Does he say “and he sort of haven said I didn't think I'd dare”? It sounds like “haven” but it doesn’t make sense.

it's 'havered'

He's saying "havered": [https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/haver](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/haver)

Haver is a pretty rare word to use in modern English. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=haver&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3

I’m American, I’ve heard or read haver(ed) but never used it myself. I used to read unabridged dictionaries, though.