Connor Padgett, an architect for a firm in Birmingham, Alabama, told a new podcast this week: “I’m glad that I’ve been able to give people pleasure on their Monday.”

Padgett was dubbed the new hero of 2024 after footage of him crammed inside a large vase — surrounded by drink-toting partygoers offering well-intentioned but useless tips for how to get out — blew up on social media. The footage, filmed by a bartender at the house party in Mountain Brook where Padgett said he’d climbed into the vase as part of a “game,” showed 39 seconds of sheer chaos.

“Call the fire department to break this motherf**ker!” Padgett shouted at one point, as fretting guests insisted he could break free if he just put his mind to it. “You can do it!” one woman cheered, while another bizarrely urged him to simply take his belt off. “I am doing everything I fucking can, goddamnit!” he replied, adding: “I already took my belt off, and that didn’t do sh*t”.

Padgett told The Daily Beast the ordeal began with an innocent “game” in which people would take turns hiding inside the vase.

“One person had gotten into it, I saw him get out of it beautifully. And then another person, who slightly had a bigger ass than I do, got into it. So I figured, ‘Gosh, if they can get into it and out of it, hell, I figure I can too.’ So my stupid ass got in it,” he said.

Then, when he was “ready to get out of it,” he couldn’t.

“They started telling me to take my belt off. I was like, I don’t know what the f*ck that’s going to do,” he said, adding, “I don’t suggest getting in one of them f*ckers.”

Eventually, the crowd realised they would have to bust him out of it, leading to a “very nice young fellow” coming to his aid to “slightly chisel” the vase and rescue him, Padgett said. But he had to take his trousers off to escape.