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Weekend Watchdog with Anne Robinson...

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Eddie Izzard's still letting down his fans. Flogging old gags...

Eddie and his management didn't want to comment.

Just felt totally gutted by that.

There was a level of trust that's been removed... A safety thing gone.

Huge amount riding on it.

This wasn't just one gig in front of 40 people...

To sell 350,000 tickets across the world.

Who's Eddie Izzard?

I know he's crazy.

I think he's a British comedian.

Ohhh! The British guy?

- Yeah! - I've heard his name before.

He is a very dangerous person.

He's a famous comedian.

A gender bending phenomenon.

My favorite comedian of all time is Eddie Izzard. He is fantastic.

There is, like, a sexiness about him, that I like.

Seen him in a ton of movies and stuff.

Wasn't he in, uh, Ocean's Twelve with George Clooney?

Eddie, uh, Izzard?

Yes. Uh, um, I've never met Eddie,

but uh, uh, the people that he hires tell me that

he is absolutely wonderful.

He's a guy on The Riches and British comedian.

I saw him in Across the Universe as well.

I think he's a great, great actor.

I've-- I've seen him on TV and stuff.

I'd heard of him, but I didn't know much about him.

Actor, comedian, great guy!

I believe it's-- the actual pronunciation is Izzard.

Eddie Iz-zard?

Iz-zard? Is... No.

Pretty sure his first name's pronounced Eddie.

I know he's really funny.

I think his work is phenomenal, I think he's absolutely brilliant.

He's, like, hilarious.

I'm a huge fan of his. His work as a, um...

I don't know what he does.

Uh, the flag sketch . It's really funny, I like that.

- Cake or death. - He does this thing about Engelbert Humperdinck.

And I mean, I don't even think people know who that is anymore.

But that's my era.

That's not his real name. He's from Britain. But not his name.

There's very few Humperdincks in Britain.

It was great.

His name was Gerry Dorsey and then his manager's obviously said

"We're gonna change the name, Gerry, it's the name that's the problem."

His name changed from Gerry Dorsey to Engelbert Humperdinck.

I mean, I just wanted to be in the room when

- they were working that one through.

Zinglebert Banbleback!

Yengybert Dangleban.

Zanglebert Bingledack.

Slutban Walla.

What?

All right, Kringlebert Fistybuns,

Steviebuns Butratan.

Who've we got-- Zinglebert Wembledack,

Tinglebert Wangledack, Slutban Walla,

Uh, Gerry Dorsey. Um...

Engelbert Humpdiback, Zanglebert Bingledack,

Engelbert Humperdinck, Vinglebert Wingledank...

No No, Go back one, Go back one.

That's it!

♪ Mama can you see me now? Can you see me

♪ Trying to get through somehow Can you see me

♪ Mama can you see me now?

♪ Can you see me

♪ Trying to get through somehow

♪ Can you see me Can you see me

♪ Mama can you see me now? Can you see me

♪ Can you see me Can you see me

♪ Mama can you see me now?

♪ Whoooo

♪ Can you see me Can you see me

♪ Can you see me now?

Can I get little more wine?

Thank you.

Normally he will turn over a new tour from the previous tour.

This time Eddie has decided to completely leave the old material alone.

Is it melting? Which is a very dangerous thing.

I'd rather the material all be fantastic.

It's just getting your brain organized and then forgetting about it.

I just wanna... What?

I don't know, I don't know.

Okay, on standby Eddie, we're about to go.

So now, we go.

I haven't written the second half yet.

Still waiting on clearance, but I think...

Um, yes, so...

So yes, so breasts.

Um, well, you know, I just thought, um...

What was I gonna say about breasts anyway?

Clop, clop, clop. What?

- Oh, yes.

Let's... there was something else I was gonna say.

Yeah, breast... Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, that's what.

I have to take on board how the audience reacts

because that is your parameter of whether a joke has worked or not.

And that's very, very hard.

And you can go out on stage and tell a joke that you've told

to someone who's roared with laughter and tell it in front of 200 people

and they sit there in absolute silence

and your stomach tightens on their behalf.

Ah, well, I was in The Avengers and Uma Thurman's doubles...

She had two doubles, one was just a body double,

just for the hell of it, when she was...

Just wanted to go off and have a cigarette.

One was a balletic double, doing things that were balletic.

One was a "through the window" type double.

Yeah, those three. One was just a double, yeah.

And they would keep taking breasts in and out,

and say, "Look." So, I said, "Oh, can I have a pair?"

And they said, "Yeah."

Well, that wasn't very good. Start's all right.

No, it's brilliant.

Yeah, well, not so good.

Well, it's just because there's no flow. And there can't be yet...

As soon as I go back, I'm going, "Is that funny? Is that funny?"

You haven't got a pocket or anything, have you?

- For what? - For the paper,

so to pull out, maybe, rather than to...

No, but, even that... See, just looking at the thing

makes you think, "What do I say next? What do I say next?"

The audience don't mind 'cause they're just--

they're just loving listening to you.

"Talk about your family."

"Try to think something chronological." Rubbish.

My life story, that'd be good.

Where do you start?

We'll just start with nought and go all the way through.

Here's a thing on Yemen.

There's my home town. That's somewhere near Aden.

The port of Aden.

I'm just like Lawrence of Arabia, basically,

except he was there for many years and I was there for one year.

My dad was there for eight years, though.

My mom was there for five years.

So, my dad has "sand credibility,"

is what they call it down there.

'Cause dad spoke Arabic like a native of Belgium and...

In eight years he picked up the Arabic for "One beer."

Arabic for "Two beers." Arabic for "Three beers,"

and that's it.

And if he wanted four beers, he'd go,

"Three beer, one beer, please."

-"Three beer, one beer."

So, one, two, and three beer, and then Allah willing.

- Yeah. - Insha Allah.

Insha Allah.

- It's a good phrase. - You can drop them in.

It sounds good.

Yeah, well, all my lads wanted to learn to speak English.

So I had to speak English to them all the time.

'Cause, apparently, no one's bothering learning languages anymore.

I should go and learn Arabic. That should be one of the stupid things

I keep saying I'm gonna do.

I was born in Yemen in 1962,

two years after my brother Mark, in the city of Aden.

There was refinery there that British Petroleum ran.

My dad worked there as an accountant,

my mum worked there as a nurse in the BP hospital.

In the end, there was a revolution in Yemen, so I had to get out of there.

My dad said, "We're getting out of here. Let's go to Northern Ireland,"

where it was a lot calmer.

My house is still there in Ashford Drive. I went there.

And bizarrely the woman that bought it from my dad is still living there.

We lived in the same house, and it hadn't changed,

it's a bungalow.

- Hello. Hello. - Hello, and welcome. Come on in.

- How are you? - Very nice to meet you.

We had the sofa there. There's a photograph taken of us

all in front of a slatted blind just like that.

I think a lot of this is in a similar place.

- But this carpet does look... - Identical?

Yeah. This garden, I mean, all that...

That was green, it was still part of the countryside.

And my dad would start the lawnmower.

He'd always take three goes to start it up.

I think he wanted to get a crowd.

And...

And he was there, one... No.

One... Don't think so.

With all these bits to adjust.

This kitchen is very much same.

I'd be cooking there with my mother.

Well, not cooking, she cooked while I just cut things up.

I was about this big.

Just feels like a different life.

My dad said I, I would adjust the stocking straps on my mom's stockings.

His mother told me that she went into the bathroom on one occasion,

and he was dressing up in her clothes.

That had no significance for me at the time.

The idea of wearing the dress was

very much a big thing for me, and something that I wanted to experience.

'Cause if you're a transvestite, you're actually a male tomboy.

That's where the sexuality is.

So, running, jumping, climbing trees,

putting on makeup when you're up there. That's where it is.

And I used to keep all my makeup in a squirrel hole, up the tree.

And, uh, and the squirrel would keep makeup on one side

and he'd keep nuts on the other side.

And sometimes I get up that tree, that squirrel'd be covered in makeup.

♪ La la la la

"Oh."

"What? Fuck off!"

He seemed to say.

Living here at 5 Ashford Drive,

it's really the best part... of my childhood.

After that, it just went crap.

Well, if I'd continued having a mother,

I wouldn't have gone to boarding schools.

I don't remember wanting to perform before she died.

When I was seven, in Eastbourne,

I saw this kid getting a lot of reaction off the audience,

so I just thought, "Oh, I wanna do that."

The only thing my mom ever saw me do...

Did she see... No, she was probably too ill to see me do it.

I played a raven, she made this raven outfit. There was a picture,

me in a raven outfit made by my mum.

And she was very ill with cancer at this point.

So, I played a raven. I remember not being

terribly interested about playing a raven.

And I got a laugh when I didn't really mean to.

And I wasn't that bothered.

Then after that she was dead, and the next thing, I was desperate to be in things.

Back in Roman times, when people died.

they had professional mourners come in.

Which is a totally weird idea.

Someone will go, "My husband is dead. There's not enough grief.

There's not enough grief in this house to warrant his death.

I wish to beef up the grief!

Slave, get a message off down to Mourners'R'Us, will you?

Tell them I wish to beef up the grief!

Here's 10 denarii for your trouble, and give it straight back.

You're a slave. What do you think you're doing?"

And up will come a very smooth guy,

"Good afternoon, I'm Mr Marcellus. I'm from Mourners'R'Us."

- Just a free sample there. Now...

And the day it happened, Dad came and took us home.

And he told us that Mum had died.

So, we sat down in the lounge and we cried for a long time.

So, then we went on a tour of Ireland.

We'd been happy in Ireland.

So now that Mom was no longer there, I could sit in the front seat

for the first time.

Though I had bad travel sickness,

I just sang the theme toWhite Horses over and over again.

♪ On white horses, snowy white horses

♪ Let me ride away

♪ Away

♪ Away

♪ Away

♪ Away

I'm, like, someone who hears several radio channels going, "Shh."

Five minutes. Oh! Five minutes

- Five minutes to drink as much as fast as you can. It's three in reality.

Normally, I'd start with the old tour.

At the moment, I'm trying to start without doing the old tour.

I would start with the old tour and then you can just,

um, have that material,

then you improvise doing some good, solid material.

Then people laugh, they had the good solid material

but you can improvise off it. You keep the improv,

you dump the old stuff gradually.

You dump all the old stuff and have a load of new stuff.

But this is like not having the backup of something,

um, even though I should try and do it.

I don't know.

This is going to be weird.

It's going to be crap.

So, if this is crap...

Just to say, "Hey, it's crap on tour."

Work in progress. Has this got "work in progress" on the advertising? It has got--

Hang on.

I remember his father coming in to see us.

And explaining the family situation.

The mother had indeed died.

And the father's only answer

seemed to be a boarding school.

The boys were very young. But it did seem a reasonable answer.

I used to cry a lot. I would have fights as well, because I was an angry kid.

And I had a fight, when I started crying first,

and I realized you can't get out of crying once you start it,

'cause it has all started coming down your face.

So, I thought crying equals losing in arguments.

Therefore, do not cry. So, I didn't cry from then on.

I had, sort of, no emotions. That's what a lot of kids

who come out of boarding school are like.

They have no emotions, no feelings. 'Cause you-- that's your survival technique.

He had a collection of teddies that he was very close to,

that he used to keep on his bed.

Seven or eight of them.

Uh, and he used to re-enact uh, tales, theater, with... with these teddies.

Ta-da!

And actually, he was a marvelous mimic.

"What do you want, little kid?"

-"I wanna be in the school play."

"No, you're not, joker."

"No, I'm not." "Yes, you are."

He did it in front of his friends, fine,

and then they summoned up courage, and matron was brought into the picture

and she was quite a strict lady.

And to get matron sitting down and watching it...

And then, yes, headmaster and wife.

And we had some, some lovely little theatricals.

When I was seven. I wanted to act.

And I auditioned for all the school things.

But, no, I was relegated to playing clarinet in the school orchestra.

I played third clarinet, right, in the school band.

Now first clarinets play the melody.

That's okay, you know where you're going. Second clarinets play the harmonies

that backup the melody, and sort of link, okay.

Third clarinets play the notes that are left over.

You're just going...

It's boring. The only exciting way to do it is really blow it loud.

The teacher's going, "Piano! Piano!" You're going, "It's not a fucking piano.

It's a clarinet."

Very soon after that, though, they did Beauty and the Beast

and I didn't get any of the good parts.

I would play the street urchin with all the rest of the bozos

in the class who couldn't do anything.

And we had a collective line, that was, "Oh, Beauty, don't go."

And I worked out that when it came to our line,

and if I went, "Oh, Beauty, don't go," very fast, then it became my line.

And all the other kids were going, "Oh, he's already said it."

I think, "Forget about it."

At 11, I played Trebonius who's the one conspirator

who doesn't actually stab Caesar, so that's no good.

He'd just take Mark Anthony to one side and stand in the wings,

while all the kids with the plastic daggers have fun.

I think it was Andrew Boxer who sat me down and said,

"What kind of role are you looking for?"

I thought it was a bizarre question because I thought,

"Big, you know, that big, huge lead role that gets off with the women.

And big, you know, ego waving, on all the time kind of role."

And he said, "Well, what about jailer?"

And I thought, "No, that doesn't quite sound right."

My abiding memory of St. Bede's was the South Downs.

The first team had to run up and down a very steep slope.

And I used to run and I used to think, it's cold and wet and this is pointless

and I remember the teacher going,

"That's why Izzard's in the team. He just pushes so hard to run."

People live their lives, they retire, they move to Eastbourne,

then they live a little bit longer and then they die.

And then they move to Bexhill, all right?

There's just no one to play with when I was growing up.

I had to play with Mrs. Stevens who was 76, you know.

The English Channel, 1941.

Any questions?

Yes. Where are my legs?

You couldn't escape from the military background here,

because in my last year, my school cert year of 1944-45,

we had regular doodlebugs.

They were a flying bomb, they had no pilot,

and they were very fast.

All you did was get under the desk.

But we had hundreds and hundreds

and hundreds of doodlebugs across Bexhill.

One morning, there was a huge explosion,

and we learnt at breakfast that an unexploded World War II mine

had hit the cliff at Beachy Head and blown up.

So, the stuff's still floating around out there.

And as kids we'd play on the South Downs, and there'd be bomb craters.

You just go and play in the bomb craters.

That's just where bombs are blown up from German Heinkels

dumping their bombs on their way back.

I got really fascinated by the SAS, the Special Air Service.

I joined the Combined Cadet Force,

and I was considering doing an officer cadetship.

Soldiering appealed to me because it was unemotional,

tactical dealing with a situation.

When the chips are down, you stand up for your friends, or for your family, or country.

♪ Bling, bling, bling, bling, bling♪

That was a barrel organ version of Jerusalem.

It's a hymn, you know, one that we'd sing in church.

And it's got really weird lines in it. "And shall my sword sleep in my hand."

Not a good idea.

You're gonna roll over and cut your bits off, aren't you?

And then it's that Godfather scene of... "Oh, oh, oh."

"A head of a horse and my willy."

- And, uh...

When I was 16, I made a mental decision,

I'm absolutely gonna be an actor. No question about it.

I didn't seem right for doing drama because I'd lost all my confidence in puberty.

And I couldn't do lead male parts

'cause I was kind of short and couldn't get off with girls.

And then I had to chat up girls. And I had never used my vocal ability to chat up girls.

And when your voice is breaking, it's very hard! It's going,

"Why, Susan, I really fancy you.

I saw you in the playground."

I had to chat up girls, and I'd only tagged them before,

and I didn't have the verbal power to be able to say,

"Susan, I saw you in the classroom today.

As the sun came from behind the clouds,

a burst of brilliant light caught your hair,

it was haloed in front of me. You turned, your eyes flashed fire into my soul,

I immediately read the words of Dostoyevsky and Karl Marx.

And in the words of Albert Schweitzer.

I fancy you!"

But no. At 13, you're just going, "Hello, Sue. I've got legs.

Do you like bread?

I've got French loaf.

Bye.

I love you."

I'm not sure any of us got lucky back then.

It was actually very unfortunate because there were maybe

30 girls to 120 boys.

So, it was, it was a challenge.

Even, even on a good day.

We didn't do mathematics together.

We sort of did mathematics together,

but what we did was, we cheated our way up to...

- What did you get in math? Oh, God.

'Cause he got expelled. I got two Bs and a D.

He got a B in math, and I got an A in math.

We made nitro-glycerine.

'Cause there was a book that had all these things,

make soap, I think, make nitro-glycerine.

So, we made it. And we tried to blow-up this old lady

who was the matron of this place.

So, we poured it on the floor and we thought

she might stand on it and go boom.

One teacher said to me, "Yeah, I saw the play, Izzard.

Not exactly Shakespeare, is it?

What are you going to do when you grow up, Izzard?"

"Transvestite comedian, sir. Hopefully do Broadway."

"Yes, yes."

What a weird thing to say to me.

I did audition in the Shaw Theatre which ended up being the place

where I did Raging Bull years later.

For the National Youth Theatre. I'd learnt these speeches,

one from Henry IV, Part 1, and one from Becket.

And I was very calm. I wanted to be very calm and knock them out

and be able to be very confident.

And I got the confidence together, but somehow

confidence and memory were not allowed in the body at the same time at that point.

So I was very relaxed when I got there. I said, "Yes, good to see you. Yes.

I'll do these parts.

And, uh, I'll just read them out to you, shall I, yeah?"

So I'm standing in my future dressing room going...

Who, who... sons.

He says, "Well, try the other speech.

The Becket one."

Nothing, just completely dry. And he said,

"Well, you better go, you're crap.

You're a crap kid, you know?" No, he didn't say that,

but he said, "Well, I'll let you...

I won't even bother letting you know."

If The Goon Show was the Old Testament,

then Monty Python was the New Testament.

We used to recite their sketches at school. And as soon as I found out that

they wrote their own sketches, then I thought, "I have to do this."

I thought I will do what Monty Python does.

I will write my own stuff, give myself a big role.

Personal nepotism, I called it.

I found out that they were at Cambridge Footlights.

So I thought I'll get to Cambridge.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

Here we are tonight, behind camouflage,

at the Iranian Embassy, here in Eastbourne.

It had moved down here for safety reasons.

And upstairs, we have some really bad Iranians up there.

And we've got one here, our resident idiot.

Come here, resident idiot.

Here we have resident idiot, Cyrus Amin.

Amini, with the 'I."

And we also have someone watching us from a distance, but it doesn't matter.

And upstairs we have the SAS trying to break in and get free the hostages.

- What do you think about that, Cyrus?

Perhaps, it would be wise here to go to our London studios.

Mathematics, attentive, searching and industrious.

A+. Good show

In chemistry, there was a Doctor Edmondson teaching.

And he had this thing, he would say, "We will take the sodium chloride

and then we stick it..."

And he would just leave a gap there

when he was gonna say... And I'd say, "In the bin."

"No, not in the bin." "Stick it in your ear."

"Not in your ear. Shut up, Izzard."

And I made a mental decision, I said, "I will use this lesson in particular,

to up my comedy hit rate." 'Cause I was getting laughs

and that was obviously kind of getting me noticed.

And, so, by the summertime, I remember this girl said to me,

"I didn't even know you existed until now."

Hey, plan number one in the bag.

He has been a very lazy boy.

A long way from the standard Cambridge University requires.

Fail! See me afterwards.

So I didn't get to Cambridge, but then

I realized the Edinburgh Festival was more key, really.

And Dad wanted me to go to university.

So I'd go to Sheffield, go to Edinburgh. Learn the ropes.

Do a comedy show, take off. Get a television series by the time I was 25.

That was the deal.

He was just basically applying vague models he had, like...

Well, I know Not The 9 O'clock News were Cambridge Footlights

and Cambridge Footlights go to Edinburgh.

But I got there and I said, "Right, I'm here.

I've come to the Edinburgh Festival.

Who goes to the Edinburgh Festival? I will clean your floors,

I will swab things down. I will mend tractors. What do you need?

I am the perfect helping person."

And they said, "Oh, we don't go to Edinburgh."

"No, I'm here.

I'm doing a degree course for no reason.

Just purely to go to the Edinburgh Festival.

You, everyone at the university, they go to Edinburgh...

Someone's going, aren't they?"

"No, someone went about three years ago, lost a lot of money, so we don't go."

So I was pole-axed by this thing

which I hadn't bothered to check out and I didn't think would happen

that no one in Sheffield Uni was going.

So I thought, "I'll take my own show up to the Edinburgh Festival."

Right, okay, so what is SUF?

SUF, Sheffield University Fringe, are a group of self-financed,

self-educated, self-propelled rug weavers.

They took this crap show, it was completely crap.

It was so crap sometimes we would laugh onstage 'cause no one was laughing,

and then run off stage.

I believe that this is a mini West End coming to Sheffield. Yes.

Eddie would like to be the funniest person in Cheshire,

but the competition is very strong.

A lot of morale and,

everybody's very keen for the show to work.

Rob Ballard is the wisest person we know.

He once came third in a wisest person we know competition.

- Look!

I think something's up here!

I think you're right. Professor Who is not here.

It was really awful, but it happened.

He did get us all up to Edinburgh.

We were part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Ian Rowland's sense of humor is dangerous.

His sense of smell is the strongest of the whole group.

What came across was this absolutely, uh, cast-iron determination

to make things happen.

In Sheffield, you had to pass first year exams to stay on,

but he didn't do the work.

He was busy taking a show up to Edinburgh Festival.

He was thrown out, really.

Ben-Hur, The Street Show.

So, Sheffield university threw me out, but I didn't leave.

I stayed on people's floors and I continued doing shows

through the student's union, due to a loophole,

which was fantastic. And I went on to the Edinburgh Festival,

kept going back to the Edinburgh Festival for the next two years,

and did shows that were staggeringly slightly better.

Edinburgh, you just had to be good at marketing

and promoting and postering and designing things,

because there's 500 shows, 1000 shows you're competing with.

This is how he started eating polystyrene cups.

And you just announce that you're going to eat them, and you do.

And he used to give himself terrible cuts and ulcers and things inside his mouth.

But it was very, very funny during those two or three minutes.

That's when you can give out your flyers and leaflets, and publicize your show.

In the old days, adverts were much more blatant.

Adverts were much more, "Go on, there it is. Come on.

"I haven't got all day, there it is."

And as consumers we were much more, "Okay, I didn't realize. Sorry.

"Sorry. Don't hit me."

Nowadays we have choice, don't we? We're much more choosy

and we're much more aware of what we can buy.

So, the adverts are more subtle, they're soft sell.

So the adverts are more subtle.

"Oh, look at that!

"Those two people like it.

"And they are shagging."

We were putting on a lunchtime performance

of Ben-Hur, with no money, no budget, nothing. No costumes, no props.

Every toga is a bed sheet and every bed sheet is a toga,

and every horse is just a cardboard cut out from

a Kellogg's cereal packet or something.

The scale of the ambition was massive and insane.

Eddie used to get himself into terrible financial straits

trying to make these things happen.

We do the show once in Sheffield, lose a little bit of money,

take it up to Edinburgh, lose more and then we'd have to come back down

to Sheffield and put it on again for another week on a public basis,

trying to get more people to come to see this.

We were on at 12 noon, the first show we did, and nobody came.

Later in the evening, we would do a show called The Sequel.

- So, on behalf of me, Adolf Hitler and... - And me, Eva Braun.

We cordially invite you to come and see The Sequel.

That year, the Cambridge Footlights turned up.

So it was us against them, in my mind.

I can distinctly remember us looking at them, going, "Who are they?"

They just happen to be Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson.

And I thought, if there was a God, the Footlights would be awful,

but they were kind of spell binding and they won The Perrier.

We were taken out and shot, by the guy who ran the venue.

We weren't even within biting distance except for one sketch that got put on

this radio program, Aspects of the Fringe.

So I did come close to standing next to these guys who had done the Footlights.

But the show that we'd worked on was terrible compared to them.

He went up to the assembly rooms.

"Oh, yes, we'll be wanting the Ballroom.

Right! Probably about 9:00," And the guy goes,

"You realize that's about 10,000 pounds?" Ludicrous sums of money.

"Oh, yeah, that wouldn't be a problem, I don't think."

Mr. Burdett-Coutts. Come here.

Do you remember when I came to your house and asked you

in the second year, I said, "Could you dump The Perrier?"

- You remember that? - I do.

- Do you remember that in Camberwell? - And you had this option

of dumping the Perrier winners?

And me with no reviews, and I worked out there was no reason

except that the venue owner told me our show was shit.

That was 'cause hutzpah, wasn't it?

That was. You always had great hutzpah.

I was good on the hutzpah.

- And so, I've never actually played at your venue. - No, your time will come.

I got another venue that was halfway to Glasgow and did a show called

Sherlock Holmes Sings Country,

and The Scotsman said we were a load of shabby old tat.

But they did leave a sentence in that said, "But sometimes they come up with something

which is completely unexpected and devastatingly funny."

And that was the only good quote I had for about ten years.

So, yes, that was all the beginning of continued nothingness.

But it was actually fantastic for me because I, I was trained

by marching through hell, basically.

Sounds okay, but I lost a bit in the second half.

How did I lose it?

Gave up on my life story? I thought, "Oh, there's nothing more to talk about?"

Now I was selling ice creams, 'cause they had...

Right down here they have an ice cream kiosk.

Initially I was just talking about anything and I was trying to make it into material.

Being in a kiosk and selling ice creams has now become a piece

and I'm not really talking about anything else.

And I like retail, I like the idea of running a sweet shop.

I always wanted to do that.

I'm just jumping to the next bit, or cycling back

to Wales or something. But I need to keep it open,

I need to... need to be able to chat.

So I lost a bit in the second half. How long was that? Anyone know?

First encountered Rob Ballard at the Students' Union in Sheffield.

As he had the energy thing that I did, and he had a band, and I had a comedy group.

So I just grabbed Rob and said, "You're in it

'cause you're funny and we're all hanging around you."

So he was in it, and he was great,

and he was energetic and crazy, and that's how it started.

I was too scared to perform on my own at that point.

So we became a double act in about 1985, 1986.

We've seen Pookiesnackenburger doing stuff. And Pookiesnackenburger

is Luke Cresswell, who is Stomp.

That's a really interesting medium, the street performing stuff.

When you work on the street, you have to make the crowd come to you.

You have to force them to come to you.

Otherwise you don't eat, basically.

We came down thinking we would get the medium

of street performing within two weeks.

I was sure two weeks, and then we'd be really good.

A lot of the acts were very new, different, and they were very...

some really good performers down there.

First show was at Covent Garden, we were doing bad tricks.

At its best, it was crazy. At its worst it was shite.

Their act was very basic, that had lot of toys to

gather the audience, eating corn flakes, escaping from jumpers.

We sort of wanted to say, "You know what we've done before.

We've done shows at the Edinburgh Festival with lights and things,

and audiences and tickets.

No one here's done tickets, we've done tickets,"

-And then we were just terrible. - It was real moronic stuff.

And then they came up with the sword fighting show, which was really good.

- Roberto! - Edwardo.

En garde!

I've directed Robin, The Three Musketeers at college.

I thought, we'll do the swords. So we bought some foils.

We started doing stuff and it was very flashy.

Eddie became very flamboyant.

Suddenly in his mind, he had to be D'artagnan.

There was a street performers festival in the summer,

I thought we could aim for that.

We worked out routines, we were getting laughs, we were earning better money.

And we didn't even win our own comedy section.

And that's when I just thought, "Oh, well."

Except I'd fallen back, regrouped, come back, attacked and just failed again.

I was going around saying, "This is just not my millennia,"

which I thought was very droll.

On his 24th birthday,

he was sort of pissed off, I was going, "What?

What is it? You're 24, what's wrong?"

"Oh, well, by the time he was 24..." "Yeah?"

"Orson Welles had directed Citizen Kane."

And you sort of went, "Oh, right.

You're pissed off 'cause you haven't directed the best movie

probably that's ever been made before, you know, you're 24.

I think that's a secretly accurate portrayal.

We're street performing. It's the hardest thing. You're performing to people

who don't want to watch you in the first place.

I lost all my confidence.

I basically brought myself down to zero confidence at Covent Garden.

Rob would take holidays and he did it quite often, so I could do nothing.

I realized I was developing a kind of thing with the audience.

And I could feel it. If there's a double act, you're just sitting on your arse

waiting for the other person to come back, and it felt useless.

Morning, Mr. Smith, how are you feeling today?

- Fine.

Comedy Wavelength was this program on Channel 4.

And they said, "Look, comedy writers."

So they accepted couple of sketches for the pilot.

And then Rob was in it, and then they said I wasn't in it.

And I was probably jealous of Rob at the time.

And I kept auditioning to try and act with them.

And the producer said, "Look, you're not a performer.

You're a writer, but you're not a performer."

And that totally screwed with my brain,

because the one thing I was sure about was, I was a performer.

Maybe a writer, but definitely a performer.

And I'd been in a four person act, and then a two person act,

I never thought I could be solo.

Paul Keane used to perform as Captain Keano.

Paul Keane used to perform as Captain Keano.

He could be hellish, he could be obnoxious, could be brilliant, generous.

He had a demeanor as king of Covent Garden.

When I am famous,

I'll still do my show on the cobbles here at Covent Garden.

So Rob went on a holiday and I said, "I didn't know you're going on a holiday."

He was out for a week or so.

Paul Keane had some ropes and chains for his escapology,

and I said, "Can I borrow your ropes and chains?"

So I went out with the ropes and chains one Saturday in about '87,

and I strapped them on, did the show, made ten pounds and that was it.

I split up with Rob two weeks later.

As soon as I'd gone solo,

it was just a release.

I'd never seen anybody work so hard at riding a unicycle as he did.

He was just on it, you know, constantly.

He knew that he split up with Rob, wanted to do his solo show,

and was just really manically learning everything that he possibly could.

Once I was tied up by someone really tight in my ropes and chains

and I couldn't get out.

I had to dismiss the audience and ask for friends to get me out.

Paul said to me, "If you think you can't get out, you'll not be able to get out."

You have to believe you can get out, it's psychological.

You gotta believe you can be a standup before a star.

You gotta believe you can act before you can act.

You gotta believe you can be an astronaut before you can be an astronaut.

You've got to believe. You've got to imagine yourself in that situation.

The careers adviser used to come to school and he took me aside.

He said, "Tell me. Tell me your dreams."

I said, "I want to be a space astronaut, go to outer space,

discover things that have never been discovered."

He said, "Look, you're British, so scale it down a bit, all right?"

If I start apologizing too much, saying, "Oh, it's not funny,"

then I'll lose it. It's very psychological.

It's very much, um...

Uh...

When I used to do the unicycle at Covent Garden.

You have to practice at Covent Garden. You gotta find a big open space,

and so you're doing it at Covent Garden. If someone walks by...

Lads would walk by going, "Hey, mate, you're gonna fall off.

You're gonna fall off. Hey, you are gonna fall off."

And so you think, "Don't fall off. Don't fall off. Don't fall off."

Immediately you fall off 'cause you're thinking it.

And what you actually had to do is, when they say, "Hey, you're gonna fall off,"

is just blank your mind.

Have no thoughts in there at all.

Just keep spaced out.

And that's like here, I've got to keep the fear.

I've got to block the fear out, uh, of not being interesting and just chat.

In the summer of 1987, I was street performing

at a festival. And these visual guys came by.

One guy had a helmet on with a steel girder with flaming kebabs coming off it.

And I realized that I couldn't compete with this guy.

There's no way I can do street performing.

I can't compete with a guy with flaming bits of meat attached to his head.

So I thought, right, forget street.

I'm developing something here, but I've got to do stand up.

But I didn't know how. I was already an experienced performer.

And I had experience with the energy of an audience,

how to deal with them.

If you stay back there we're gonna do the show right...

But not of writing ideas down as myself because I was dyslexic.

When I was a kid, I would spell phonetically.

And we'd do the game of "I spy" with my dad and my brother.

I remember going, "S, a word beginning with S." And that was ceiling.

"K" and that was cat. And they'd spend hours

trying to get these words and they could never get them.

Later on, I got the impression that probably was what being dyslexic was.

I was fully dyslexic until I met someone who was more dyslexic than me and said,

"You're only partially dyslexic."

- There's a lot of rivalry in the dyslexic camp, you know.

Rivalry with three V's.

It makes you think in a creative way.

You see shapes and you see things inside shapes.

You see clouds, and see lions, and tigers up there.

So I went and got a tape recorder.

And I thought I'll just ad-lib into the tape recorder and then write that out.

That'll be stand up.

It didn't work.

They did a stand-up workshop at a place called Jacksons Lane.

Patrick Marber, who was a stand-up at that point

became a playwright who's written Dealer's Choice and Closer.

We were very spiky with each other.

He did an impression of me in that workshop where he went,

"Uh... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Blah, blah, blah, street.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, street." And I thought, "Oh, God, he must be really annoyed with me."

'Cause I was obviously just going on and on about this thing.

I'd written loads of sketches at university,

and, in the end, I took a sketch, which was a two-person sketch,

and I cannibalized it, cutting out the interviewer

and just made it into a one person sketch

about being addicted to breakfast cereal.

And that got laughs, and I thought, "Well, if that gets laughs

I could do more like that. I could just write them as two persons,

cut them in half, make them one person,

and I could do my whole career that way."

Remember, in the '70s, there's all that work we'd done with monkeys.

The signing thing. Hey, you're a monkey.

Yeah, yeah, I'm a monkey.

So what's it like, being a monkey?

Not bad, not bad.

What's it like being a human?

Pretty good.

Could I have a banana?

No, I have no bananas...

on this day.

You have no bananas?

Well, if you have no bananas, I'm not fucking talking to you.

What's happening?

I don't know. I just ad-libbed it.

Give me a fucking banana.

Give me a fucking banana.

- Alright.

What do you wanna know?

How does the monkey community interact?

You know, in the usual way.

Give me another banana.

No more bananas.

I've got a gun.

You didn't even sign that time.

I know.

So in the end, I decided to just work on one show until it was good.

And then people would come,

as opposed to write shoddy quick stuff, and then shove it in people's faces

and say, look, it's brilliant...

because it wasn't.

The only way you could get good was by doing gigs, and you couldn't get the gigs.

You could get these open spots, which were unpaid five minutes.

You would phone up and ask for one.

They'd give you one, three months ahead. Just one.

Well done, Hollow. That was good.

Um, sometimes, you have to get on stage,

the applause is still going while you're there.

Once I'd got a few bookings going, I'd said "I'd do compering"

and then they said, "Oh, you do, you will? We'll have three then."

The host is seen as a a lower status thing. People would say to you,

you're quite good, you should be one of the acts, so I said "I am one of the acts."

The audience wouldn't realize this, the standups didn't like doing it

'cause you have to tell people to shut up, sit down, get their drinks, and they hated it.

They just wanted to talk funny stuff.

All street performers have to be comperes.

We wrangle the audience into a shape, so we're hosting our own show.

So we were already trained in it, and I was just relentlessly working.

I was in Streatham on a Monday night and they would not laugh.

I just talked endlessly.

Then I bring acts on and I could smash atmosphere

into people until they're, "All right, he seems okay."

And I felt it was, it was coming through, so I was just grabbing it.

I did a couple of the Screaming Blue Murders,

when I was just in real basic gags,

and he was compering them, and it would be, you know,

he would go out and for five minutes, just, they would love him,

and then he would go down a tangent that would just, you know,

stink the room out.

You've seen it all before, haven't you?

You've seen something before, haven't you?

Seen me before, yeah?

I've seen you before.

Oh, God, we're gonna have a horrible time.

Well, everyone just talk amongst yourselves actually.

But he was taking those risks that nobody else was taking.

Nobody ever thought about taking risks.

You only did things that you knew which would satisfy an audience.

You're on a trapeze and you know you're safe on the trapeze, and then you let go,

and you fly, and the audience goes,

"Is he fucking gonna catch it?

Is he gonna catch that trapeze? I don't know."

But the audience loves the gap between the two trapezes.

There's that great fairy story of Idi Amin goes around to the Duvalier house.

And there he gets in, it's in the middle of the woods.

He goes in there and there's porridge on the table.

Tries Papa Doc Duvalier's porridge, "Ooh, it's too hot."

And he tries Mama Doc Duvalier porridge, "Ooh, it's too cold."

Then he tries Baby Doc Duvalier's,

"Mmm, it's just the right temperature." So he gobbles it all up.

And he nips upstairs, he's a bit tired.

There were three beds. Papa Doc Duvalier's bed. "Ooh, a bit too hard."

Mama Doc's, "Mmm, a bit too soft."

Baby Doc Duvalier's, "Just right."

So Idi gets in and falls asleep. And then the Duvaliers come back

and they find him and they skin him.

I don't know what to do with that piece of material, but I like it.

It's wonderfully sick, but sort of needed kind of thing.

The summer of '89, I decided to go back to Edinburgh yet again.

This time as a stand up.

I decided to do an hour and five minutes.

As soon as you've committed yourself so much

that you can stand up and do an hour, I think you've really...

You've decided that's what you want to do.

I did a show at Edinburg Festival.

I was setting up and it was just me and there was no one else in the area.

There's a one man standing, watching, and then he went,

"Oh," and then ran off in the opposite direction.

I thought, well, that's not very helpful.

A few minutes later he came back

and he dragged his entire family up the hill and said, "Watch this."

And I thought, "This is it."

"That's it. That's the thing I'm trying to get."

Good afternoon, Edinburgh!

I was doing three shows, two street performances,

and one stand up in the first year and I got completely ill doing it.

I should also point out that I'm doing

a stand up show every night.

Um, I got lots of leaflets. My name is Eddie Izzard.

It's a rather strange name. It's got two Zs in it

and it's going on every night and I say, I got a load of details about it.

I think it's fun.

It's an hour and five minutes. It's on tonight. I like it.

Are you ready?

I certainly am, old chap.

Are you steady? - Yes, this is an ominous buildup, isn't it?

- Go. - Okay. All right.

Five, four, three, two, one.

Very cute. Very cute. Very cute.

Aelswith and I find ourselves

at the Edinburgh Festival.

And suddenly, there in front of us was a notice "Eddie Izzard."

We got tickets to what I think may have been pretty well

his first professional show.

I saw them, my old headmaster.

He goes... "Oh, shit."

And for one hour, we fell about.

Why do they say blood is thicker than water?

It's a strange expression.

I was thinking about this, "blood is thicker than water"

means you should be kind to your relatives.

But custard is thicker than blood.

Does this mean we should be nice to trifles?

He's a smashing bloke, but there are a good few shows

you should catch before this one.

William Cook.

I was a student and I was running a venue in Edinburgh for the festival.

I went up to this woman, she was running a venue

called Greyfriars Kirk House.

She had a slot and I looked at one other venue and they may have had a slot.

I thought, "No, I think I'll go with her. I think I fancy her more."

He couldn't afford to take a slot on his own,

so he went in with another comedian. The two of them took the slot.

It was a way for me to get my plays on

because I could hire a venue and afford to put my own play on in there

and not lose money like everybody else

because it was running venue too.

She had 15 shows in here and I realized how much energy it took to set it up.

Because I've never set up a venue.

He hadn't perfected his technique at that point.

I remember your accounting was terrible.

He would turn up to the venue every day,

checking his box office figures

when there would be half a dozen people in the audience.

I fell asleep in his show.

We just hung out, and then afterwards I asked you to come to something

and you said no, and then your dad said you should change your mind.

So you said yes.

After the festival, I came back to London

and I invited Sarah back to my flat in Streatham.

And I don't think she was terribly impressed

'cause it was like a mattress, small black and white television,

and all my stuff was in black plastic bin bags.

Kind of stylish.

But I seem to remember she liked my map

and I had them color-coded flag system,

and I'd stick a flag in, different colors if I'd stormed it.

If I'd died, if I'd been booked back.

After each gig, I'd come home and I'd write down my set list for the night.

What worked, what didn't work, any good at improv,

how the audience reacted. And with that system,

I relentlessly worked my way through the circuit.

I remember when he first played.

Well, a lot of rubbish really. A lot of things

that people didn't understand, didn't like.

Got quite a few heckles.

My uncle's always used to say... He used to say,

"Remember, you can take a horse to water,

"but you can't take him to a disco."

I kept playing The Comedy Store and failing.

So I thought, I'm just gonna stay away from here until I'm good enough

to come back and blow the roof off.

He was doing sort of slightly surreal humor,

he by no means had found his, you know, the place where he should be.

In this country, when comedy is at its best is when there's a Tory government,

when there's something to rebel against.

Satire in the '60s was at its height

because there was a Tory government.

As soon as Wilson came in,

whoop, it slips away. We had the mainstream... You know, men going,

"My mother in law, my mother in law."

Thatcher came in, alternative comedy was at its height.

We have a war.

Everybody has to say things about it.

You know, we got Ben Elton,

Mark Thomas, Mark Steel, these strong political comedians.

And suddenly through it all, there was this guy

just talking about being brought up by wolves,

and it was just incredible.

He died so regularly.

But you know, he stuck with it. He went, "No, this is what I find funny."

Well, there was a night in a Comedy Store in London

where another comic called Bob Mills comes to me and said,

"Look, they're wild and they're cranky.

"And tonight is not time for your...

"I went to school with Paris Teqauila bit." And I said, "I got to, it's all I've got..."

I just talked at this speed...

A child was born and my mother went out,

she said to him, "Why are you doing that?"

I said, "Didn't really understand."

...never took a breath.

I never went in there... 'Cause I knew that...

So, I would go, "You can..." And the people down the front who are actually attacking you

under your radar 'cause you're playing out here.

They would gradually quieten down because you're like, laugh

laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh.

- Twenty minutes I get...

And then they would go,

"They like you. You come back tomorrow."

His off the cuff humor beats most impro hollow.

Heckle at your peril. William Cook.

You have to understand what the comedy circuit

in London was like in the '90s.

It became the biggest thing in the world. There's about ten clubs in New York,

and 80 clubs in London. And people were gigging

at least twice a night. At the weekends,

four times a night. You do a gig and you jump in a black cab

and you'd scoot off to somewhere in London

and then you'd come back in another cab.

We kind of owned that town. And the audiences were coming.

They didn't care who was on as long as they were good, didn't know our names.

No one was famous, and it was all cash in hand,

pockets stuffed with fivers and tenners and twenties

and drugs and weed and whatever you kind of wanted was there,

and everyone was doing it and gigging and drinking like idiots.

And none of us were known, and it was great.

He decided he should open his own comedy club

and compere and he would get more exposure.

Here I am in the world of strip joints,

and there's this sort of like a big black and yellow sign

hanging in Soho. And people must've walked past and gone,

"I wonder what that's about."

I'd set up my own club in the center of town

in order to be hosting a club every week,

be right at the center of things.

That's Eddie's thinking immediately. "I will host it.

"I'll get big names in, but people will be seeing me."

I remember people walk around with Raging Bull badges, the Raging Bull logo.

There's his marketing working out.

I managed his club.

People liked to come and play there

even though the money wasn't great.

It was really tough and I couldn't make money, and the rent was too high.

And I had to do other gigs around this gig in order to pay for the bills.

He lost so much money in that one year

that the VAT man didn't believe that he really could have.

They investigated him and eventually found that

it really was just a mad person throwing their money way.

But it gave me this place.

People seemed to be coming on, watching what I was doing.

It was just packed

and I stood at the bar 'cause it was the only place I could get in.

You just felt that he had something special.

He just seemed so ahead of everyone else

who was doing stuff at the time,

I would muck about.

I would improvise. I started doing this word rap thing.

I'd talk endlessly about things

and make up scenarios about people

who are wandering around and poke fun at people and, oh...

That, that improvising was the danger thing

that people were sort of interested in.

That was a commodity, that was different.

He was Raging Bull.

Everybody will come along and they'll see Eddie week after week.

I don't think any big venue in London ever had a regular compere.

Two people are gonna come along and watch me do stuff,

and if they liked it, I would get into this benefit calledHysteria 3.

I really tried to do good, and I failed.

I was really crap that day.

So at the end of that night, I said, "Look, I was really shit tonight,

"so if you don't want to vote me, that's fine."

And they said, bizarrely, fantastically,

"No, it's okay. We'll come back next week and watch you again."

Which is just like, "Have a second go."

And so they came back next week and I decided, "Okay, don't give a damn this week."

So I just did whatever, mucked about, had fun. Had fun. And it went great.

And they said, "Yeah, you're in."

That was an AIDS benefit, and no one... But no one knew who Eddie Izzard was.

And he came on and did three minutes of,

you know, the very famous as it is now "Wolves" sketch.

And I was brought up after that by wolves. Actually, um...

Well, you know, they were out yachting one day.

It was great, it was wonderful.

You know, it's great to be brought up by wolves.

It was wonderful. They gave me a name.

They called me...

And I did it all. They taught me all the stuff, you know,

hunting, fishing, backgammon, all of that. Wolves are natural at fishing.

You know, they wait by fast flowing rivers, you know.

And then when a big fish comes along, just at the right moment,

they reel it in. Reel it in.

And, you know, cook it, Gas Mark 4 with a bit of herbs.

And we were wolves, we were young, we were crazy.

We'd make love at the moonlight, you know. They would. They would.

I'd watch and say, "No, I'm full. Thank you."

Everyone was turning around going "Who's that guy? Who's the Izzard guy?"

- Catch you later. 'Cause no one had really heard of him.

And he just absolutely took the place apart.

Well, to be honest, there were around

19 wolves and me and I'm trying to blend in going "Woof. Woof."

And these bears standing there saying, "Oh, what's that?"

"Oh, hi, I am a wolf."

"Catch you later."

And we'd be chasing these things, they turn out to be antelopes.

That was great. And 'cause we eat them.

And that was great. Chasing them.

And after about 20 minutes,

they put on a real lead and so we had a discussion

and agreed to move our legs as well. That really helped.

So, whoosh. Out there.

And I couldn't keep up with them.

Two legs. So I took to driving a small red car.

It was great, you know. It was the same mind position and everything.

And it was a hatchback.

It was roomy. So I said, "Guys, get in the back."

Ironical thing about Hysteria 3 was that it was being run by Stephen Fry,

and Hugh Laurie was in it with Stephen Fry,

who were part of that Footlights group that won the Perrier ten years before.

Ten years.

Well, I've been out in the wilderness. Living off pine cones.

I remember the next day being woken by the phone

ringing off the hook and faxes coming through on top of each other.

You tore the place apart on Sunday night!

The most talked about item we had!

It really was the classic overnight success after many years.

I always wanted to do in the big god television.

Then I thought, maybe I don't need television.

People thought I wasn't doing out of principle,

but I was, in fact, doing it as a revenge for always wanting to do it.

Well, it's the madness. What I call a madness 'cause I think...

You think you can perform and the whole world is saying that you can't perform,

then you are obviously mad.

If you hold onto that madness and you hold on to it and you hold on to it

and you hold on to it for years, and then later it comes good and you can actually perform.

Then it proves that you weren't mad.

And I just... You just had to surround that little bit of belief

and hold on to it for as long as it takes.

He's one of these people who have been told

throughout life that he's not capable of certain things.

And he'll just bang on the door until you open the door and let him in.

I thought I could play the West End because people were phoning up

and saying, "I want to see that guy."

I've done that on the street. I seem to be doing it in the clubs.

He was the first person I know that had a mailing list.

People would write to you and say, "Eddie's on here, Eddie's on there.

"Let's go and see him do a fall in China."

That that's how the Ambassador's first sold out.

So I left the circuit and I tried out my show

in small theatres around London, and they sold out.

So I thought, I'm gonna go and do the West End.

It was completely unheard of to book yourself

into a West End theater like that.

People thought he was taking a terrible risk.

It was a risk, yes, because we didn't have the money.

We would be doing so many shows that everyone was letting us

have printing and stuff on 30 day credit.

We had 30 days to break even or go bust.

Okay, that would be crap.

I thought it was a great idea, you said no, never worked...

I say things, you say no. If you do the big silence thing, I know I'm very wrong.

I came in late the first night.

I really seriously thought I walked into the wrong show because I had no idea.

Okay. I've only got a couple of dresses, so fuck off.

I was so shocked. I had no idea. It was a fantastic show

and I think the audience were incredibly warm.

Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. I thought I'd do the gig in a dress and uh...

Good reaction, London. Come on. Yeah. Fucking hell.

Up to this point, he still had never dressed in the clothes

and he did not want the tabloids trying to make something out of it

so he thought, "Right, I'll become visible."

I'm a very stubborn,

pig-headed personality and quite thick-skinned.

And was always looking for a challenge or a quest.

Do you want me to talk about sexism? You know, 'cause men could never really get there.

You all know. If you're a ethnic minority, I can talk about racism,

but for me personally, white, male, middle class, completely fucking useless.

There's no angles there at all. You can't say, "Oh, no. When I was growing up..."

All right.

School's not too bad.

Kids at school would taunt me, they'd go "Ooh, do you wanna play?"

Oh, the good old days.

It was the acceptance I couldn't take. The constant acceptance.

So, uh... So the only thing working in my favor is

thank God, I'm a transvestite. Phew, eh?

It was very dangerous because my career was just finally taking off,

and I could just be about to blow it out the window by wearing a dress.

With me in the studio is the well known stand-up comedian Eddie Izzard.

It was recently revealed that he is a transvestite.

Why aren't you dressed?

Because I chose not to.

It was also 'cause I wanted to talk about it rather than wear the clothes.

I think it's very brave of you to come out and tell everybody you're transvestite.

Why do that at this stage in your career?

I just told a newspaper that. TV, and of course, all the newspapers

after that decided to pick up on it and uh...

But you do feel it's important, don't you, that people should know?

Society makes, uh, people fear it, you know, be scared and feel ashamed.

And it's just the way I am.

I am TV. I have been since I was four, and I have no problems with it.

Now, you have to come out and basically get...

I have a girlfriend, and she's quite cool about it as well.

The only way you can get cool about it is by society backing up,

all people who are TV coming out and saying, "I'm TV, it's not a problem."

The first time he came out with stand ups

was at a party that I gave at my flat.

He turned up with turquoise eyeshadow up to his eyebrows

and a huge jumper with a belt, a skirt and really high Peyton shoes.

I wasn't gonna come out about it 'cause that just seemed foolish.

And then when I thought I should,

there is an element that it was absolutely positive.

Do it, it's truthful. I'm coming out, it's difficult.

People see it's difficult for me. It is a fight.

It was really important for him that time to wear the skirt.

He wanted to go on and do it honestly, and he felt that way.

And I think it was a very brave move.

Look, this is me.

This is what you get. This is Eddie.

The show, in fact, worked,

and extended twice. It would play for three months.

And it had a gotten an Olivier nomination out of it

got I got a video distribution deal out of it.

That was surprising.

You have to accept your children for exactly what they are.

I couldn't see anything in his dressing up,

in his own women's clothes to get upset about

as long as he didn't get into situations where

he got clobbered by a lot of people who thought it was outlandish.

And he doesn't seem to have managed to do that, except once in Cambridge, of course.

Comedian Eddie Izzard was attacked late last night in Cambridge City center.

If you had a knife and you were coming down like that,

it's doing that, and then you go back and you do that and then you do that.

Oh. I see. Wow. That's very good.

That's from a book. I've never practiced it. Except on this guy in Cambridge.

I didn't go down. I was pleased I didn't go down.

It was like cool hand look.

He went down, but he kept getting back up. I didn't even go down.

I just stayed up and, you know, and I was pleased I didn't run away screaming.

I've looked at fear in a big way

'c ause coming out, you have to deal with,

basically whole of the world saying, "Oh, your abominable snowman."

And me going, "No, I don't think so. No."

And that's quite... You have to deal with this fear thing.

I tend to go towards things that scare me now.

I think it's very positive. Not anything.

You know, like, leaping off a cliff onto a spike, scares me.

Don't do it. Oh, let's go. Here we go.

Crash helmet on. Great belly flop. You know...

I know lots of women who find him

very, very attractive dressed as a woman.

I don't. I think he's very attractive dressed as a man.

Is difficult to live with? Yes, but you compromise.

In that respect, it's pretty normal.

I think most of all, the courage that's taken to live his life this way

is the thing that makes him the most attractive.

But, yeah, he does drive me nuts.

I thought my brain was visually hip,

but I didn't think my look was visually hip.

Tonight, Eddie is wearing

black velour kaftan top, western buckled belt.

Wow, partner. Mustard pleated baggy trousers

and black monkstrap rubber-soled shoes. Stealthy.

Gosh, girls, look out!

It's a Batik patchwork shirt, brown and black striped belt,

grey herringbone suit trousers and brown shiny cowboy boots. Yee-haw.

I just wore whatever clothes happened to be lying around.

Most comics just look like me.

Just this big slob that walks out on stage

with what they've been wearing all day.

I was wearing a dress on stageand the journalist believed I was a transvestite.

For they said, "Okay, you are a transvestite, but you look a mess." And it struck me.

I had to get it to land in some sort of sexy rock and roll place.

So I stole that sensibility from Sarah who was doing rock and roll gigs.

And I got her to write the intro in every show after that.

They got more funky, and more rock and roll.

You didn't have to say, "Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome this guy."

Just put on the music and boom.

It just blew out the speakers and everyone knew what to do.

Get ready to kick.

Pears can fuck off too, because they're gorgeous little base.

But they ripe for half a hour

and they're never there. They're like a rock, or they're mush.

So you take 'em home and they'll ripen up.

But you put 'em in a bowl at home and they sit there going "No, no.

"Don't ripen yet. Don't ripen yet.

"Wait till he goes out of the room.

"Ripen now. Now, now."

If you just saw his picture, and had no idea who he was,

you'd never think he was comedian. You'd think he's Madonna.

It was a rock picture. It wasn't a comedy picture.

I've never seen one person in a film on a computer

doing a normal kind of thing going...

Control P, print. Control P, print.

"Cannot access printer."

Cannot access? It's here.

I can access it. Print. Control P, print. Control P, print.

Print that. It's five in the morning. It's only a paragraph.

In 1996, I got my first film role.

On the first day of shooting, I got a huge surprise

when I found out who else was in the cast.

I had been told that there's this comic who's in the movie.

For me it was like, "Another comic?"

I thought I was gonna walk down there, and I walked up to Mr. Robin Williams.

- You went "Mr. Eddie Izzard." I went "How do you know me?" - I know you.

Then I think later on you bought me the tape and said, "Could you watch my tape?"

This is what I do.

Did I say, "Do you think this would swing in America?"

Yeah, I said... May I say it? "Honestly, fuck, yeah."

And you said, "Do you think American audiences will get it?"

I said, "Yeah, the intelligent ones will."

New York is the tastemaker.

It's gatekeeper to the whole of America and Canada.

You get New York and specifically, The New York Times.

You have to get them to say you're good.

So I realized I have to go to a small theater in New York

and play it and play it and play it and just keep doing that.

There was a big change. We're going from the UK to America.

Well, I played to 8,000 people at the Docklands Arena

and then in New York I was playing to to 80 people.

It was like playing Edinburgh Festival all over again.

Well, I found an issue when I came here.

I had to try and stop Europeans coming and get Americans coming.

Got to stop the Europeans. Please don't come.

Yeah.

If you know about Eddie, don't come.

Because otherwise, they're just... - They'd pack theaters with...

And then you can't get any American word about.

But I think you cracked it perfectly

'cause everyone tries to come here and go big.

Your plan is you start very small, the way you did in England.

Small. Like a small thing.

Yes, you do it back and forth. Word of mouth. It was a planned test I think.

From the first day that you played with these three people.

Eighty seats, I think. Yeah, eighty seats.

- Only three people there. - Yeah, okay.

But those three people are good people., And then you built in.

Next time you came, it was like 300.

And now you're up to a couple of thousands.

Show time.

Cool is a thing of youth. It's a link to fashion.

Being cool is linked to fashion, and there's a circle.

A lot of circles involved in things like politics.

Extreme right wing and extreme left wing politics join up...

Like, madness and genius joins up in the back and also with fashion.

So you go over, you got looking like a dickhead

and you have average, normal looking, then you have

cool, cool, hip and groovy, looking like a dickhead.

I personally, cruised

- up back corner looking like a little...

And if you're on the cutting edge of cool, hip and groovy,

- you must look like a dickhead, yeah?

- You've got to be over in there,

but it has to go around this way.

You can't back in from looking like a dickhead.

Call him and go, "No, fuck off. It's that way around."

"I wanna be cool, man." "No, you look like a dickhead."

"Well, you look like a dickhead."

"Yeah, but I know why I look like a dickhead. Now, fuck off."

With the success ofDress to Kill in New York in 1998,

I decided to go and play the West Coast, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Robin Williams found out and said,

"We want to support you coming to the West Coast."

I said, "We're already going, it's perfect."

He put his name above the title,

we put our names under the title,

and it was a wonderful marriage.

And then, in the end, instead of opening in San Francisco

with three cans of beans and banana.

It was everyone from San Francisco just turning out.

So it was just massive amount of people coming.

Well, he looked stunning.

That's not a comic, is it? That's a superstar.

We stole countries. That's what we... That's how you build an empire.

We stole countries with the cunning use of flags,

- Yeah.

Just sail around the world and stick a flag in.

"I claim India for Britain."

"Mate, you can't claim as we live there...

-"...500 million of us."

"Do you have a flag?"

Most of us in the UK,

where we have alternative comedy,

specifically, I'd say the majority do not have writers.

I'd say about 90% did not have writers, they're writer-performers.

And that's what's tricky. You could be a great performer

and not be able to get material together.

Or some people are great writers,

and their performing skills are not so good.

Um, you have to be two things and...

I only really become starkly apparent

is when I did Dress to Kill.

I got this one Emmy for writing, one Emmy for performing.

You think, my God, they, they, they're too highly valued areas.

And Emmy goes to... And the Emmy goes to...

Stop it!

Ah, and the Emmy goes to...

- I think, it's...

- Eddie Izzard!

Be careful.

It's a hole.

Thought there would never be a hole in the stage at the Emmys.

Eddie Izzard is on location in Vienna,

All the Queen's men.

We accept this award on his behalf.

Congratulations.

That's two.

Well, it's... What's, What's the number two?

Hey, I couldn't do that.

Ooh.

You all right. Yeah, that's fine.

In the end, if you count one to five in a language,

that's gonna get the best reaction. That's right.

I'm talking for an hour and half.

There's no stand-up in France.

And the night you think, these people are speaking French.

First gig I did in France, a stand-up gig,

was in '97, at the La Fleche d'Or.

The Golden Arrow.

He's a europhile. Wants to do every country in every language.

He was kind of excited, you know, and...

Oh, my God, we walked into this venue,

which was a sort of, um, cavern.

We went backstage to the office

and, he just, went sort of, like,

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck."

Pacing up and down, pacing up and down, going,

you know, "I just don't know if I can do this.

"I don't know if I can do this."

That night he was going, "I can't remember anything.

"I can't remember any vocabulary."

She sat down and just went choosing vocabulary.

Now I'm thinking, "I can't remember any vocabulary."

We're in trouble.

- Hello!

If all the room was aimed at me, that's a...

that's confirmed false, I'd say.

I said to him,

"Look, you really don't have to put yourself through this.

"Please, it just doesn't matter. We can cancel it now.

"Say you're ill. It doesn't matter.

"I don't want you to get so worked up about it

"that you, you won't be able to do."

But, of course, he wasn't going to hear that.

Okay, um...

I felt so sick all the way through.

I just stood at the side.

And he would get through,

my French is pre-pretty basic.

But he would get through

you know, a sort of joke, a sequence about supermarkets.

And then, at the very last minute,

Oh, fuck! I don't know the words.

He'd forget the French word for the punch line

and he would have to ask the audience what the word was.

What'd they call them?

The feedback I got

was that his French was not really good enough to be down there.

I don't know why he didn't do it in English.

Because he'd set himself the task of doing in French.

And he is stubborn.

You think the French people found it funny?

I thi... No.

So that was the first gig, and it was atrocious.

But at least I did it.

If the meaning of life, or the purpose of life is to live it,

then, which I think it is,

this life that we're here,

you can go, "What is it all about, Hmm-Hmm."

And just get lost in a circular argument.

Or you could just say, "Well, get it, grab it, try and put

"something positive into it."

And, uh, that's what, that's what I wanna do

and if fear gets in the way,

you just push fear back.

Well, since that gig, I have really pushed to do more studying.

And also, before the gig starts,

I worked with a language expert,

and I think, it's very key to speak a lot of slang in language

because that's what you do, when you're doing stand-up.

I'm very much looking forward to getting my doctorate.

It's because I didn't pass my degree.

There was a thing in my head saying,

"Well, if I work really hard

"maybe, well, someone will give me one."

Eddie Izzard is committed

to challenging assumptions about language.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

My dad's here. He had to wait 20 years

to get one of these ceremonies to happen,

so thank you very much.

German's the next one, and, um, Spanish.

I think it's quite keen to, maybe learn a smattering of Scandinavian.

I don't know.

I dread to think of it every time.

A critic reviewed a show, and within the show

he said, "Why do you wanna be a so-so actor when you're a brilliant comic?"

But once I was a so-so comedian.

I was always trying to get to Hollywood.

We play bad guys in Hollywood movies.

But, the best are just full of British actors opening doors and going,

"Oh, I'm, oh, oh..."

"What is it Lieutenant, Sebastian?"

"It's just the rebel, sir. They're here."

"My God, man. Do you want tea?"

"No, I think, they're up to something more, Master.

"I don't know what it is, but I brought a flag."

During stand-up, he's always paved his own way

whereas with acting, you're in a system, and,

it's much harder just to do your own thing

and prove your own point. You have to play the game.

But you lose all your gut feelings

because you worry that you're going to hit comedy instead of hitting truth.

Well, I did the Ocean's movies, but I felt like, I've got

to base camp on Mount Everest and everyone was saying,

"We're going up the mountain." And I was saying, "All right, I'll be here."

And now I'm in The Riches, Wayne Malloy,

great critical acclaim for the show

and I think, I can now call myself an actor

or, if not, uh, I can call myself a postman.

I wanna do those things, not just 'cause it scares the shit in them.

I think, that's the reason to do it.

It's like running the marathons of theater, where you got to do it.

You know, there's always that, there's the three biggies.

My guess is, uh, Hamlet. You play it a certain phase

and then you go, uh, well, obviously,

the end of your life is always Lear that's waiting for you--

I can start with Lear.

Yes, start with Lear and then go--

- They went backwards. Yeah. - Do the only 85-year-old Hamlet?

Well, I haven't done Shakespeare yet,

but I did do Broadway.

The theater people, you know, were great.

And they really welcomed

A Day in the Death of Joe Egg on Broadway.

It-it was huge buzz about it, and I got a Tony nomination

and my dad was there, opening, my--

No, I got down on my knees, like, pray to God.

I said, "God, I've only just found her.

"The baby doesn't matter

"if it is a question of a swap..."

Oh, Bri.

And then I found I was so drunk, I could hardly get to my feet again.

But that was a very good experience.

And then I had to come back and,

uh, go into this new type of tour

to develop a tear to do it because I had to change it

because I was on a program about fraud.

On Weekend Watchdog

New field of petrol stations causing a massive rise

in car breakdowns, claim the IA.

We report on Eddie Izzard's recycle jokes and guarantee--

Their issue was "He's doing old material."

That show-- - He never performed that show here,

but they would have seen it on the DVD.

The DVD had been released.

Original sin.

What a hellish idea that is.

People having to go, "Father, bless me for I have sinned.

"I-I did an original sin.

"I-I poked a badger with a spoon."

"I've never heard of that one before."

"Five Hail Marys and two Hello, Dollies."

-"All right, thank you."

Well, funny hearing it once, but still funny twice? Maybe.

I would start a new tour with the old show.

I just used to ad-lib it on the stage,

and then hone it, and then dump out the old stuff

and put in the new stuff.

It's just a constantly running thing--

Every tour has always started off

I told people, "I did this." I told critics, "I did this." That is what I did.

We've counted up all the gags on this video.

Fifty-five in total.

And we put them here, on our Weekend Watchdog.

Eddie Izzard gag count.

Now we're going to send in our gag accountant--

It's like going to a rock and roll concert.

and say, "We've heard the stones.

"We've heard these numbers before.

"Your on Watchdog for fraud.

"The Stones on Watchdog for fraud

"because we've heard all this stuff before."

In the same sentence they're attacking

one of biggest oil companies in the world,

and then, one independent comedian.

We knew, we could absolutely justify the situation.

And he was in no way

should have been criticized for it.

The theater got their hand on the stick

and they said, "All new material."

at Birmingham Hippodrome.

And people complained to Watchdog saying,

"I'm trying to fuck everyone over."

So you paid 18.50, each for their seats

and by the end of the night, in fact, realized it was very little new.

Eddie was the first one I'd ever known

not to be putting out his material during the tour he was on.

That's what everyone does.

I'd been part of the movement beginning in the '90s

to try and change material over at a faster pace,

before the people had done the same 20 minutes

sometimes for years, back in Morecambe and Wise times.

Forever. You'd get together your hour show and just do it forever.

Was it only you two tonight?

Umm, obviously, yeah.

- Yeah? - Yeah. Just told in different ways

the things that he had said before.

You can go in there and be like, "I've recipe for making cake."

And it will still be fantastic. It's just Eddie being Eddie.

It's just felt totally gutted by that.

" I will have the Penne all'Arrabbiata."

"You'll need a tray?"

"Do you know who I am?"

"Do you know who I am?"

"This is not a game of 'Who the fuck are you?'"

"I'm Vader. Darth Vader.

"Lord Vader.

"I can kill you with a single thought."

"Do you still need a tray?"

"No, I will not need a tray.

"I do not need a tray to kill you.

"I can kill you without a tray, with the power of the force,

"which is strong within me.

"Even though I could kill you with a tray if I so wished...

-"...for I would hack at your neck

"with the thin bit until the blood flowed across the canteen food."

"Sir, the food is hot. You'll need a tray to put the food on."

"Oh, I see. The food is hot.

"I'm sorry. I did not realize."

He's always excessively hard on himself.

If you had a room of hundred people who said "Eddie, you're fantastic."

And one person said, "Hmm."

And it's that, that he wants to act on.

They took it to the government.

And he received a warning letter.

Eddie's been injured by what's happened in the past.

And I think, he's carrying the scars of that injury onto this tour.

It just took a long time to get around till then, doing another show.

Um...

Sorry, I got to concentrate, Nancy. Fuck off.

Please. Off.

I'm thinking about the arenas over the years.

Thinking, "What if I screw those up?"

Yeah, I'm somewhat stressed about it.

The pressure on Eddie

is greater now than it's ever been in the past.

The expectation is greater.

We sold 350,000 tickets across the world.

All the time that he was in Australia

he must have been working, like, a mad thing.

Everyone's just so good here.

Everyone has been inconsistently good here.

I don't know how to end.

Maybe they just might be relaxed.

I just want to play it down, so that's good.

I've heard that, uh, kangaroo means, "Fuck off " in Aboriginal language.

That's what I heard. And I've asked people,

no one seems to admit this, but the English arrived,

the British, and said, "What the hell is that bouncy thing?"

And they went, "Fuck off!"

"Oh, it's a fuck off, it's kangaroo."

"Kangaroo!"

"What kangaroo. You kangaroo!"

He is besotted with him you know.

- I'm thinking of citing him as correspondent.

Given how thick and fast the story is

and the loose threads come and in,

and apparently chaotic bursts.

It's hard to believe any one performance

will be anything like the next.

Hi, Eddie.

Just wanted to let you know that I've received

some old letters from your mom

to Aunt Margaret.

I will keep them here until you get back to the UK.

Call me when you can. Love from Dad.

They kind of didn't really care what he said.

There were just so pleased to be there.

He was worried about it because basically,

stand-up comedy can't have that kind of graduation.

They have to calm it down a little bit. They have to tell their gags.

Now, the screaming thing is fun.

- Ah...

But, and in rock and roll it's great.

And I do like to be in the rock and roll wing.

But, in the-the mind gig that this is,

we have to control our "Hoo", and our "Hurrah-ahh".

We're with you, Eddie, we wanna be

part of this setting, it was almost like

some religious revivalist meeting.

Eastern and Western medicine is interesting.

Western medicine very much appealed their own way

and go to them and say, "Got a bit of a throat thing."

"Antibiotics, you mean, sir."

"My leg has been caught in a dangerous tractor accident."

"Antibiotics will make that leg better."

You kept me laughing.

I know, I was really afraid.

I nearly died, a year ago,

I had a brain hemorrhage and um,

I came out the operating theater,

reciting your, we keep a sketch from Glorious.

Thank you so much.

Definitely.

We're nearing the end of the tour now.

We've done all of Australia. We done all of New Zealand.

We've done Canada, America.

And tomorrow we go on to the UK.

If you're a performer, you want to play Wembley,

it's the Madison Square Garden, it's2 the Hollywood Bowl,

England.

♪ Mama can you hear me now?

I think, everyone tours around by saying, "Good night, Wembley."

You can say that in a very small place.

You could say that when you're street performing.

And it's kind of weird to get to play Wembley.

♪ Mama can you see me now?

♪ Mama can you hear me now?

♪ I'm desperate Tog et through somehow

♪ Can you feel me now?

♪ Mama! ♪

He's just always at something. He's always thinking.

He's always working. He's always developing, scheming.

His day is starting at nine o'clock in the morning,

and it's finishing again at three or four o'clock the following morning,

as a constant. And at the end of the day,

Eddie has to be fresher than anybody else.

'cause he has to go face 12,000 people, 14,000 people,

whatever it happens to be. He's afraid of stopping.

He's fighting against that to such an extent

that he pushes himself beyond that

which anybody else could dare stand.

I went down to see my dad,

and he'd been given some letters,

which my mom had written before she died.

Five Ashford Drive, Bangor, County Town,

26th of September, 1967.

My dear Margie and George.

By now you all know, the result of the operation, I had

to find out what was wrong.

It was a bit of a shock.

I expected bad news last time, not this time.

I am carrying on just as usual for Harold's sake and the boys.

I still feel a bit shaky, but I'm in quite good shape, really.

Maintain not to let this get me down.

I've persuaded Harold that we must move now.

I want to see the boys settled at their new school

and making new friends.

And a home comfortable for them and Harold.

I just want to carry on normally as possible.

I hope you're all well. With all love,

Dorothy, Harold, Mark and Edward.

I thought she called me Eddie.

I don't know how I got Eddie.

But I was an "Edward" to her.

We didn't understand what was going on,

and I just thought she was ill.

You get it all and you get better.

And then, one day, she wasn't there.

I think, the performing was trying to get everyone to,

to, uh,

to love... You're trying to get the love of the audience,

and that was a swap from Mom's love not being there.

The big problem is that everything I do in life is trying to

uh, get her back.

I think, if I do enough

things, well, maybe she j--

That maybe she'll come back.

Yeah, I think that's what I'm doing.

♪ Mama can you see me now?

♪ Can you see me?

♪ I'm trying to Get through somehow

♪ Can you see me?

♪ Mama can you see me now?

♪ Can you see me?

♪ Trying to get through somehow

♪ Ooh!

♪ Can you see me?

♪ Can you see me?

♪ Mama can you see me now?

♪ Can you see me?

♪ Can you see me?

♪ Mama can you see me now?

♪ Ooh! ♪

The trouble is spending too much time in your mind.

You either question it all the time

or you don't question it.

And then you can end up living in a ditch

because you thought, you're on top of the world

and actually your career is going down the toilet.

Do I think he's running towards something

or running away from something?

I think, they meet in the middle.

There is a man in there who is going

in the biggest and most nicest way, lovely.

♪ Ooh!

♪ Ma-Mama

♪ Ooh!

♪ Ma-Mama

♪ Can you see me?

♪ Can you see me?

♪ Can you see me Mama? Whoo!

♪ Can you see me? Can you see me?

♪ Can you see me Mama? Whoo!

♪ Ooh!

♪ Ma-mama

♪ Ooh!

See what do you get?

I'm a comedian.

I'm a comedian.

You've got to believe you could be a stand-up before you could be a stand.

You've got to believe that you can act before you even act.

You gotta believe you can be an astronaut before you can be an astronaut.

But you got to believe.

♪ Mama can you see me now?

♪ Can you see me?

♪ I'm trying to Get through somehow

♪ Can you see me?

♪ Mama can you see me now?

♪ Can you see me?

♪ I'm trying to Get through somehow

♪ Ooh!

♪ Can you see me?

♪ Can you see me?

♪ Mama can you see me now?

♪ Can you see me?

London!

The greater city in the London area.

♪ Can you see me? Can you see me?

♪ Can you see me Mama? Ooh! ♪

♪ Mama can you see me now?

♪ Mama can you hear me now?

♪ I'm trying to Get through somehow

♪ Mama can you feel me now?

♪ Mama can you see me now?

♪ Mama can you hear me now?

♪ I'm desperate To get through somehow

♪ Can you feel me now?

♪ Mama

♪ Mama ♪

Do I think he's running towards something,

or running away from something?

I think they meet in the middle.

I don't wanna learn,

I wanna go out and smash things with hammers.