Beef And Dairy Network - Episode 31 - Redeeming Eli, Part 1

Episode Date: January 21, 2018

The first in a new mini-series from the Beef And Dairy Network. “Life is a struggle, life is dog eat dog. Right? I will eat a dog. I have eaten a dog.” By Benjamin Partridge, Mike Bubbins, Melangell Dolma, Chris Corcoran, Nadia Kamil and Rhodri Viney. Thanks to Hal Lublin and Tom Crowley. Music credit: Oh Holy Night Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Support for Redeeming Eli comes from the Buck P. Mitchell Foundation, efficiently avoiding tax since 1974. Making the perfect candle isn't easy. There is a lot to consider. The delicate balance of wick size, wax recipe shape, and a certain something else, a je ne sais quoi, an X-factor, something that can't be easily defined, but is absolutely required to make a truly outstanding candle. The average eight-inch candle will burn for around six hours, six and a half if you're lucky. But a candle made in the Welsh village of Llancaig, of exactly the same

size, will burn for 15 hours. As a result, Llancaig has been a byword for quality candles for hundreds of years. On the bio-tapestry, you can clearly see a soldier being soothed by the light of a Clankheag candle as he comes to terms with having his leg chopped off by a Norman. It was Clankheag candles that brought light to Charles Darwin's drawing room as he stayed up

late into the night looking at beaks. Guy Fawkes had planned to use a candle from Clankig to light the fuse to detonate the gunpowder blow parliament in the 5th of November gunpowder plot. However, as we all know, he was caught and the candle was shoved up his arse by one of his torturers. I know all this because last year I was contacted by a resident of Clankig, former slaughterhouse owner Eli Roberts, who asked me to save his reputation. You've got to remember one thing, right?

People are essentially bastards. Wherever you go, everyone hates everyone else. Right? Life is a struggle. Life is dog-eat-dog. Right? I will eat a dog. I have eaten a dog. I will kill a dog, then eat it. Right? I will kill a dog by eating it. From the Beef and Dairy Network, this is Redeeming Eli, part one. It's early evening, and I'm sitting down with a couple of rich beefers to read today's post.

At the top of the pile is a large brown envelope, spattered with what looks like blood. I open the envelope and a waft of cheap aftershave, mixed with the sweet, sweet smell of raw meat, meets my nostrils. I pull out the contents. A letter from Eli Roberts. I'd interviewed Eli on the Beef and Dairy Network podcast on a number of occasions. He first appeared on the show to talk about health and safety standards at his slaughterhouse. You lose a finger, guess what? Next shift, you're thinking, right, come on now, don't lose any more fingers. The bloke there, right, Dave his name is, the bloke with four fingers,

is the most focused bloke in the place. Because he knows, right, one slip, he's got no fingers. Then he spoke to me about his new mosquito theme park. Eli's world of mosquito mayhem. You get out of the car, and within a matter of seconds, you'll start getting the full experience. Different types of mosquito and strains of mosquito in different parts of mosquito mayhem.

Before finally explaining his current incarnation, a religious leader running his own cult. I am a chosen person. I have a special duty to fulfil my prophecy, which is to help people in this life and help them on the way to the next, like I did for so many animals over the years. The handwriting was childlike,

but the content of what was written was anything but. He says that my interviews with him on the podcast have given a false impression of his personality, and that he wants me to make a programme about him that will show the world, in his words, the real Eli. The next morning I take the first train to Swansea, in South Wales,

where I hire a car and make the hour-long drive up to Llancaig. To get there you simply drive up the Taru Valley and keep going until the road stops. Eli's home, which doubles as the headquarters of his cult, the Church of Eli, stands alone on a hillside, looking down across the valley and the village below. The building is a single-storey rectangular concrete compound, unassuming apart from the 150-foot-high brass statue of Eli hitting a bull in the face with a cricket bat. I ring the doorbell, and when he opens the door,

Eli seems uncharacteristically jittery and nervous and is keen to start recording. He begins by telling me that the way he's been portrayed in previous podcasts is, in his opinion, unfair. Well, I came across as some sort of, you know, uncaring lunatic with no empathy. And, you know, if you cut me, I bleed. So you're saying you're just human like everyone else? I'm a human being. You know, I've got feelings. I've got emotions.

I think that, like everyone else, I'm like a Russian doll, you know, you take apart the outside, you know, this tough exterior, which has had to be tough, you know, and under there, there's a soft, soft, gentle, gentle, smaller doll, and then you go inside that doll, and there's another odd doll again, you know, there's a bit of another, and then inside that doll, there's another nice doll again you know it was a bit of another and then inside that doll though is another nice one you know and they go no that's human nature and i mean we're all we're all we're all russian dolls eli of course is right we are all russian dolls but eli is more russian than i'd ever imagined well my early life was very very very happy i was

a small child growing up in in uh in the uk Ukraine area of what was then the Soviet Union. My father was a wonderful, wonderful man, Nikolai. Very much a go-getter, very much a man who didn't see problems, just saw solutions, you know, and he was involved in the purges with Stalin. When you say he was involved in the purges, on which end? Oh, in the Soviet end, yeah. He went into Ukraine with, he was good friends with Nikita Khrushchev. They grew up in a small village together.

They were both metal workers. Yeah, he killed thousands, but I mean, always responsible for the death of thousands, certainly, but for a reason. You know, people just like, well, if his grandfathers went to war, then, you know, my father and his father before him were involved in a class struggle.

People forget that, you know, so yes, he killed thousands, but look at the end result. we're involved in a class struggle. People forget that, you know. So, yes, he killed thousands. But look at the end result. You know, and the old man was very much favoured. He was one of the elite. So as a small boy, he grew up in, you know, we'd have a dasher down the country there and, you know, we'd go killing deers and stags and wolves and bears. Fantastic times.

And, of course, then, party political politics, as it was like in the former Soviet Union, Khrushchev became persona non grata, following the sort of Cuban-Mithozoic crisis and various other things, you know. And my dad had to leave the country. Nicolai and his family defected to the West, eventually making it to Britain, where they were given new identities and a small house in Clankig.

Eli was just eight years old. We went from a life of absolute luxury to, you know, a very hard existence. So did people in Wales, did they know about your father's background? They called him Russian Nicky. Some people called him the Tsar. But a bear of a man, a huge, huge bear of a man, big, lovely Stalin-esque moustache. I can see him now as a kid.

I always had that protective big Russian arm around my shoulders, and it was just nice to have Dad there and to see the locals' eyes when he'd walk into the shop, you know, to see that. It's fear, really, isn't it? I mean, people talk about respect, but respect at any level is essentially fear, I think. I think if someone fears you, then, you know, by definition, they respect you.

When did your father die? I don't really know because he went out in the woods when I was about 16, 17 years of age. Never saw him again. I mean, you hear the stories and that, and they said the woods are haunted after that. Old Russian Nicky's out there. Oh, don't go in the woods after that. Old Rush Nicky's out there. Don't go in the woods at night

because Old Rush Nicky lives out there and he's covered in his own excrement and he eats whatever he can find. But I mean, he saw a lot of stuff, Dad.

You know, he saw the world and I think that in the end he just thought I'm going to walk away from all this now. It was when his father disappeared into the woods

that Eli, now the man of the house, had to make ends meet, which is when he started his slaughter business. I mean, the thing was, starting off there, you know, I was a man of few financial means, so keeping the overheads low was essential, you know, when I started the business. And where I managed to undercut a lot of the competition in the area

was I would need no machinery. So people would bring me their animals, their livestock, or their pets to kill, and I would do it with bare hands. The saving you make there on conveyor belts and electric bolts and the tanks of acid and all the modern acc of accoutrements of a slaughterhouse. You don't, essentially, you don't need that. I mean, that is all window dressing. You know, all you really need is a strong pair of hands and a can-do attitude.

And that's what I had. So people bring me their pigs and their cows, horses. There's nothing you can do with an electric boat, you know, that you can't do with your bare hands. And with a rock or a piece of glass or a river. You know, dying's dying. He'd phone me up. Eli? Yeah.

What's the matter? Oh, it's old Jeb. Old Jeb the horse. What's up with him? He's lame. Okay, where is he? Can he come up here? No, he's got a bad leg.

I'll come to you, don't worry. And I would go down there now. If he was saying I was the horse, go down there, put like a bin bag over my top and just whack him in the temple with a with a half a brick that's fine you know

bang gone and that's from those from those very inauspicious beginnings you know very humble beginnings I moved on but I mean

I think there was a purer if anything those days the early days I think you always look back on through rose tinted spectacles you know the early days of stuff think you always look back through roast-tinted spectacles, the early days of stuff, and how things were simpler back then.

But, I mean, it really was. I mean, I'd go round, I didn't even have a car. I'd jog, you know, if you're six, seven miles away. Jog over there. You know, whatever, chuck your dog in the river. You know, it was trial and error. I mean, the joy of not having any overheads, particularly,

and that youth and enthusiasm was when I get, I had the joy of experimentation and working out the way, like so, for instance, things like ferrets and stoats, you know,

they're quite small. You can just hold them by the tail and smack them against a wall. They will die almost immediately. Things like a tortoise, literally a tough nut to crack a tortoise, right? nut to crack a tortoise flip it over first of all

it's on the soft bit and then if you just drive a tractor over it but don't do it when it's shell up because it's just like a speed ramp you know it'll be oblivious to it so I don't know I killed a dolphin once on holiday the key with that is I mean they're very slippery

I got a beer bottle and just chucked it in the air hole and chyfeirio'r rhain yn y fan honno. Mae'n dechnicaeth tecniol iawn gyda'r gwyl. Fe wnaethon i ddiwethaf o gwyl, ond rhaid i mi gael bort fwy. Fe wnaethon i ddiwethaf o gwyl, ac fe wnaethon i ddefnyddio, yn y bôn, un fath o fars. Mae llawer o fyrdd, yn enwedig y fyrdd mwyaf, yn cael eu ddefnyddio. Er enghraifft, mae'r albatros yn cael ei ddiwethaf wrth roi llyfn arno. Fel ychydig o ddwy-dyfodol. I got for instance an albatross they once killed an albatross by throwing a hammer at it like a modern day thaw

it was a lump hammer seven pound hammer which they use for like taking propellers off ships and stuff and I caught it right in the back

of the head and the head literally exploded it was a wonderful thing to see but I mean anything living can be killed

simple as that you know often times it was things that you could have done yourself if you had the moral compass

to want to do that, you know, or the fortitude to do it. You know, there's no reason why you couldn't kill your own pig physically. You know, it's easy enough. I mean, pigs are thick as you like as well. So if you had like a handful of apples or something, a pig would follow you upstairs, no problem. And then just put the apples by the windowsill and kick him out.

He's going to be dead. But people won't do it. They've got some sort of moral problem with it. The same people, mind, the same hypocrites, will happily have a bacon roll, won't they? You've seen them. So you're saying there's an inbuilt hypocrisy with someone who will eat bacon but won't kick a pig out of a window?

Of course, it's exactly the same thing, isn't it? Animals get born, they die. Guess what, sunshine? Get at the top of the food chain and you can do the killing. But you're not, are you? You're two rungs down, so shut up and get on with it. Get on those bloody stairs

and get out that window. Because believe me, if they were on top of the food chain, we wouldn't be here for two seconds, mate. Don't even worry about that. You think if pigs were... I tell you what, then we wake up with

some sort of planet of the ape's future, right? Oh, what's happened? The pigs are ruining the place. These staff buggers, these people from universities, oh, pigs are intelligent, right? And we wake up one day and pigs are ruining the place. These staff buggers, these people from universities, oh, pigs are intelligent, right? And we wake up one day and pigs are running the show, right? What are they going to do to us?

Do you think a pig would kick you out the window? Within two seconds. The thing is, in all these dispatches, it's hand-to-hand combat. It's the pure way of doing things. It's gladiatorial. I think a gun's an easy way out. You know, it's better to have that respect for the animal way of doing things. It's gladiatorial. You know, I think a gun's an easy way out. You know, it's better having that respect for the animal's soul, really.

So you think that kicking a pig out of a window rather than getting it with a gun is more respectful to the pig? I think so, yeah. And I think if the pig could speak, you know, he'd agree with you. I think if he saw me in the window, what was he doing there? Oh, look out, here it comes. Bang. You know, as he's falling, I can imagine him think if he saw me in the window what was he doing there oh look out here it comes bang I can imagine him falling down there

looking up at the window with a probably got some bit of apple I'm chewing a bit of apple thinking oh you little bugger Eli you got me with the

old apple by the window trick there didn't you bang what would you say are the are the things that make a person a good person well there's no such thing as a good person is there but good things within a person would be things like physical

strength mental strength um a capacity to do wrong for the right reasons i mean a lot of people say that my dad was a bad man right oh russian nicky dada um because he was involved in those purges back in the day you know but uh and yes on one side of it you'd look at it and you could look at it and say right the modern historians might look at it and say oh he's a bad man when he why is he a bad man then my dad he killed thousands in the purges and i say right okay who'd he kill a lot of those people are nameless facelesseless, right? Forgotten by history. Who's to say, right, that amongst that population

there wouldn't have been the next Hitler or the next Pol Pot, right? What did Hitler kill, 8 million people? Pol Pot killed 5 million people, right? What's that, 13 million? Who's to say my dad, right, by wiping out one village hasn't saved 13 million lives? Think of it that way, 13 million? Who's to say my dad, right, by wiping out one village, hasn't saved 13 million lives?

Think of it that way, innit? Because you don't know, see? That's the thing. You don't know. But you also don't know that maybe they weren't for a future death. Yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, whatever. Right? What does that mean?

Or maybe they weren't death spots. Maybe they wouldn't have grown up to commit genocide. Yeah, maybe they wouldn't have. And maybe they would have. He could have saved billions of lives, my dad, by killing thousands. That's called altruism. Following through this line of argument and this logic,

you could argue that it would be best to kill everyone on Earth because someone might turn out to be a despot, a genocidal despot. Yeah, right, right enough. And if you think that, and you wholeheartedly believe it in your soul, then, you know, you have the courage of convictions. So you're saying that the best way to stop genocide is to kill everyone on Earth? It's obvious, isn't it? No more genocide.

No more murder. No more crime. No more murder. No more crime. No more hardship. You've taken care of it because you've got the courage of your convictions. You've got the moral fortitude to do what needed to be done. To kill everyone in the world.

To keep everybody safe. If I went out without you and talked to the people of the village here and I said, do you think Eli Roberts is a good person? Which people are you going to ask? I don't know. Could you give me a list of names you're asking? Well, I don't know yet.

I'll just go out in the street and speak to people in the local shops. Right. Let me talk to the village first, maybe. I could have a town meeting. I could put some basic rules down like you know what i mean no guidelines i was talking hypothetically really all right okay because i said i quite happily get a meeting like i don't think we'd need the next hour or two just get everyone in and i don't think we'd need a meeting tell them what's what like you

know no i i could just go and talk to them i'll do it right yeah but i don't we don't need that to happen but let's just say people say oh eli's a murderous thug just because they know it'll make it'll make you know it'll get airtime when really they're thinking he's not a stick all eli is he you're saying that if i was to go and speak to the villagers someone might say for example that you are a murderous thug yeah they're just attention seekers isn't it and if they do say that i would like to know who said it but you think they're they're not being fair? No, they're just doing it for attention, aren't they?

Well, maybe I'll go and talk to them and they'll have positive things to say about you. What do you mean, maybe? Well, it seemed like you thought they might sort of have negative things to say. Well, no, I'm saying if they have negative things to say about me, then it's probably that's not true. They're doing it because that's what you want to hear. So going back to my original question, if I were to ask them if they thought you were a good person right and they said who you going to ask yeah but let's let's imagine i'm asking a random stranger well he's not gonna know me is he no a random stranger to me not to you someone who just lives in the village who

where'd you live i don't know right go on if i was to ask this hypothetical person right if they think you're a good person, what do you think they'd say? They'd say yes, if they know what's good for them. On the drive down the side of the valley from Eli's compound, I pass huge piles of debris, old wax, discarded wicks and the like, dumped on the hillside.

A constant reminder of the village's candle-making heritage. Not that one needs reminding. When a village has no future, everything is the past. For almost 200 years, Llancaig was a wonderful place to live. The candle factories employed over 90% of the local people until the late 1980s when, facing pressure from cheaper candle makers in India and China and following a number of strikes, the British-made candle market collapsed almost overnight. Several derelict candle factories still stand, casting long shadows across the village. Even today, despite a massive cleanup effort in the 90s, a thin film of candle wax

covers almost every surface, including the roads, which as a result are some of the most dangerous in Europe. And the village itself is, well, it's depressing. After the candle factories, the only other employment was the Robert Slaughterhouse, which shut down last year after a litany of health and safety failures. Schlankig is a village on its arse. I parked the car outside a boarded-up candle showroom and have a walk around. Walking through the village, the locals seem friendly, some saying a cheerful hello or trying to sell me homemade candles.

But when I mention the name Eli Roberts, they change. They seem to shrink like a scared animal, and they won't say another word. What's your relationship like with the people of the village? I think my relationship with the village is very much like the bee's relationship to the flower in as much as they provide the pollen, which is labour, and I provide the honey, which is a means to survive.

You know? So it's symbiotic. You know, it's like those little creatures that live on whales. You know? Eat the barnacles and stuff. Like a parasite. That's the one, a parasite, yeah. The only person willing to have his words put on record

says he will only do so on the condition that his voice is replaced by that of an actor. No one around here will talk to you. They're all afraid of what Eli would do. He knows everything. Somehow he's everywhere at once. It's terrible. In retrospect, we probably should have used a different actor.

As my train home pulls out of a Swansea station, I know something is going on. Why had no one wanted to talk to me about Eli? More after this. Are you looking for your next great hire but short on time? You just need the right tools. ZipRecruiter posts your job to over 100 job boards with just one click. Then they actively look for the most qualified candidates and invite them to apply. No wonder 80% of employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate through the

site in just one day. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. And right now, network members can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for free. That's right, free. Go to ZipRecruiter.com slash beef. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash beef. Slash beef. Slash beef. In a world where meat was banned, only one man could stand up to the state. Get off me.

There's no point struggling, Slash Beef. We've got you this time. Get these punks off me. I'm sorry, Mr. Beef. I'm not going to risk letting you go now. I'm not Slash Beef. Oh, I think you are. I'm not.

Then why are you wearing a cape on which it has printed the words Slash Beef? I'm just a fan of his. You'll never catch slash beef. Is that so? Well, if you're not slash beef, who are you then? I'm slash beef. Oh no. ZipRecruiter.com slash beef. If no one living in the village would talk to me, maybe someone who used to live there would. After weeks of research, my team found some people willing to talk. My name is Gwenllian Lewis and I'm a photographer. Gwenllian Lewis is an award-winning photographer. At her home in Bethesda in North Wales, she shows me the photos she took when she moved to Llancaig in the late 80s. I think, yes, this is around the time. Ah, here we are. Yes. So this is actually the first picture I took.

So I originally heard about the village because obviously it was a big news story at the time with the candle-making industry coming to an end. And, you know, that was massive. Even up in North Wales, you know, it was a big story. So I was very interested in the kind of the post-industrial imagery but I thought it would be really interesting to capture that as it was happening so I went down I did a trip for a weekend to see what what it was like and you drive over over the hills and you arrive at this

this valley and in the middle of all this nature there's these gigantic buildings, these huge structures and all the debris of the candle making and the wax dripping everywhere and if it got very hot in the summer then it would get on your clothes, you know, it was quite difficult working environment but after that first weekend I came away and I was so inspired and I just knew that that was where I needed to be. Gwentleyan found a small cottage to rent, moved to Clankig and started taking pictures. And straight away, it was clear that something was awry.

So it was very important to me that I was also getting pictures of the people that were going through this crisis point, as well as the debris and the industry. So I started doing portraits. And it took a while for people to trust me, but they would come. And eventually I was doing portraits of quite a few people. But something very strange was happening

because as a photographer, you do a series. You gradually get to know somebody. You'll do three or four sittings. But I'd do the first sitting. It would go OK. But none of the pictures were really usable. And I'd plan for a second sitting and they wouldn't turn up. It was happening all the time.

And I started trying to, well, look into it because I thought a few times, OK, maybe they're uncomfortable. They've decided not to come again for the pictures but it was happening every time so that was quite worrying so I was going around their houses knocking and it was like they had disappeared into thin air family members that I would ask about them would not say a word about them and that was worrying. And I remember one day, I met with Father Jonathan, who's the local vicar. And that was when he told me all about Eli. And I remember he said that day, you don't know what you're dealing with. You should get out while you can. Well, to me, that sounded like a challenge.

So I was very interested by that. And I thought, right, I'm going to get to the bottom of this and who this Eli man is and where all the people are going. You know, they were disappearing. This was, you know, this was far more interesting than the candle making industry coming to an end. That was peanuts. You know, this was disappearing people. Gwendolyn made it her mission to try and find and photograph Eli, snooping around outside the slaughterhouse, but for many weeks she didn't see him. But then, one evening, she finally got her shot.

It was late afternoon, it was winter, so it's quite dark, and he came out of the slaughterhouse, and he was wearing his overalls blood, I mean everywhere he's a big man and he was carrying something that was wriggling a lot and I realised it was a cat and he was carrying it

by its tail and he threw it against the wall with such force and that day I did get some pictures. Gwentleyan shows me copies of the photographs. It's dark, and Eli, covered in blood, is hurling the cat at the wall. In his eyes is a look that is hard to describe. Inhuman. Demonic.

Shortly after this incident, Gwentleyan got a package through her letterbox. It was quite thick, and it was a series of Polaroid pictures. And they were all of me. And it became apparent that he knew I was following him. And a lot of pictures of me, some of them very intimate, which was very distressing and the the final one was um i don't really know how to describe it but it was a picture of some kind of it was like a frankenstein monster made of all these different animal body pieces and and the cat that i saw that day was the head, you know, the crushed skull, the head and pig's trotters and a cow's tail. It was the most horrendous thing I've ever seen.

And I knew then that I was in grave danger and I needed to leave. And I have never been back. I've never been back. Hi, I'm Geoff Pugh, and I used to work with Eli, and I've been living away now for 15 years. Geoff worked at the Robert Slaughter House as a young man. He now lives in London, where he is a successful font-namer. Sitting in his plush London flat, Geoff tells me about the ways Eli made it hard to leave the village.

It was psychological. for most people. And then if his psychological control didn't work, then it would often be physical. I mean, sometimes I remember seeing him stood by the village sign, stopping one couple from leaving. village sign stopping one couple from leaving and he was short of people he wanted to work at the slaughterhouse and um actually put down you know those uh stingers they call them they had like he had um he had police stingers and he put a stinger across the road and the car was going you know no more than 25 miles per hour but it hit the stingers and swerved out of control there's a baby on the back seat, I remember it, and it crashed into a ditch.

No one was hurt, but he just said out and walked them back. And yeah, that was it. He had them working the next day. When he left school, Geoff had assumed that he'd go to work in the candle factories.

My dad had, my grandad had. But on the day of his final school exam, Luminox collapsed. That was followed the next week by United Candles and Chandler Tech, and then the biggest candle factory, Tallowmasters. He had no choice but to try and find work at the Roberts slaughterhouse. He immediately hated the work. The stifling heat, the danger, the compulsory after-work awful parties.

At the end of his second week, he handed in his resignation. So as far as I was concerned, I'd resigned. That was me done. I was out. But I had the weekend and it was a relief. And then I woke up on Monday morning. It was about quarter past six in the morning. And I heard this banging on the door. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Like that.

Initially, I just thought school kids or, you know, milkman, like, needing payment or whatever. So I was waiting for my mum to get up, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, like that. And then I remembered my mum was away and it was only me in the house, bang, bang, bang, bang. And I was just about to get up and then he just burst through the door. He just barged through the door, came steaming up the stairs burst into my room no words picked me out of bed in fact all he said was slaughterhouse now so he just grabbed me by the scruff and uh pushed me down pushed me down the stairs not literally i ran down the stairs but he's behind me i didn't under my back like that call the bottom of the stairs, but he was behind me, had his hand on my back like that, caught at the bottom of the stairs. You know, I'm in my pants like I'm in wife-runs.

He just pointed to my brogues by the front door. I put him on and he marched me to work in a pair of wife-runs and a pair of brogues. No words. That was it. Geoff worked at the slaughterhouse for a further two years before he felt that enough was enough and asked to resign again,

hoping that his years of service would count for something. I went into his office at the end of the day. I sat down and I said, Eli, I'm shaking now. I said, Eli, I want to resign. I'm out. He said, um, he said, OK. He said, OK. He said, thanks for your work, thanks thanks for your time best of luck to you so monday

morning there i am uh half asleep thinking our new life here we come thinking about going away and all that it was brilliant and uh bang bang bang bang same noise front door so i'm like i know what that is so i jumped out of, put my own brogues on, got a pair of shorts on, got a t-shirt on minimum, because I knew what was coming, ran down the stairs, got to the bottom of the stairs, opened the front door, he was stood there, Eli, like that, just wild, like, it was like a Hollywood film, he was like lit, he was like lit, and I turned, I saw what was lighted him my car was on fire and he was just standing looking at me and he just screamed at me and like slowly like this like slaughterhouse

pointing uh where the slaughterhouse was And I knew what he meant. He meant I had to go and work in the slaughterhouse. Do you know how I was then? How was I then, back working? Another two years. Another two years passed, and Geoff knew that he had to go. But this time, he wasn't going to tell Eli, and he had a plan. So it was one Christmas, you know what it is.

So Santa Claus comes around, and it's the local charity like and they have a sleigh. They have a sleigh and it's not really a sleigh, you know, it's just an old farmer's cart that they've stuck a sleigh on the side and there's Santa sitting in the back and it's just a trailer being pulled around by a four by four basically and one of the farmer's boys pulls it around. Anyway they do the whole valley music you know all the weather outside is frightful all of that like all the way through the valley it goes visiting all the villages all the kids come out right so that was it anyway it arrives at the village I know this is my opportunity I thought this is it it's obvious this is my opportunity. I thought, this is it. It's obvious. This is my way out. I'm not proud of what I did.

I waited for, you know, it's the end. Basically, we're top of the valley. So they've come all the way up, all the villages. He's done it all now. And they've been giving him brandy and sherry and everything, right? And he's, you know, he's having a weird time. Half the reason he does it, he was slammed. So, you know, he's busting for the toilet, so he got out of his sleigh,

everyone's chatting, all the kids are happy. He went round the back of the community centre, and that was it. I ran round, BAM! I just punched Santa Square in the face. Down he went. Beard off, hat off, wellies on, red stuff on, back in a sleigh, no problem at all, I'm there waving, pretending to be pissed. That was it, I was gone, gone. I do feel bad about what happened to the guy who was Santa Claus. Yeah, of course

I do because, you know he's been in the slaughterhouse now for uh five or six years i think yeah and he was just i mean he was a nice he's a primary school teacher yeah i feel bad i hope he's okay at this point i was getting a lot of phone calls from Eli, and I wasn't taking any of them. I don't know why, it just didn't feel right. He'd usually call early in the evening, and I would just put my phone on silent and put it in a drawer. But the more I ignored the calls, the more he would make, and soon he was leaving long, rambling messages on my aunt's phone late at night.

He'd found out somehow that I was talking to people about him and he was angry and he sounded out of control. There'll be no county courts, there'll be no CCJs, there'll be a bone in knife. And a can-do attitude. Now cut it out. You snivelling little rat! You snivelling little rat, I'll have your asses! I'll have your fucking asses! Hi, my name is Jodie Branch and I am a journalist. We struggled to find anyone else who had lived in Llancaig, but my team finds Jodie Branch, a journalist currently working for the New York Times, who in the early 2000s was working for the South Wales Evening Post.

It was her job to cover the news from a number of small towns and villages in the Valleys area, including Llancaig. It was very obvious to me straight away that this village had a different vibe. Very peculiar. Honestly, very fishy. I felt a little bit uncomfortable wherever I went. I did not feel welcome there. And famously, you get a good welcome in the valleys, but not in this particular valley. In this particular valley, I felt like I was treated with a lot of suspicion and the name Eli Roberts kept coming up. So I looked into it and I'm a journalist and you sniff something out, you've got to find where that smell is coming from.

Jodie set about trying to get an interview with Eli to get to the bottom of what was going on. Basically asked around, asked a few places and it was him that came to me in the end. So he knew you were in the village yeah yeah turns out a little bit of investigation uh shook the hornet out of the nest as it were i was interested to know how the interview had gone it was one of the strangest experiences of my life i felt like he was he was he was trying to i don't know he's trying to trap me in some way i felt like he'd read one of those pickup artist books

and was trying to seduce me but not actually no to seduce my my intellect now i i have um met him and interviewed him on a number of occasions and he is i think rather charming in some ways yes no no it i wasn't um it wasn't unpleasant it was it was it was confusing more than anything else i felt like everything he said kind of in the moment that he said it made sense. And then immediately after made absolutely no sense whatsoever. That's kind of my experience as well. The reason I'm enjoying relishing the opportunity to talk to you is that as a journalist, he is one of the most, I can't put a word in it, mercurial, enigmatic figures I've ever had to interview.

Oh, yes. And the thing I'm struggling with as a journalist, and I wonder if you felt this way, is I'm never feeling like I'm actually getting anywhere near the nub of it. Can I give you a piece of advice, journalist to journalist? By all means. Do not believe a single word that comes out of the mouth of Eli Roberts. None of it is reliable. And I honestly, I am not sure he's ever said a single truthful thing.

Now, it's interesting you say that because I've spoken to him on a number of occasions and he has said some things which do seem far-fetched. But to me, it never seems as if he is lying. I think part of it is that I don't know if he is lying, truly in the sense that he is telling an untruth knowingly, or if he really believes these things have happened. Jodie was saying all these things that I'd been thinking. It was as if she had access to the back of my mind,

which she doesn't, hopefully. Suppose he's told you all about his Russian father? Yes, he's spoken to me about that. Sounds pretty kind of brutal and exciting, doesn it russian nicky russian nicky yeah yeah who had to uh it's on his life did you tell you all that yep did you tell you he was born there yeah i mean i thought it was interesting it it seemed to give me some pointers as to where his It seemed to give me some pointers as to where his brutality maybe comes from. Yeah, except that it's all a lie.

It's all a complete facade. Not a single bit of it is true. I investigated it, deep investigation, and the reality is that Eli's father was a mild-mannered Welsh accountant. So there's no truth at all in the idea that his father, and indeed that he was born in Russia? Not a shred of truth. And I don't know.

He talks about it with such conviction that I don't know if maybe he created this character of Russian Nikki to justify his own brutality. Give himself, you know, a backstory that suits his deeds now. So do you think that Eli believes that he was born in Russia? I honestly don't know. I don't know. It's possible because he is very convincing.

And it's completely possible he's convinced himself. Then Jodie tells me something even more shocking. Oh, and he probably told you that his dad just disappeared one day. Never heard from him again. He told me that his dad just disappeared one day. Never heard from him again. He told me that his dad had walked into the woods. Yeah, well, that is almost true. From what I've found out, he walked his dad into the woods

and, as far as all the evidence suggests, he murdered him. And, honestly, we don't even know why. His own dad. And I was obviously confused and upset to discover that he'd been lying about his dad. But what was much, much more distressing was what I discovered about his mother, who he had told me had died.

Now, the one person you haven't mentioned so far is your... Is your mother. What are you trying to say? Well, I'm just saying that your father's obviously... Why are you coming here now? I've invited her to my house. What about mum? Well, you told me about your father and how important he was in your upbringing. Right, right, right.

There's also... Right. With every father is a mother. Yeah, well done. So I just wondered whether you wanted to tell us about... Why? Just because it helps fill in the backstory that you... Absolutely.

Who's it helping? Me. Is it fair to say you're uncomfortable talking about your mother? No. My mother brought me into this world. Right? That's what she did. that's what you did

is that all you're willing to yeah we can move on if you'd prefer yes I think that's probably the best for you okay well maybe you could Start by telling me about the No one talks about Mama to me And she had not

Died And in fact it's very Disturbing It's disturbing to talk about It's disturbing to think about His mother had not died He is in fact married To his mother had not died he is in fact married to his mother so hang on marjorie his wife yes marjorie his wife is in actual fact his birth mother who he forced into marriage

and I believe from what the records that I found and from interviews that I've done with people who were absolutely terrified to talk to me forced an entire village

to attend the wedding and strong-armed a vicar into completing the ceremony. Is that legal? I don't think it is, no, I don't. I don't think it is. The things I've found out about Eli since talking to him last have been deeply shocking to me and I guess the question

I have is whether you think it's advisable or safe for me to try and talk to him again and talk to him about some of these things I don't know because you never know is he going to be the charming Eli who you'll be off on a carousel

of fantasy with him and you'll be like yes I want to be on this carousel what a beautiful ride but it can all turn and you can be tossed off that carousel into the woods and murdered I mean I think the only safe thing

is to steer as clear as possible because I just don't think you can do any of these things, tell these lies with such conviction, if you're not a 100% psychopath. I think he's a murderous psychopath. You can't, you know, have an entire village under your whim, which they are. They all, they bow to him like he's some sort of queen bee in a hive. And it's chilling. Honestly, it's chilling.

Look at the way that he's manipulated these simple village people. It's like the village of the damned, but with people who used to miss it or a couple of legs to miss it. There's no sense in that. Because a mosquito bites you like it's only you. That's what you're here for. Well, it's fucking not, sunshine.

Right? I built this business up with my bare hands for 40 years. I've lost me, my whole family, and my own hands because of this. And what are you doing to me now?

You're trying to rule me. Well, you're a fucking ass, sunshine. Don't you worry about that. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, kill this stupid fool. I'll take the fucking bone in my field

and, yeah, I'll take the bone down to the bone and then I'll take me in the grinder and I'll do whatever I need to do. I'll do whatever I need

to do to prove to you that I'm not some sort of nutcase. I'm not a rat man. I'm just a bigot man. I love you in ashes. Do you understand me? They won't recognise you.

Your family wouldn't recognise the best. You'll be in a pile. Oh, you'll be... Oh, you won't be the best one in the pile, either. I can tell you that for nothing. You can't do good to me. You can't do this. I mean, maybe the truth is that maybe there's an Eli Roberts in every single one of us.

Maybe Eli Roberts is a balancing force in the universe. Something necessary. Something necessary. All that I know is that I never, ever want to encounter Eli Roberts ever again in my life. When Jodie filed her story at the South Wales Evening Post, her copy was rejected and a week later she was sacked. I started to think maybe it was time to give in. Maybe this whole thing had been a very, very bad idea. Maybe I shouldn't have even opened the letter from Eli. And I really gave proper consideration to the idea that I would stop making the programme. And then

I heard something which meant that there's no way I could put this story down. This is the news at 10 o'clock. A 62-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the death of a 35-year-old male on London's Oxford Street this morning. Bystanders were left shocked as the man was killed after an altercation in the middle of the road. The seemingly unprovoked attack was carried out with a seven-pound lump hammer, the sort you might use to take a propeller off a ship or kill an albatross. The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has bought a new towel. I'm just going to tell you it's all fault I haven't well

I haven't done it I haven't done it you made me do it right you didn't mean to do it but I have done it and I have done it oh no

Redeeming Eli is produced by the Beef and Dairy Network. Thanks to Mike Bubbins, Hal Lublin, Malang Echt Dolmer, Chris Corcoran, Nadia Kamal and Tom Crowley. Also a huge thanks to Roderick Viney for providing the music and also thanks to my dad for playing the piano. we, the Hollywood geniuses behind Video Game High School, have one hour to turn a humble idea into an awesome movie. Thrill as we weave the tragic tale of Jar Jar, a Star Wars story. We're going to double down on everything that made the prequels great. Jar Jar, trade federations, politics. Gasp as we assemble a pantheon of heroes for the Kellogg's Cinematic Universe. We could get rid of Snap, Crackle, Pop. I wouldn't even miss them.

You're crazy. They'd die in the second act. Oh, come on. And join us as we make fun of Mattle, Pop. I wouldn't even miss them. You're crazy. They'd die in the second act. Oh, come on! And join us as we make fun of Matt as he struggles to name a single Beyoncé song. Well, yeah, put a finger on it. Sure, she wants to be Beyoncé. Put a finger on it. Beyoncé is the famous song. Will we break the story? Or will the story

break us? Find out by joining us in the writer's room every Thursday on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, folks. I'm writer and performer Dave Holmes, and I host International Waters, where we pair a team of comedians in L.A. against a team of comedians in London

in a pop culture trivia battle royale. Comedians like Josie Long. I worry that it makes me seem like I'm 80 years old, but I hurt my knee, and it is just on the mend, and I can't tell you how delightful that feels. If I want to walk down some stairs, I'd my knee and it is just on the mend. And I can't tell you how delightful that feels. If I want to walk down some stairs, I just go for it now. Michaela Watkins. We have a country where like our leaders actually deny global warming. So we are going to have

more beachfront property than any other nation. I mean, it's going to shrink our country in half, but it's okay. But that's just more beach. And many more. Join us every other week on International Waters with me, Dave Holmes. Find it on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.