At a time when many of us are searching for ways to pivot our businesses in the COVID-19 era, this killer idea enables the dead to dish the dirt.
Bill Edgar, a former private investigator has pivoted his business to become a ‘coffin confessor’, gatecrashing the funerals of Australia’s wealthy to reveal secrets the departed want finally to be told in front of relatives and friends.
For decades, one of Bill Edgar’s clients let his family believe that their riches stemmed from his skills as an astute businessman. But, for a little over £5,000, Bill Edgar confessed that the dead man’s riches came not through his commercial acumen or hard work, but from a lottery win he kept secret from even his closest relatives.
First client
The 52-year-old former PI from Brisbane, Australia, was hired by his first client three years ago to unravel their finances. He then found out his client was terminally ill. “We were chatting about death, the afterlife and things like that,” he recalls. “And then I suggested he write his eulogy but he doubted his family would allow it to be read. So I said, “I could crash your funeral”. In three weeks I get this text saying “Bill, please crash my funeral”. Basically, he was asking me to interrupt the funeral when his best mate was doing the eulogy and expose him for trying to have sex with his wife.”
Mr Edgar has since gate-crashed dozens of funerals to pass on messages the dead couldn’t get off their chests when alive.
One woman instructed Mr Edgar to reveal she’d had affairs with both her partner’s parents. At another funeral, few were impressed by the revelation that the deceased had been sleeping with his brother’s wife for six years.
Serious crime
Mr Edgar’s company Coffin Confessions is booked to speak at four funerals here in the UK. One of these will require him to reveal what he describes as a serious crime committed by the deceased. “What it is I’m not too sure because I won’t know until I open the envelope in front of everybody,” he says. “I’ll be as shocked as everyone else because if I know the crime in advance I have to report it,” he explained.
Not all of his clients are involved in score-settling. On a happier note, one dying woman asked for a letter to be posted every month to her husband from a small town in New South Wales, Australia where the couple had spent many happy holidays. Each letter ended with the promise, “I will make a home for you when you’re ready to come.”
If you can beat that as a business pivot let me know!
