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.