By james art 
Rob Manuel will bring the most fragile, funny, shocking and bizarre confessions to the Newhampton Center stage in Wolverhampton on Thursday night as he presents Fesshole Live.
It will be a look into the world of Fesshole, a portal into the human mind on Twitter, Bluesky and Instagram, where people are able to submit confessions they want to share anonymously, which Rob sifts through and publishes online.
Rob, who was born in Wolverhampton, started the site five years ago and said it came from trying out a few ideas online and finding the confession site worked.
He said: “I’d put together a lot of internet projects just for the hell of it and one afternoon I was messing around with this idea and I put out a message to ask if people wanted to send in some credits.
“I put them up and then left it for a few months with nothing posted, but a couple of people got in touch and asked what happened to it and why I didn’t deal with it.
“I think there’s just something fundamentally interesting about the idea of confession and it just intrigues people because it’s the promise that you’re going to get something new that you didn’t know.”
Rob said he’s probably read more than 250,000 confessions since Fesshole started and said his editorial rule for posting a confession is if it’s funny or interesting, it will.
He said it’s sometimes a strange experience to be on the other side and never be the one to admit it, though he admitted he has a good one if he ever feels the need to.
He said: “My own admission will be that the Connaught Hotel used to do club nights and I would get in for free by going into the bar upstairs, buying cigars from the machine and then going downstairs and waving the cigars around while saying ‘Just Off up to buy these’.
“Some of the most popular have had hundreds of thousands of likes or favorites, with one getting 156,000 favorites.
“That was it” our eight year old daughter lost her hearing and had to learn to sign but she struggled at first as none of her friends knew how to talk to her.
“One day I noticed our labrador running to the treat cabinet after she signed ‘Treat?’ “Her. In the absence of friends, our dog has learned sign language for her.”
Rob said some of the confessions that were his favorites followed his “Interesting or Funny” rule:
I lied to my boss about spending a voluntary “charity day” at a local nature reserve for a free day off. I popped out to get a photo as proof, met some volunteers and spent the day helping them out. I had a great time. I can’t train if I’m ahead or not.
Adopted a “failed” police dog that was turned down for rehoming. It has always been a brilliant addition to the family. Loving, caring, protective. He began to wonder why the cops were rejecting him. We then took him into the woods where he saw a squirrel, got scared and ran headfirst into a tree.
I once met a girl one night, she stayed at mine for the night, but in the morning I couldn’t remember her name. So I took her to Starbucks for coffee.
Rob also talked about the live show, which he joked was like Bob Dylan’s never-ending tour, as there seemed to be no end to it, and talked about what people can expect to see on the night.
He said: “The show came from me doing work presentations and my instinct was to make it funny and people would tell me afterwards how funny it was and how much it was like a stand-up show, which was never the intention, more a way to get through presentation to 100 people.
“That helped me with this show because I decided to take that modal and make sure the slides were funny, tell a little story, and then I went back to my journalism days when I was doing all these kinds of listicle stories.
“I took that structure and turned it into 14 life lessons I’ve learned from reading a quarter of a million confessions, which just gives people an idea of what I’ve learned along the way.”
Fesshole Live is split into two halves, with the first section seeing Rob dress up in full cardinal costume, go through classic confessions and life lessons, while the second half brings the audience into the show as Rob will go through confessions Left by the audience in the start of the show.
These confessions will be put on screen and the person responsible will be invited to come out and talk about it, something Rob described as cathartic, very funny and an experience that can only be turned around and experienced.
He said the hometown gig might be fun for him as he said he knew some boys during his school days at Smestow School who would walk up to him and put their hands over the ginger’s hair which he said his hair was on fire.
Rob said Feshol has become bigger than he ever imagined and talked about how he thinks it has changed him.
He said, “I just came up with a real answer to the question I get from time to time, ‘Have you read five years of unfiltered confession?’ “
“Yes, I will no longer use a bottle of shampoo accidentally left in the gym shower.
“I don’t need to spell out why, as your worst guess is probably correct.”
Fesshole Live takes place at the Newhampton Arts Center on Dunkley Street in Wolverhampton on Thursday, with doors opening at 7.30pm. And tickets starting at £18.