The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
Eddie IZZARD: ‘Call me she, he – whatever you want. My brain is coded both ways’
Every day this month, Eddie Izzard is running a marathon – then doing stand-up. Can the comic bring a ‘woke’ world to its senses?
Eddie Izzard doesn’t do things by halves. Few comedians appear to think bigger when it comes to artistic possibility, ambitious career moves and sheer human potential.
When he emerged in the late 1980s, before shooting to fame in the 1990s, it was as if he singlehandedly established ablished a parallel uniuni verse for British tish stand-up comedy to occupy. Inspired spired as a child by the Goons and Monty Python – hailed, in fact, by John ohn Cleese as “the lost Python” – and nd having cut his teeth as a street entertainer, he made burbling, conversational onversational surrealism his stock k in trade. It was the antithesis of the Ben Elton- ish, Thatcher- bashing ashing template that then dominated ated alternative comedy. Whether her conjuring Darth Vader in the e Death Star canteen (“Give me penne all’arrabiata or you shall die!”), e!”), the thoughts of a busily munching ching squirrel (“Did I leave the gas on?”) or God as James Mason, Izzard d didn’t just riff off recognisable reference eference points but spun big existential stential questions into hallucinogenic nic gold.
That imaginative inative freedom was of a piece with his sexual identity: he was gender-fluid -fluid avant la lettre – and way before ore Grayson Perry took the limelight. t. With supreme confidence and poise oise – glamour and grit – he was able to deliver the goods as mesmerically ly in make- up and a frock as more e blokey garb.
Other comics mics fell by the wayside; Izzard, now 58, not only stayed the course but kept going off piste – building a stage age and screen acting career, making ing waves in arenas, and heading overseas to be a “world comedian”. In the US, he sold out Madison Square uare Garden, and was the first solo comedy act to play the Hollywood Bowl. This pronounced Europhile did d a long stint in Paris, performing in French, and has gigged in Germany, rmany, in German.
In February ry last year, building on a gasp-inducing p-inducing sideline as a marathon hon runner ( for charity), he e pounded the pavements of 28 European cities (throwing wing in London at the end). This month, mid-pandemic, mic, he not only repeats and exceeds the feat – running g a marathon every day of f the month on a treadmill ll (a project called Make Humanity Great Again) n) but is going the extra tra mile,
‘Pro-actively y in girl-mode’: Eddie Izzard metaphorically, by doing a show straight after. It will all be livestreamed, like a sweaty version of Big Brother.
Yet when we speak over the phone, it is amid a social media explosion of interest in him that has nothing to do with his act, and everything to do with his pronouns. While posing for the finalists of Sky Arts’ Portrait Artist of the Year, he was referred to ( with his happy consent) as “she/her”. Congratulations erupted on Twitter. Izzard’s personal pronouns were swiftly feminised on Wikipedia. He sounds faintly bemused at the perception this was a landmark moment of asserting his trans identity, or settling on a gender.
“I didn’t push for it [on the programme]. This isn’t the big thing. I’ve been out for 35 years. When I was called ‘she’ on getting my honorary degree at Swansea [in 2019], no one gave a monkey’s. Why didn’t anyone pick up on it before? It’s whatever people want – if they call me she and her, that’s great – or he and him, I don’t mind. I prefer to be called Eddie, that covers everything.”
Izzard talks about switching between boy-mode and girl-mode: “I’m gender fluid. Your brain gets coded male or female when you’re young. Mine got coded both ways. I have the gift of both, although it doesn’t feel like a gift at first.” He’s proactively in “girl- mode” at the moment, and hopes the running “makes people look at trans in a different way”. He owes some of the robust mindset required for marathons to the struggles he has had to go through. He waited until 1985, when he was 23, before braving a London street in a dress and heels. He did his first gig in make- up, heels and a skirt in a pub in 1991. “Coming out was so hard – I couldn’t talk to anyone. I knew I was going to get abuse in the streets – and I have had that. It made me very mentally tough.”
He’s tough, then, but not combative. He tries to steer the course of least hysteria through the furore over J K Rowling’s stance on trans issues, and how they impact on the definition, and protection, of women. “I don’t think J K Rowling is transphobic. I think we need to look at the things she has written about in her blog. Women have been through such hell over history. Trans people have been invisible, too. I hate the idea we are fighting between ourselves, but it’s not going to be sorted with the wave of a wand. I don’t have all the answers. If people disagree with me, fine – but why are we going through hell on this?” Has he contemplated transitioning? “I don’t have an answer to that. I do feel female, but if I was only expressing the female side of me, the boy side wouldn’t be represented. Whichever way, I’m slightly under-represented.”
He adopts a measured tone, too, when I ask him about Cleese’s comments – in the wake of the temporary withdrawal of a Fawlty Towers episode (“The Germans”) from UKTV in the summer – to wit: “I don don’t t think we should organise a society aro around the sensibilities of the most ea easily upset people.”
“I don’t w want to get into a fight with John. H He’s a hero of mine,” says Izzard. “But “Bu if you’re making jokes at minority or powerless groups, that doesn’ doesn’t show a strong character. If you’r you’re taking the p--- out of people of c colour, or who have less money, that’s tha not a great way to do comedy. I w won’t censor people, but I’m not goi going to do that.” He disdains the te term “woke”. “I’m a radical mode moderate. That’s enough definition f for me.”
‘J K Rowling is not transphobic. We need to look at the things she has written’
This calorie calorie-burning burst of standup may pr prove part of a comedy wind- down down. He remains intent on standing as a Labour MP: “To effect real change change, you have to enter politics”. Was h he disappointed by the collapse of the Corbyn project? “If Jeremy wa was running the party, I was going to support him. Now Keir is runn running the party, I’m going to support him. I want the party to win, that’ that’s what I want. I’m a fighter. I fig fight on.”
Onwards Onwards, then, he pounds. Of this new-ye new-year running adventure, he admits: ““I know I’m doing something weird and extraordinary. But it’s good to do things so out-there that people notice them and go: ‘ I didn’t know that was possible. Did he really do that?’ ”
What drives dr him to keep moving, outst outstripping the rest? Partly it’s his nature, n and a genuine, grand passion pas to bring humanity together and turn negatives on their he head. He concedes his mother mother’s death from cancer when he was six haunts him still. “There is an underlying thing that if I do enough good and positive things, mum will come back, w which I know is not true. But m my subconscious would want it to be true.” It takes guts to t acknowledge something as painful as that, to a stran stranger. Izzard, let’s agree, has guts in spades.
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