King of the Undies World is an entire novel of unremitting underwear-related skullduggery and dirty deeds. It’s therefore inevitable that before the end of the story someone has pulled a nick-of-time and mercilessly executed wedgie on her captor in a daring escape bid. There may even be an interesting wedgie-Glasgow kiss combo somewhere in there.

That is fiction, but now there is a salutary warning from real life: wedgies can actually kill.

In the news last week (May 2015) we heard how Brad Lee Davis, 34, from Oklahoma killed his stepfather, 58-year-old Denver Lee St. Clair by pulling his underpants over his head and suffocating him in a manoeuvre the media has titled an ‘atomic wedgie’.
Davis pleaded guilty to the wedgie but insists that he did not intend the death of St. Clair and sentencing on a charge of first degree manslaughter will take place in July.

‘I’d never seen this before,’ Pottawatomie County Sheriff Mike Booth told the Oklahoman newspaper.

The assailant, Davis, is reported in the same newspaper as saying, ‘Man, I did a horrible thing when I gave him that wedgie.’

Just as the vicarious thrills of movie guns and bombs don’t translate happily to real life, so it is with wedgies: one person’s book-bound chortle is another’s real-world untimely and undignified demise.

In other words, don’t try this at home.