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Wales Online
Lifestyle
Neil Shaw

Who is Rise and Fall winner Eddy: Famous family and celebrity TV past

Channel 4's Rise and Fall has been the sleeper reality TV hit of the spring with thousands tuning in each night at 10pm to watch 16 contestants trying to win up to £100,000. And Eddy, who has spent almost the whole series as a Grafter - living in poverty and working to raise money for the prize fund - won the series after being picked by fellow grafters to claim the £85,610 prize fund.

But most people have no idea who Eddy really is, or why he was much more at home in the Penthouse, living in luxury with the Rulers, who make all the decisions and direct the Grafters to work.

In the show, viewers saw Eddy tell fellow contestants that he lives in a huge house on an estate in Devon - where his family have never had much money. He has also been a stable and calming element in the show, making bread for fellow Grafters every day, working hard in the tasks and operating with honesty and integrity.

What most don't know is that this is far from Eddy's first time on TV.



Eddy is actually Edmund Fulford, younger son of Francis Fulford, and one of the stars of a series of TV shows and documentaries, including Channel 4's The F***ing Fulfords and BBC Three's Life is Toff. And, as well as sharing pictures on social media of his life at the 3,000 acre estate and Tudor manor house on the edge of Dartmoor, Eddy also joined an Army regiment dedicated to espionage four years ago.

His family shared a picture of him in his uniform after passing out with the Honourable Artillery Company - the oldest regiment in the country, specialising in covert surveillance and target acquisition. It also protects high-profile guests during state visits in London.

Eddy is also an Exeter City FC fan, sharing pictures from games and in an ECFC top. He spent time after finishing his education on a gap year touring South America with friends - visiting countries including Nicaragua, Colombia and Peru. He also took a trip to Kenya.

Eddy, 27, born in 1996 appeared in The F***ing Fulfords, a 2004 documentary-style reality television programme. It made the name of Francis Fulford and his family when it was aired as part of Channel 4 TV series Cutting Edge.

The documentary told the story of Eddy, his family and his father Francis, who inherited Great Fulford, the 800-year old crumbling manor house on a 3,000-acre (12 km2) estate in Dunsford, near Cheriton Bishop, Devon.

During the show, with their mansion becoming increasingly dilapidated and the family in financial difficulty, Francis Fulford concocts several elaborate schemes to make money. The schemes include using a metal detector to search the family's 3000-acre estate for treasure, searching for telephone cables so that he can invoice British Telecom, selling guided tours of the mansion, conjuring up stories of ghosts, and harvesting trees. Meanwhile, his wife Kishanda tries to solve the family's financial difficulties by gambling on horse races.

Oblivious to the family's turmoil, the four Fulford children entertain themselves by fighting, indoor cricket, throwing mud at one another, and watching television. At one point in the episode, Kishanda becomes so angry with her children that she picks up the television set, carries it outside, and throws it into a lake.

Throughout the programme, Francis expresses frequent outbursts of profanity, uttering 38 of the show's 53 swearwords.

The show was a hit with both viewers and critics. Upon airing on Channel 4, 3.5 million viewers tuned in.

The programme was nominated for a BAFTA, in the 'Best Single Documentary' category, in the 2005 awards year. It also featured in Channel Five's '100 most swearing TV shows' and came 7th with 24 swear words – mostly beginning with F – in the first 26 minutes. It was largely this issue – how the use of profane language divided individual strata within the British class system – that marked it out from any other programme or documentary in a similar vein.

In a later programme entitled Why Britain's F****, Francis raised further points about the decline of a sense of duty, a lack of responsibility and basic knowledge of the United Kingdom's history.

Francis and the four Fulford children returned to television, without the presence their wife and mother Kishanda, in the six-part series Life Is Toff, broadcast on BBC Three in autumn 2014.

The six-episode 2014 documentary showed the eccentric and aristocratic Fulford family at home on their 800-year-old country estate, as the children grappled with coming-of-age. Eddy starred alongside older twin siblings Arthur and Matilda and older brother Humphrey.

Eddy is the 24th Fulford generation to live at Great Fulford manor house in Devon. His father is lord of the manor of Great Fulford, the current owner of the estate which was granted to his ancestor William de Fulford by King Richard in 1191, as a reward for military service on the Third Crusade. The present great house dates back to the 16th century.

Mother Kishanda has just released a book detailing the family's connections to the slave trade - The Spite of Fortune: The Fabulous Story of an 18th Century Heiress. It tells the story of Louisa Carolina Colleton who, In 1777, at the age of fourteen, inherited valuable estates on both sides of the Atlantic. She went to live with her uncle on the Devon estate before going on to live in the Bahamas, and then her plantations in South Carolina.

On her return to England she married a naval officer, with whom she had ten children. Her affairs were much commented on at the time.

Francis Fulford is the son of Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Edgar Anthony Fulford and Joan Shirley, younger daughter of Rear-Admiral C. Maurice Blackman, DSO. He is a great-great-grandson of Francis Fulford (1803–1868), Bishop of Montreal.

Since 2004 the Fulfords have maintained an ongoing career in reality television, appearing in various entertainment and documentary-style programmes.


The family's TV appearances include ...

The F***ing Fulfords (2004)
How Clean Is Your House? (2004)
Why America Sucks (2005)
Why England's F***ed (2005)
Country House Rescue (2012)[15]
Salvage Hunters (2012)
Life Is Toff (6 episodes) (2014)
Help! My House Is Haunted (2018).

Eddy's older brother Arthur, who appeared in Big Brother, will inherit the estate.

Many of the family's TV appearances have focussed on how little money the family has and how much it costs to maintain the estate. In a recent interview Kishanda said they keep the heating off most of the time, sleeping with dogs for warmth. As well as making money from TV appearances they also market Great Fulford House as a haunted venue - claiming it is haunted by the ghosts of numerous dogs.

It is also used as a wedding venue and a place for events and festivals as well as a filming location.

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