How Rick Edwards spends ANYDAY

What are the first three things you do when you wake up?
My alarm goes off at 3.45am, so the first thing I do is just curse my life choices, then I roll out of bed. When I first started doing the Radio 5 Live breakfast show I used to have a shower and wake up properly, but actually I value the additional ten minutes in bed too much. Now I shower the night before so I can get up, put my clothes on, grab my rucksack and stagger out of the door. I don’t even have a cup of tea.

At the moment, I’m living in Manchester in the week and then I come back to London most weekends. I like Manchester, but I wouldn’t recommend being apart from your wife [actress Emer Kenny] for most of the time.

Don’t pretend you don’t check your phone. What’s your most used emoji? Who did you last whatsapp and what did you say?
A guy who presents 5 Live sports had messaged me a screen shot of someone insulting me, so I replied: ‘Yeah, I mean I’m fuming about it’. I was quite a late adopter on emojis – perhaps I thought I was above them and I couldn’t have been more wrong. I’m quite a basic man, so I use a lot of the laughing face emoji.

Describe the style of your home in five words
Cosy, simple, calm, quiet… We wanted to make our house like a little haven, but the only thing is it’s plagued by our cat, Tippi, who’s an absolute nightmare.

What do you have too much of? Too little of?
We have not enough bedrooms. It’s a small house anyway, but it’s mainly living areas. Too much of? We both have too many clothes and shoes. Emer has quite a lot of stuff, but I’m the real culprit. When we first moved in together, Emer insisted we got all my shoes out to assess the scale of the issue and it was horrifying, actually. I had a purge, but if there’s a spare cupboard you’ll find a shoe stuffed in it.

What does an average day at home look like for you?
It’s usually a weekend and I’d make breakfast. But first of all I have to feed the cat because I just can’t function with her going mad. We have quite a nice set-up with a few of my friends living locally, so we might go out and have brunch with them.

I like to fit in a nice bit of boule – there’s a petanque rink, I think it’s called, quite near us on Hampstead Heath. I’m horribly competitive and so are most of my friends, so we’ll play anything seriously. Otherwise, what’s the point?

What’s for lunch?
Emer and I go through phases of eating the same lunch every day. At the moment it’s flatbread stuffed with Greek salad, hummus and halloumi. It’s delicious and it feels like the salad is also a nod to being healthy.

What’s the weirdest thing we’d find in your kitchen?
The cat will eat pretty much anything, so every week there’ll be a moment when you walk in and go: ‘Why is all that on the floor?’ This week, she’d just had six teeth out and had stitches in her gums, but in spite of that she still managed to drag a bag of wet food down off the side and had bitten through the foil with her gammy mouth. We found bits of food, foil and detritus scattered all over the floor. It’s extraordinary stuff. I told the vet and they were like: ‘Oh, so her mouth is probably feeling OK’.

Can we wear shoes in your house?
Part of me arriving back at home is taking my shoes off. If people want to take them off and pad around, they’re very welcome to and we don’t wear them upstairs because it’s carpeted. We don’t provide slippers – I think that would feel a bit passive-aggressive, like those blue plastic shoe covers, which is not a way to make someone feel welcome in your home.

What would you save if your house was on fire? And what would you be glad got burned to a crisp?
I’m assuming Emer and Tippi were already out, so two bits of art that we really love and wouldn’t be able to replace. That sounds very pretentious, doesn’t it? But they’re not by a famous artist and worth thousands of pounds. I find it so hard to get rid of clothes and shoes so it wouldn’t be a terrible thing if they all went up in smoke.

Where’s your happy place?
It’s such an obvious answer, but our sofa is incredibly comfortable. It’s really soft, big and squidgy and when we both collapse on that sofa it makes everything feel better. I’m a telly watcher, but I’m not one of the great nappers. When I wake up from naps I always have an incredibly hot face and I’m always a bit grumpy, so it’s not really fulfilling the purpose.

Can you keep a plant alive?
It’s interesting you ask that, because there are two plants I’m trying to resurrect today. My wife tells me you should put a layer of water in the sink and sit the plants in it, rather than pouring it straight into the pot, which is what I’ve always done. I don’t know what the opposite of green fingers is, but I think I’ve got those.

What’s on your bed? And on your bedside table?
We don’t have all those additional pillows you get on hotel beds because I just don’t see the point. You always throw them straight off, so cut out the middleman. On my bedside table is a clock radio and my ‘to read’ pile of books, which I have to accept I’m never going to get through, but they’re taunting me.

Next up is Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I was trying to read a book a week this year and I try to alternate between fiction and non-fiction, but I’m way behind schedule.

River Hunters continues on Mondays at 9pm on Sky HISTORY

Images courtesy of Rick's Instagram (@rickedwards1)