work all that out. However, he also asked that I play on my phone, Pop goes the Weasel.
Oh my god, I know.
He didn't tell me why, but he said, when you do it, and when you check it's me, look at my wife, give her the thumbs up, and that's all you have to do. Well, when I did it, and I looked at his wife, she was in hysterics, and it was a thing between them too. It was just something very secretive and very beautiful between the both of them because she went from morning to hysterical and it was just a beautiful thought process for her to think of him. You know, it's good. I enjoyed it.
Have secondhand anxiety from you explaining that story. How do you push through that? Because what I how do you do? I wouldn't.
I don't know. I've seen enough dead bodies to not worry about seeing your dead body.
Yeah, but it's even just in front of a room of people going oh yeah, better put Pop goes the police salon.
Oh, fuck them. I don't have any concern for those left beyond. It's not about them.
It's you and I guess too. At the end of the day, you don't know any of those people. You'rerobably never going to see them ever again the rest of your life. It'd be different if it was a rumor of people that you didn't know. Jeez, do you ever have to sometimes kind of question your own morals? Like, I know you're working on behalf of your client, but do you have to bring your own reason into some situations to go perhaps my client isn't thinking properly, or this isn't right, you know.
Yeah, And this is where my background comes in. I investigate every claim that i'm told. So if Joe Blogg said to me, I'm looking, I've been screwing the neighbor next door and she's not letting me see the kid, well, you know what, I'll investigate that claim. I'll do it as discreetly and as professionally as I can, and then even if I find it's true, I'll say, listen, how about we just say you were screwing a neighbor because you live in a complex and it could be man or woman, that's not out her when you're gone, because she's got three kids, you know, she has her husband, and I know how vengeful and revenge you on her. But let's just let her know secretly that you're desires in your thoughts, but let the crowd know that it could have been anybody. So I'll work around a few areas that I'm not going to destroy a family over it.
Yeah, And that's a really good point, because some older people do get very vengeful and always really want to have the last say.
Although there are a lot of vaults in the families too, you know, And these vultures circle as soon as I know you're on your deathbed, they're circling trying to get all your shit, you know. And you don't know the vultures are there until they're there. And sometimes they could be standing right beside you throughout life, just waiting, you know, So I couldn't give a fuck about them. I love standing up at funerals and telling them to fuck off.
Now, I will ask you, is there a kind of funeral you haven't gone to yet that you want to experience? I don't know, maybe a witch burning, or maybe I don't know, a mummification could be fun. Is there any because I feel like you've been to all sorts of funerals. Is there something that you're waiting to see one day?
Yeah? Too? Oh, going to go into a tomb? I'd like to. Yeah, something like that would be something I'd like to see. You know, I've jumped in another man's grave, I've lay in the grave, I've been to the cremation, and I've sort of lay on the bed of the crematorium as well. I've done all those things to experience what it was like. I even had coffins on my own farm that I was People were coming in staying because I had coffin camping and it worked out really well for a while.
So that's quite a camp though. I like that. No, I really like And it's really pleasant to meet someone like you because death is very scary for a lot of people. And the service you offer and from just meeting you, I think you demystify and make death a little less scary. How do you price something like this, like, how do you go? How much is a secret worth? And it's a lot of people and depending on the secret it could be a lot of money.
Well, yeah, I mean it's between two and ten thousand dollars a year. They don't need the money where they're going, and I never get a complaint.
That's true, And I mean people are going to wonder. People are going to wonder to get paid in advance or does it go into a magical thing that releases at a certain date.
In time, like yeah, it goes into a trust account, so it's not released until the day they're funeral and that I've done the job.
Well, there's your motivation to do the job, then, isn't there. Okay, forget about the dead people hunting you down. You don't get paid Gill, It's done so so I think the only way to close this out would be to give you a confession that I'd like you to keep. I'll give you bit of background. So I haven't told anyone this, and my housemate will be really upset when I do reveal it. But luckily I don't think he listens to my podcast because he's not a good friend. But my housemate is obsessed with house plants. Obsessed obsessed with house plants. You won every day too, if possible, and I've been very accepting, But there's one type of house plant I hate, and I don't think they deserve to be in the house. And they're those mangy, gross, succulent things. Their kid is give me something with the flail, Give me something with the vine. Why do I need this meat bloody thing with some rocks on the bottom that's just sitting in a jar. Anyway, The reveal is that I've been throwing the succulents over the back fence so.
Well that sucks.
So if you could please deliver that, if I have an untimely JESK, that would be wonderful, not a.
Problem at all. I'll let him know you spit his succulents out.
So Bill isn't an ambo. He is a Goffin confessor, and I hope he enjoys my succulent secret. You've been listening to an iHeart Australia production Concealed with artsimone. Listen to more of what you love an iHeart, and I must confess I look amazing today. So what are you waiting for? I know you're dying to check me out on the socials.
Momma, Yes,