The handcuffs are off and former illusionist Eddie Izzard is back --
as a comedian. DAVID BELCHER meets the man with an exceptional ability
to make people laugh.
LIKE every true artist, Eddie Izzard has created his own unique
language, a singular lingo that we can all share. Eddie Izzard and his
wondrous world of words will be at Glasgow's Theatre Royal on Monday
night. It's a big place, and Eddie isn't that well known. Not that he's
worried. Like all the best performers, Eddie Izzard has worked hard,
earning his right to be a little bit arrogant.
''How many does it hold? A thousand? Two thousand? Ooooh . . . just me
on stage in a room that big. Being intimate in a room that big isn't a
problem, no. I'll be funny enough to fill the room. Whether enough
people know I'm funny enough to fill the room is a different matter.''
What I say is this: you should know that Eddie Izzard is exceptionally
funny. If you're not at the Theatre Royal on Monday, you'll be missing
British comedy at its best, it's most surreal and skilful, gentle but
bold. In years to come, after Eddie has a become a mega-star, which he
will, you'll be claiming to have been there -- ''oooh yes, I was at the
Theatre Royal when no-one else knew who Eddie Izzard was'' -- so it
makes sense to turn up on Monday. It does, really.
Eddie's last big visit to Glasgow halted loads of people in their
tracks in Buchanan Street outside Prince's Square. How so? Because
Eddie's comedy career got under way on a nation's streets at the top of
a 6ft unicycle, wearing a pair of handcuffs.
''I hated being an escapologist. I used it as a vehicle for talking
rubbish. That evolved into the gibberish I do on stage now, but as a
street performer you have to keep shouting at people or they'll walk
away.'' In Glasgow, Eddie recalled, people shouted before he'd even
begun. ''As I was setting my gear up, this old guy came up and shouted
'eff off, ya English bastard'. You can see why the Glasgow Empire had
the reputation it did.''
Eddie, who does not greatly deploy such swearie-words on stage, has
successfully played Glasgow since that incident (at the Shelter, now
re-named the Apollo). In the summer he wowed the Edinburgh Fringe,
picking up a Perrier nomination and confounding all those critics who
sought to compare him with other comedians.
Eddie, you see, is vaguely like Frankie Howerd, sort of like Jeremy
Hardy, but he's more whimsical and -- most crucially -- he actually
possesses the ability to make you laugh. Eddie on stage naturally says
''hey'' and ''oooh'' a lot, plus weirder things like ''umyah!''
''wuff!'' and ''pum!'' These are not catch-phrases, you understand;
these are simply evidence of Eddie being Eddie, which is to say a
studiously free-form kind of guy for whom words are a sacred invention;
whose thoughts are entirely untrammelled.
Eddie stages conversations between racehorses; ponders a version of
The Great Escape starring racehorses; talks to the trees; cre
ates a comedy of observation from observations that go entirely
unobserved by the rest of the universe. Believe me, by the end of an
Eddie Izzard gig, Eddie will be saying anything, and you'll have tears
running down your face.
Where does it come from? ''From inside. It's an extension of me. It's
not fictitious. Really. It comes from Steve Martin, the surrealism. And
Richard Pryor. And I watch loads of films. I love words, but, apart from
biographies of actors, performers, directors, I don't read books. My
imagination is over-developed . . . I don't need to read other people.''
Your comedy philosophy? ''I don't know . . . I just remember that when
I was a child, me and my dad and brother -- my mum died -- had the same
sense of humour, we still do. Mine was, and is, childlike. The bigger
the subject -- war -- the funnier it is to portray pompous characters in
the way that a child would see them.
''I also remember that in the bosom of the Izzard family I was
completely unfunny. In all sorts of school productions, from the age of
seven, and later acting in things at college, I was making audiences
laugh, but my family . . . I couldn't make them laugh, my stepmother
especially. They were the toughest audience in the world. In the middle
of a joke they'd start talking. I mumble now, but then I had real
mumbly-mumbly problems with pronunciation and the less I made them
laugh, the more mumbling I did, the less confident I got.''
He makes the Izzards laugh these days. Eddie will do the same for you.
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