The Strangest Person I Know is a new VICE column, in which we interview strange people and then ask them who the strangest person they know is so we can interview them too, creating a never-ending daisy chain of spiraling human strangeness in an increasingly square world.

Next up is Dr. Rodney Rodderson, a 43-year-old mortician and part-time scuba-diving instructor who relocated from his native Isle of Sheppey to Izberbash some time ago. He got in touch offering to speak with VICE after seeing an iteration of this column on the internet.

VICE: So, undertaking. How do you get into a profession like that?
Dr. Rodney Rodderson: That’s a great question. I guess you could say that I [REDACTED] a few incidents at school when I [REDACTED] and things progressed naturally from there. It’s not for the faint hearted but after I had already [REDACTED] five or six times before the age of 12, I [REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED]. I guess you could say I was born to work in death!

That’s a neat turn of phrase. I guess my next question would be, how did you find yourself in Izberbash? There can’t be many people who’ve moved there from Kent.
There was a [REDACTED] with a [REDACTED] that I [REDACTED] with a [REDACTED]. Obviously, I feel bad about it. But we must all live with regrets: our mistakes shape us. Thankfully, the good people of Izberbash welcomed me with open arms. Dagestan has a very forgiving culture—even when you’re fleeing [REDACTED] from the Crown Prosecution Service just because you happened to [REDACTED] the wrong [REDACTED] wife’s snorkel on the wrong way.

What was that, sorry?
The time when I [REDACTED] the [REDACTED]?

Yes, what happened there?
I mean, there are people you meet in life who just really [REDACTED], you know? That said I would never have risked endangering my professional reputation in the scuba-diving industry on purpose. It was just [REDACTED] in the [REDACTED] at the wrong time. Shit happens.

“Dagestan has a very forgiving culture—even when you’re fleeing [REDACTED] from the Crown Prosecution Service just because you happened to [REDACTED] the wrong [REDACTED] wife’s snorkel on the wrong way”

But surely you could just have [REDACTED] the [REDACTED] and none of this would have happened?
Coulda, woulda, shoulda. You can’t let your life be defined by your mistakes.

Earlier you said more or less the exact opposite.
Did I? Classic me!

Just before going to print, VICE was contacted and informed that we should not, under any circumstances, publish the information divulged to us by Dr. Rodderson, by lawyers representing his estate and former employers.

This story is taken from the fall 2025 issue of VICE magazine, THE BE QUIET AND DRIVE ISSUE, a Deftones special. We’ve sold out our copies, the only ones left are in stores—perhaps there’s one near you? Secure yourself the next 4 issues by subscribing.

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The Strangest Person I Know is a new VICE column, in which we interview strange people and then ask them who the strangest person they know is so we can interview them too, creating a never-ending daisy chain of spiraling human strangeness in an increasingly square world. You can read the previous edition, about Russia’s foremost enema artist in exile, here.

Next up is Sol, a 26-year-old costume designer, scriptwriter, and performer recommended by last issue’s candidate. Named after an English soccer player who is synonymous with treachery in certain corners of North London, Sol escaped an exurb upbringing and spent their college years dallying with Viennese Actionism before exploding into the capital’s queer underground, gracing raves, club nights, and theaters with performative attempts to grapple with their past through the mediums of horror and pain.

VICE phoned them for a chat.

VICE: Have you always performed solo?
Sol: Pretty much. I respond to things I’m going through, or past trauma that’s lived in me the whole time. That’s what makes it quite dark and uncomfortable for me and whoever’s watching.

What have some of the wilder performances involved?
Body horror, blood, physical endurance… My solo shows have all been about how much the body can take, physically. Now, it’s more about the effect that endurance has on me emotionally and containing that to the point where it then affects the body. Rather than, like, shoving a metal rod up my ass (below, right) or hitting myself with a hammer. 

“In day-to-day life, I’m very reserved.”

I think I saw the metal rod on Instagram. How does the crowd respond to your shows?
I started out performing at club nights and raves, where people are just there to have a good time. I moved away from those spaces: it didn’t feel true to where I was coming from. In more formal theater spaces, people’s reactions are very different. They seem to be uncomfortable and shocked by what’s happening. Performing is the only way I can make sense of my mind, which I think is quite confusing to some people.

That said, you seem different in real life to how you present online.
Yeah, I get this a lot. In my day-to-day life, I’m very different, I’m very reserved.

What’s London like compared to where you grew up?
Where I’m from, people like me just don’t exist. Everyone around me was very traditional—you finished school, you got a job, got a house, had a baby, and that was your life. Even my family, they’re all like that. Since coming to London, my whole life has changed. I’m a completely different person from who I was before.

This column is from the summer 2025 issue of VICE magazine, THE REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL ISSUE. Buy the individual issue, or subscribe and get 4 issues delivered to your door each year.

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THE STRANGEST PERSON I KNOW is a new VICE magazine column, in which we interview strange people and then ask them who the strangest person they know is so we can interview them too, creating a never-ending daisy chain of spiraling human strangeness in an increasingly square world.

First up is Leonid Kotelnikov, a 31-year-old artist from Moscow who’s been living in exile since Putin’s escalation of violence in Ukraine. He’s marauded through 30 European countries, playing inscrutable music, hanging naked from balconies, and painting his face with glue while staying with friends and fans or sleeping rough beneath the stars.

His current performance persona, fake_trailers, recently played an interesting sounding show in the basement of a London squat. I caught up with him afterwards to see how it went.

VICE: Hi, Leonid. You’re not what I was expecting. You seem like a warm, engaging person.
Leonid Kotelnikov: Sometimes people who see my shows think that in real life, I will be kind of crazy too. Sometimes I can be: Two days ago, I was playing a show here in London, and I got some slimy enemas from my ass. I had a pig mask on my face, and I tried to… fuck, I don’t know this word, when you hang on a rope…

Hanging? Choking?
I was burning my head [with fire]. I still have burns here on my ear, and some of my hair is damaged. But anyone who’s afraid to know me, if we talk, they will change their mind.

What was the thing with the enemas?
I went into a toilet at the venue and poured a liter of water inside my ass to make it clean. By the time I needed to perform, I was ready to make a huge water bomb. It looked a little bit scary for people; some of this water from my ass with some slime poured on their brand new clothes.

“I’m on my way to heaven, or maybe to hell, and I don’t think that anything can stop me.”

Okay. How would you describe this event?
It’s a regular event in the basement of my friend, Piotr. He’s squatted an interesting building in London for years, and once every few months, he creates a night of strange and interesting performances. I saw I was not the only one there in a pig mask, doing enemas.

Really? There were more pig-mask enema-people there?
Actually, the enemas were just me. Some people did douches, though.

So what were you doing? Just like, singing, shouting, screaming?
I didn’t sing anything. My mouth was creating only one sound, it was like [he blows into a small clown instrument]. So it was like, clown-y interactions with listeners. At first, I was in this piggy mask with some other things on me that made me completely blind and deaf, and I didn’t really do anything apart from pull myself on this rope and create some enemas on the ground. But then I started some strange interactions with people who were there by setting fire to my head.

You’ve been traveling across Europe since the Ukraine invasion in 2022, and you’ve essentially been homeless throughout this trip, right?
Yeah. In that time, I’ve paid to sleep somewhere only three times. First, it was Kazakhstan, then I spent a year moving from Georgia to Armenia to Serbia to anywhere else I could go without a visa. Then I started my [Western] European and British tour. I moved through 100 towns in a year, sometimes sleeping on the streets because it’s more interesting for me than to just stay at somebody’s cozy apartment. It’s extremely interesting for me to check out all the strangest caves where I can get my body unstuck. All the places that will never be on TripAdvisor.

How long will you keep living like this?
I was thinking about this a few days ago. Everybody I know who got out of Russia, and were extremely homeless like me, after some months, they stopped the adventure. Some of them went back to Russia. Some of them are living in some other country. But me? I don’t know. I’m on my way to heaven, or maybe to hell, and I don’t think that anything can stop me.

Many thanks to Online Lipnem for introducing us to Leonid and his oeuvre.

This story is from the spring 2025 edition of VICE magazine: THE ROCK BOTTOM ISSUE. To subscribe to receive 4 print issues of our newly relaunched magazine each year, click here.

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