All language subtitles for Believe.The.Eddie.Izzard.Story.2009.DVDRip.XviD-SPRiNTER.eng

Eddie Izzard still letting down
his fans, flogging old gags.

Eddie and his management
didn't want to comment.

This programme contains
very strong language.

Just felt totally gutted by that.

There's a level of trust that's been
removed. The safety thing had gone.

A huge amount riding on it.

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

We sold 350,000 tickets
across the world.

Who's Eddie Izzard?!

I know he's crazy.

I think he's a British comedian.

Ohh. The British guy?

I've heard his name before.

He's a very dangerous person.

He's a famous comedian.

A gender-bending phenomenon.

My favourite comedian of all time
is Eddie Izzard. He's fantastic.

There's this sexiness
about him that I like.

I've seen him in a ton
of movies and stuff.

Wasn't he in
Ocean's 12 with George Clooney?

Eddie Izzard, yes.

I've never met Eddie,

but the people that he hires tell me

that he is wonderful.

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

I saw him in Across The Universe
as well. I think he's a great actor.

I've seen him on TV and stuff.

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

Actor, comedian, great guy.

I believe the actual punk
pronunciation is Iz-ZARD.

Eddie Iz-ZARD? Iz-ZARD.

I'm sure his first name's
pronounced Eddie.

I know he's really funny.

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

He's, like, hilarious.
I'm a huge fan of his work as a...

I don't know what he does.

The flag sketch is
really funny, I like that.

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

I don't think people even know who
that is any more, but that's my era.

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

There's very few Humperdincks
in Britain.

It was great.
His name was Gerry Dorsey.

His managers said,
"We're going to change your name.
The name's the problem."

His name changed from Gerry Dorsey
to Englebert Humperdinck.

I just wanted to be in the room when
they were working that one through.

Zinglebert Bembledack.

Yengybert Dangleban.

Zanglebert Bingledack.

Slutban Walla. What?

All right, Cringlebert Fistibuns.

Steviebuns Butratan.

Who've we got - Zinglebert
Wembledack, Tinglebert Wangledack,
Slutban Walla,

Gerry Dorsey,

Engelbert Humpdiback,
Zanglebert Bingledack,

Engelbert Humperdinck,
Vinglebert Wingledank...

Go back one!

APPLAUSE

That's it.

# Can you see me now?

# I'm trying to get through somehow

# Mama, can you see me now?

# 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?

# Mama, can you see me now?

# Can you see me?

# Can you see me?
Can you see me now? #

APPLAUSE

Can I get a 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.

Which is a very dangerous thing.

I'd rather the material
all be fantastic...

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

I just want to... What?

I don't know.

OK, stand by, Eddie.

We are about to go. So now we go.

I haven't written
the second half yet.

We are still waiting on clearance.

APPLAUSE

Yes, so... Yes, breasts.

I just thought... What was I
going to say about breasts?

Clop, clop, clop. What?

AUDIENCE MUMBLES

Oh, yes!

There was something else
I was going to say.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah!

You have to take on board

how the audience reacts

because that is your parameter

of whether a joke has
worked or not. That's very hard.

You can go out on stage and tell a
joke that you've told to someone
who roared with laughter,

and tell it in front of 200 people,
and they sit there
in absolute silence.

Your stomach tightens
on their behalf.

I was in the Avengers
as Uma Thurman's double.

One was just a body double,
just for the hell of it

when she was wandering off
and having a cigarette.

One was a balletic double, one was
a through-the-window-type double.

Yeah, those three.
One was just a double.

They would keep taking breasts
in and out saying, "Look."

I said, "Can I have a pair?"

They said, "Yeah."

That wasn't very good.

It was brilliant.

Hmm. Not so good.

It's just because there's no flow.

As soon as I go back,

I'm going, "Is that funny?
Is that funny?"

You haven't got a pocket or anything?
For what?

For the paper. For the paper so
you can pull it out rather than...

But even just looking
at the thing makes me think,
"God, what am I going to say next?"

The audience don't mind because they
are just loving listening to you.

Talk about your family, try doing
something chronological. Rubbish!

My life story, I could do.

Where do you start? I just start at
nought and go all the way through.

Here's a thing on Yemen.

There's my home town.

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.

My dad was there for
eight years, though.

My mum was there for five years.
So my dad has "sand credibility"
is what they call it down there.

Cos dad spoke Arabic like
a native...of Belgium.

In eight years he picked up the
Arabic for one beer, two beers,
three beers and that's it.

And if he wanted four beers he'd go,
"Three beers, one beer, please."

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

Inshallah. It's a good phrase.

It sounds good.

All my lads wanted to learn to
speak English so I had to speak
English to them all the time.

No-one is bothering learning
languages any more.

I should go and learn Arabic,

that should be one of the stupid
things I say I'll do.

I was born in Yemen in 1962,
two years after my brother, Mark,

in the city of Aden.

There was a 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 are getting out of
here, let's go to Northern Ireland."

Where it was a lot calmer!

My house is still in Ashford Drive,

I went there.

Bizarrely, the woman that bought it
from my dad is still living there.

It hadn't changed, it's a bungalow.

Hello.
Hello and welcome, come on in.

Very nice to meet you.

We have the sofa there. There's a
photograph taken of us all in front
of a slatted blind just like that.

A lot of this is in

a similar place.

But this carpet does look...

Identical. Yeah.

This garden... All of that.

It 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.'

One, n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n... No.

One, n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n...
Don't think so.

One, n-n-n-n-na-n-na...

There's all these bits to adjust.

This kitchen is very much the same.

I remember cooking there
with my mother.

She cooked and I just cut things up.

And I was about this big.

It just feels like a different life.

My dad said I would adjust the
stocking straps on my
mum'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 a dress
was very much a big thing

for me and something
that I wanted to experience.

If you're a transvestite,
you're actually a male tomboy.

That's where the sexuality is.

So, running, climbing trees,
putting on make-up when
you're up there, it's there.

And I used to keep all my make-up
in the squirrel hole up the tree.

And the squirrel would
keep make-up on one side
and nuts on the other side.

And sometimes I'd get up that tree,
that squirrel would be
covered in make-up.

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.

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 and I just thought,
"I want to do that."

The only thing my mum never saw
me do... No, she was probably
to ill to see me do it.

She made this raven outfit.
There is a picture.

Me in a raven outfit.
Made by my mum.

And she was very ill with cancer
at this point. I played a raven.

I remember not been terribly
interested in playing a raven.

I got a laugh,
but 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.
My husband is dead.

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 back,

you're a slave, what
do you think you're doing?"

Up would come a very smooth guy.
"Good afternoon, I'm Mr Marcellus,
from Mourners R Us. Oh!

"It's just a free sample there."

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

He told us that Mum had died.

So we sat down in the lounge
and we cried

for a long time.

Then they went on a tour of Ireland.

We'd been happy in Ireland.

But now that Mum was no longer
there, I could sit in the
front seat for the first time.

I had bad travel sickness.

I just sang the theme to
White Horses over and over again.

HE HUMS

# On white horses

# Snowy white horses

# Let me ride away away

# Away

# Away

# Away. #

I'm like someone who can hear
several radio channels
going through ssh-h-h...

You've got five minutes.
How long is it?

Five minutes. Three in reality.

Normally, I'd start
with the old tour.

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

Start with the old tour
and then you can just

have that material,
then you improvise
during some good, solid material,

people laugh, they've heard
the good, solid material,
but you keep the improvise off it.

You keep the improv, you
dump all the old stuff gradually
and have a lot of new stuff.

But this is like not having
the back-up of something.

Even though I should

try and do it.

I don't know.

This is going to be weird.

It's going to be crap.

If this is crap, let's just say,
"Hey, it's crap on tour.

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

Me? Hang on.

APPLAUSE

I remember his father coming
in to see us and explaining
the family situation.

The mother had indeed died.

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
and I started crying first.

And I realised you can't
get out of crying once

you've started because it all
starts to come down your face.

So I thought crying = 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 from
boarding school are like.

They have no emotions. No feelings.

Because that's your
survival technique.

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

that used to keep on his bed.
Seven or eight of them.

And he used to re-enact
tales, theatre, with these teddies.

And actually
he was a marvellous mimic.

What do you want, little kid?

I'm going to be in the school play.

No you're not. You're crap.

No, I'm not. Yes, you are. He did
it in front of his friends, fine.

And then he 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,

and then, yes, headmaster
and wife, and we had
some lovely little theatricals.

When I was seven, I wanted to act.
And I auditioned for all school
things, but no, I was relegated

to playing clarinet in
the school orchestra.

I played third clarinet

in the school band. First clarinets
play the melody.

you know what you're going.

Second clarinets play harmonies
that back-up the melody and link.

Third clarinets play the
notes that are left over.

We were just going na na na na.

Na na na na.

It's boring.
The only exciting way of doing was
really blowing it loud...

NA NA NA NA.

Teacher's going, "Piano, piano."
You're going,
"It's not a fucking piano.

"It's a clarinet."
Very soon after that,

they did Beauty And The Beast and
I didn't get any of the good parts.

I was playing a 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 I came to our line,
if I went, "Oh, Beauty, don't go,"

really fast then it became my line
and all other kids were going,

"Oh, he's already said it.
Forget about it."

At 11, I played Trebonius,
who is the one conspirator

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

You take Mark Antony
to one side and stand

in the wings while the kids
with plastic daggers have fun.

I think it was Andrew Boxer
who said, "What kind
of role are you looking for?"

I thought this a bizarre question.

Being the huge lead role
that gets off with the women

and a big ego-waving,
on-all-the-time kind of role.

He said, "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."

I remember the teacher going,

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

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

Then they live a little bit longer.

Then they die.

And then they move to Bexhill.

There was no-one to play with
when I was growing up.

I played 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 set year of 1944-5,

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 has a huge
explosion and we learned at
breakfast that an unexploded

World War Two mine had hit the
cliff at Beachy Head and blown up,

so there was stuff
still floating around out there.

We'd play on the South Downs
and there would be bomb craters.

You'd just go and play
in the bomb craters.

That's where the bombs had 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 the situation,

when the chips are down

you stand up for your friends
or for your family or country...

HE HUMS "JERUSALEM"

That was a barrel-organ
version of Jerusalem.

It's a hymn.
One that we'd sing in church.
It's got really weird lines in it.

"And shall my sword sleep
in my hand." Not a good idea.

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

And then it's that
Godfather scene of...

A head of a horse and my willy
and...

When I was 16, I made a
mental decision, "I'm
absolutely going to be an actor.

"No question about it."

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

and I couldn't do lead male parts
because I was kind of short
and couldn't get off with girls.

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

When your voice is breaking,
it's very hard.

IN BREAKING VOICE:
"Susan, I really fancy you.

"I saw you in the playground."

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

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 a 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 a challenge,
even in 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 maths?

Oh, God.

He got expelled...
I got two Bs and a D.

He got a B in maths,
I got an A in maths.

We made nitroglycerin
because there's a book
that has all these things

to make. 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 had learned these speeches,
one from Henry IV Part One
and one from Beckett,

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

And I got the confidence together,

but somehow confidence and memory
weren't allowed in the body
of the same time at that point.

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

"I'll do these parts and I'll just
read them out to you, shall I?"

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

going, hudh... Huh...

Hwoo...

The sun...

He says,
"Right, try the other speech.

"The Beckett one."

Uh... Nothing, just completely dry.

He said, "Well, you'd 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
and when I found out that they
wrote their sketches,

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 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.

They've been moved here
for safety reasons.

Upstairs, we have some
really bad Iranians up there.

We've got one here,
our resident idiot.

Come here, resident idiot.

Here we have
resident idiot, Sirius Armin.

Armini, with the I.

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

Upstairs, we have the SAS, trying
to break in and free the hostages.

What do you think about that. He-he!

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

"Mathematics - attentive, searching
and industrious.

"A-plus, good show."

In chemistry A-level,
there was a Dr Edmundson teaching.

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

"and then we stick it..."

And he'd just leave a gap
there, when he was going to 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. I was getting laughs.

And that was obviously
going to get me noticed.

By the summer term, I remember
this girl said to me, "I didn't
even know you existed until now."

I went, "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 realised that
Edinburgh Festival was more key.

Dad wanted me to go university,
so I could go to Sheffield, I could
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, Not The 9 o'clock News
were Cambridge Footlights,

and they go to Edinburgh.

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

"Who goes
to the Edinburgh Festival?

"I will clean your floors, I will
swab things down. You want men?

"Tractors? What do you need?
I am the perfect helping person."

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 Festival.

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

"Someone's going, aren't they?"

"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

or didn't think would happen, that
no-one in Sheffield Uni was going.

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

Right, OK, so what is SUF?

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

self-educated,
self-propelled rug weavers.

I took this crap show. It was so
crap, sometimes we would
laugh on the stage

because no-one was laughing,
and then run offstage.

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 strong."

There's 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."

DRUM ROLL

Look!

I think something is afoot 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
Fringe Festival.

"Ian Rowland's sense of humour is
dangerous. His sense of smell is
the strongest of the whole group."

What came across was is absolutely
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 his show up
to Edinburgh Festival.

He was thrown out, really.

Ben Hur - The Street Show!

Sheffield University
threw me out but I didn't leave.

I stayed on people's floors
and I continued doing shows
in the union,

due to a loophole,
which was fantastic.

I 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,
1,000 shows you are competing with.

This is how we started
eating polystyrene cups.

You announced that you're
going to eat them, and you do.

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.

In the old days, adverts
were much more blatant.

Adverts were much more,
"Go on, there it is! Go on!
Haven't got all day. There it is!"

As consumers, we were much more,
"OK, I didn't realise, sorry."

"Don't hit me."

Nowadays, we have choice, don't we?

We are more choosy, and we're
more aware of what we can buy.

The adverts are more subtle,
they're soft sell.

Adverts are more like -

# Dah na nah

# Nah nah nah nah

# Ba dah dah dah... #

"Oh, look at that!

"Those two people like it.

"And they're shagging."

LAUGHTER

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 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
financial straits, trying
to make these things happen.

We'd 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, trying to get
more people to come and 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

World War II - The Sequel.

So, on behalf of me, Adolf Hitler.

And me, Eva Braun.

We cordially invite you to come
and see World War II - 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, "Ha, who are they?"

They just happened
to be Stephen Fry...

Hugh Laurie...

Emma Thompson...

I thought, "If there was a God,
the Footlights would be awful."

But they were kind of spellbinding.

They won the Perrier.

We were taken out and shot by
the venue.

We weren't even within biting
distance, except for one sketch,

that got put on this radio
programme, Aspects Of The Fringe.

So, I did come close

to standing next to these
guys who had done the Footlights.

The show that we'd worked on
with terrible compared to that.

He went up to the Assembly Rooms -

"Oh, yes, we'll be wanting
the ballroom,

"probably about 9 o'clock."

The guy going,
"You realise that's about £10,000?"

It was just ludicrous sums of money.

"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 the second you opened,

I said, "Could you dump
the Perrier?"

Do you remember that, in Camberwell?
I do, yeah.

And you had this option of
dumping the Perrier winners

and then me with no reviews.

And there was no reason, except
the venue owners told me our
show was shit.

That was chutzpah, that was. It
was. You always had great chutzpah.

I was good on the chutzpah.
And so, I've never actually played
your venue.

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.

They did leave
a sentence that said,

"But sometimes they come up
with something

"which is unexpected and
devastatingly funny."

That was the only good quote
I had for about 10 years.

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

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

marching through hell, basically.

APPLAUSE

That was OK, but I lost it
a bit in the second half.

How did I lose it?

Gave my life story and thought, "Is
there nothing more to talk about?"

I was selling ice-creams.
Cos they had, right down the end,
they had an ice-cream kiosk.

I was talking about anything,
and was trying to make
it into material,

selling ice-cream.

It's now become a piece, and
I'm not talking about anything else.

I like retail. I had my own 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.'

I need to keep it open, I need to...

I need to be able to chat.

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

FAST CLASSICAL MUSIC

First encountered Rob Ballard at
the students' union in Sheffield.

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.

"You're funny,
and you're hanging around."

So, he was in it and he was great,

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 '85, '86.

We'd seen Pookiesnackenburger
doing stuff.

Pookiesnackenburger is
Luke Cresswell, who was Stomp.

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

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

you have to force them,
otherwise you don't eat, basically.

We came down thinking that we would
get the medium of street performing

within two weeks.

Two weeks,
and then we'd be really good.

A lot of the acts were very new
and different, and there were some
really good performers down there.

First shows 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.

They had a lot of toys to
gather the audience,

eating cornflakes
and escaping from jumpers.

We wanted to say,
"Know what we've done?

"We have done shows at the Festival,
with lights 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! Eduardo! En garde.

Hey!

'I had directed Rob in the Three
Musketeers so I thought,
"We'll do the swords."

'We bought some foils and we started
doing stuff. It was very flash.'

'Eddie became very flamboyant.

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

There was a festival in the summer,
so we thought,
"We'll aim for that."

We'd worked out routines and we were
getting laughs and we didn't
even win our own comedy section.

That's when I just thought,
"Oh, well..."

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

I was going round 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,
Orson Welles had directed
Citizen Kane."

And you sort of went, "Oh, right.

"You're pissed off because 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.

Street performing, it's the hardest
thing. You're performing to people
who don't want to watch it.

I basically broke myself down to
zero confidence in Covent Garden.

Rob would take holidays.
He did it quite often.

So, I could do nothing.
I realised I was developing
a thing with the audience.

I could feel it. But as a double
act, you're sitting,

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

Morning, Mr Smith.

How are you feeling today? Fine.

Comedy Wavelength is this programme
on Channel 4,

and they said,
"Come and be writers."

They accepted a couple of
our sketches.

And then Rob was in it, and they're
saying I wasn't in it, and I was
probably jealous of Rob at the time.

I kept auditioning to trial act.

The producer said,
"You're not a performer.

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

That screwed with my brain, because
the one thing I was sure about
- I was a performer.

Maybe a writer,
but definitely a performer.

I'd been a four-person act,
then a two-person act. I never
thought I could be solo.

Paul Keane used to
perform as Captain Keano.

He could be hellish, obnoxious,

he could be brilliant, generous...

He had a demeanour as
King of Covent Garden.

When I am famous, I'd still do
my show on the cobbles here

at Covent Garden.

Rob went holiday. I said,

"I didn't know you were going on
holiday." He was off
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 a show, and made £10,
and that was it.

I split up with Rob two weeks later.

'As soon as I'd gone solo,
it was just release.'

Yes, there it is!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

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

He was just on it, constantly.

He'd split up with Rob,
wanted to do his solo show,

and was just really manically
learning everything
he possibly could.

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

I couldn't get out.

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

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

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

You've got to believe you
can be a stand-up before
you can be a stand-up.

You've got to believe you can act
before you can act.

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 and
said, "Tell me your dreams."

"I want to be a space astronaut,

"discover things that
have never been discovered."

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

If I start apologising saying,
"I'm not funny," I lose it.

It's very psychological.

It's very much...

You know, when I used to do unicycle
at Covent Garden,

you have to practise at
Covent Garden, you've got
to find a big open space,

so you're doing it at Covent Garden.

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

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

You fall off because you're thinking
it. What you have to do is,

when they say, "Hey, you're
going to fall off", 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, block the fear out,

of not being interesting,
and just chat.

In the summer of '87, 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 realised 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
an audience, how to deal with them.

If you stay there, we'll do the
show behind these two people.

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,

and I remember going,
"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 never could.

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

and said, "You're partially
dyslexic."

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

Rivalry with three Vs.

It makes you think
in a creative way.

You see shapes and you see things
inside shapes,

you see clouds and lions
and tigers up there.

So I went and got a tape recorder
and I thought I'd just ad lib

into the tape and then write that
out. That'll be stand up.

It didn't work.

They did a stand up workshop at
a place called Jackson's 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,
er...

"Blah, blah, blah, street,
blah, blah, blah, street."

And I thought, oh God, he must be
really annoyed with me,

cos 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 cannibalised it,
cut out the interviewer and made it
for one person,

about being addicted to
breakfast cereal.

And that got laughs.

I thought, if that gets laughs,
I could do more like that.

I could just write them as two
persons, cut them in half,

I could do all my whole career
that way.

Remember in the '70s there was
all that work done with monkeys,
the signing thing.

Hey, you're a monkey.

Yeah, I'm a monkey.

So what's it like being a monkey?

Not bad, not bad.

What's it like being a human?

LAUGHTER

Pretty good.

Can 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 does that mean?

I don't know, I just adlibbed it.

Give me a fucking banana.

Give me a fucking banana.

All right.

What do you want to know?

How does the monkey community
interact?

You know, in the usual way.

Give me another banana.

No, 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 shove it in people's faces

and say look, it's brilliant.

Cos 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 an unpaid five minutes.
You would phone up and ask for one

and they'd give you one three months
ahead, just one.

SMATTERING OF APPLAUSE

Well done, Harlow, that was good.

Sometimes you can get on stage
and the applause is still
going while you're there.

'Once I'd got a few bookings going
I'd said'

I'll do compereing and they said,
oh you will? Well, have three then.

The host seems a lower status thing.
People would say,

"You're quite good,
you should be one of the acts."

I am one of the acts.

But the audience wouldn't realise
this

and the stand ups didn't like doing
it cos you had to tell people

to shut and sit down.
They hated that, they just wanted
to talk funny stuff.

All street performers have to be
comperes,

we would wrangle the audience into a
shape, we were hosting our own show.

We were already trained in it.

I was relentlessly working.

One club was in Streatham on Monday
night and they would not laugh.

I'd just talk endlessly and bring
acts on.

I could smash an atmosphere into
people until they thought,

all right, he seems OK.

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

I did a couple of
the Screaming Blue Murders,

where I was just doing real basic
gags

and he was compereing them.

And it would be, 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.

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

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

Seen me before?
I've seen you before.

Oh God, we're going to have
a horrible time here.

Well, just talk amongst
yourselves...

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

nobody thought about taking risks,
you only did things you knew

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 going to catch it?

"Is he going to catch that trapeze,
I don't know."

But the audience love the gap
between the two trapezes.

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

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

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

And he tries Papa Doc Duvalier's
porridge, "Ooh, it's too hot."

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

Then he tries Baby Doc Duvalier's,
"Mmm, just the right temperature."

So he gobbles it all up.

Then he nips upstairs
and he's a bit tired.

There are three beds.

Papa Doc Duvalier's bed, "Ooh, too
hard."

Mama Doc's, "Mm, 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 a wonderfully sick
but sort of needed kind of thing.

In '89, I decided to go back
to Edinburgh

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 do an hour,

I think you've really...you've
decided that's what you want to do.

I did a show at Edinburgh Festival.

I was setting up and there was
no-one else there

and there was one man standing
watching

and then went, "Ooh!" And ran off
in the opposite direction.

I thought, that's not very helpful!
A few minutes later, he came back

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

And I thought, 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 burned out.'

I should also point out that I am
doing a stand-up show every night.

I've got leaflets. My name is Eddie
Izzard. It's a strange name,
it's got two zeds in it.

And it's going on every night.
I've got all the 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
enormous build-up, isn't it? Go!

OK. Right.

CROWD: Five, four, three, two, one...

THEY CHEER

WHOOPING

Very good. Very good.

Very good.

Elspeth and I found 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. You go, "Unggh!

"Oh, shit!"

And for one hour,

we fell about!

Why do they say
"blood is thicker than water"?

It's a strange expression.
"Blood is thicker than water" means

"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."

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

I went up to this woman.
She was running a venue called
Greyfriars Kirkhouse.

She had a slot
and I looked at one other venue

and they may have had a slot
but I thought, no, I think I'll
go with her cos I fancy her more.

He couldn't afford to take a slot on
his own so he went in with another
comedian. 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 because it was
running the venue, too!

She had 15 shows on and I realised
how much energy it took
to set it up.

Cos I'd never set up a venue.
He hadn't perfected his technique
at that point.

Your accounting was terrible. He
would turn up to the venue every day,
checking his box office figures.

When there were only half-a-dozen
people in the audience,
I fell asleep in his show!

We just hung out and then afterwards
I asked her 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 invited Sarah to my flat

in Streatham.

I don't think she was terribly
impressed

cos 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 a colour-coded flag system
and I'd stick a flag in

different colours if I'd stormed it,

if I'd died, been booked back.

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

and what worked,
what didn't work, any good improv,
how the audience reacted.

And with that system, I relentlessly
worked my way through the circuit.

Yeah, I remember
when he first played.

Quite a lot of rubbish, really.

A lot of things people didn't
understand, didn't like.

Got quite a few heckles.

My uncle always 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'll stay away from here until I'm
good enough to blow the roof off."

He was doing sort of
slightly surreal humour

but he by no means had found
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 Sixties was at its height

because there was a Tory government.
As soon as Wilson came in,

it slipped away,
we had the mainstream, 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.

We've got Ben Elton, Mark Thomas,

Mark Steel, these strong
political comedians.

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 he stuck with it.

He went, "No, this is
what I find funny."

There was a night
at the Comedy Store in London

when Bob Mills came up to me
and said,

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

"tonight's not a time for 'I went
to school with Perez de Cuellar'."

I said, "I've got to,
that's all I've got!"

I just talked at this speed...
And my mother went up, she said,

"Why are you doing that?" I said,
"I didn't really understand," so...

I never took a breath. I never went
in there... Because I knew in that

breath someone would go, "You cunt!"
And the people down the front who

are actually attacking you, under
your radar because you're here,

they would gradually quieten down,
because you think, "Laugh, laugh,

"laugh, laugh, laugh,
20 minutes, good night!"

Then the booker would go, "We like
you, you can come back tomorrow."

His off-the-cuff humour beats most
impro hollow. Heckle at your peril.

CHEERING

You have to understand what the
comedy circuit was like in the '90s.

It became the biggest thing in the
world. There was about 10 clubs

in New York, and there were
80 clubs in London.

And people were gigging at least
twice a night, at the weekends

four times a night. You'd do a gig
and jump in a black cab,

scoot off to somewhere in London,
then 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 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 wanted

was there, everyone was doing it,
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 strip joints

and there's this 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 centre of town

in order to be hosting a club every
week, be at the centre of things.

That's Eddie's thinking,
immediately.

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

I remember people walking 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 the 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've
and investigated him

and eventually found that it really
was just a mad person throwing

their money away.
But it gave me this place.

People seemed to be coming
and watching what I was doing.

It was just packed,
and I stood at the bar cos it was

the only place I could get in. You
just felt he had something special.

He just seemed so ahead
of everyone else

who was doing stuff at the time.
I would muck about, improvise.

I started doing this word wrap
thing, talking endlessly

and make up scenarios about people
who were wandering around and poke

fun at people, and all that
improvising was the danger thing

that people were interested in.
That was a commodity,

that was different.

He was Raging Bull.
Everybody would come and see Eddie,

week after week.

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

Two people were going to
come along and watch me do stuff,

and if they liked it I'd get into
this benefit called Hysteria 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,

"I was really shit tonight, so
if you don't want to book me, fine."

And they said, bizarrely,
fantastically, "No, it's OK,

"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,
OK, don't give a damn this week,

so I just did whatever,
mucked about, had fun, had fun,

and it went great.
They said, "Right, you're in."

It was an Aids benefit, and no-one
but no-one knew who Eddie Izzard was.

And he came on and did three minutes
of the very famous, as it is now,

wolves sketch.

And I was brought up after that
by wolves, actually.

LAUGHTER

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

It was great, it was wonderful.

Being brought up by wolves as a kid
was wonderful. They gave me a name.

They called me Rrrr.

LAUGHTER

They taught me all the stuff,

hunting, fishing, backgammon,
all of that.

And wolves are natural at fishing.

They wait by fast-flowing rivers

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

they reel it in
really, really quickly.

Cook it gas mark 4
with a bit of herbs.

We were wolves, we were young,
we were crazy.

We'd make love in the moonlight.

They would, they would. I'd watch
and say, "No, I'm full, thank you."

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

Catch you later.

Cos no-one had really heard of him,
and he just took the place apart.

19 wolves and me, and I was trying
to blend in, going woof, woof.

LAUGHTER

And these bears would stand there
and say, "What's that?"

I'd go, "Hi, I'm a wolf.
Catch you later."

And we'd be chasing these things,

they turned out to be antelopes,
that was great, cos we eat them,

and we'd be chasing them, and after
about 20 minutes they put on a lead

and so we had a discussion
and agreed to move our legs as well.

That really helped.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Whoosh, off they went
and I couldn't keep up.

You know, two legs. So I took
to driving a small red car.

LAUGHTER

It was great, it was
the same position and everything.

And it was a hatchback,
it was roomy, so I said,

"Guys, get in the back."

LAUGHTER

The ironic thing about
Hysteria 3 was

it was being run by Stephen Fry,
and Hugh Laurie was in it with him

who were part of that
Footlights group

that won the Perrier
10 years before.

10 years, while I'd 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 had always wanted to do the Big
God Television, then I thought
maybe I don't need television.

People thought I wasn't doing it
out of principle, but I was

in fact doing it as revenge
for always wanting to do it.

It's the madness, what I call
the madness, because I think,

if you think you can perform and
the whole world is saying you can't
perform, then you're obviously mad.

If you hold on to that madness, and
you hold on to it and 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.

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 has
been told throughout life that
he's not capable of certain things

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

I thought I could play the West End,

because people were phoning up and
saying they wanted to see that guy.

I had done it on the street, I
seemed to be doing it in the clubs.

He was the first person
I knew who had a mailing list.

People would write to you and say
"Eddie is on here, let's go and
see him do a full length show."

That's how the Ambassadors
first settled down.

So I left the circuit and I tried
out my show in the small theatres

around London and they sold out,
so I thought "I'm going
to go and do the West End."

It was completely unheard of
to put yourself into
a West End theatre like that.

People thought he was
taking a terrible risk.

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

We'd been 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.

OK, that would be crap.

I thought it would be a good idea,
you said no, it'll never work.

So we've got a sort of relationship
here. I say things, you say no.

If you do the big silence
thing, I know I'm going wrong.

I came in late the first night,
I really seriously thought
I had walked into the wrong show!

Because I had no idea.

OK, 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, I thought
I'd do the gig in a dress.

Good reaction London, come on, yeah.
Fucking hell!

It was up to this point he had still
never dressed in the clothes and he

didn't want the tabloids making
something out of it so he said,
"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.

One minute you can talk about
sexism, because men could
really get the angle on that.

If you're ethnic minority you
can talk about racism, but for

me personally - white
male, middle-class -
completely fucking useless.

LAUGHTER

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

"all right. I suppose not too bad."

The kids at school would taunt me
and say 'Ooh, do you want to play?'"

LAUGHTER

It was the acceptance I couldn't
take, the constant acceptance so...

The only thing working in my favour
is thank God I'm a transvestite,
eh? Cor!

Phewee!
It was very dangerous because

my career was just finally taking
off and I could be about to blow it
out the window by wearing a dress.

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

who has recently revealed
that he is a transvestite.

Why aren't you dressed?
Because I chose not to.

It was also because 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 a transvestite.

Why do that at this
stage in your career?

I just told a newspaper that I was
tv and of course all the newspapers
after that decided to pick up on it.

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

Society makes people fear it
and be scared and feel ashamed.

It's just the way I am.

I'm tv, I have been since I was
four. I have no problems with it.

You have to come out and
basically get the reaction about it.

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 off,

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 I gave at my
flat and he turned up in turquoise

eyeshadow up to his eyebrows and
a huge jumper with a belt, a skirt
and really high patent shoes.

I wasn't going to come out about
it because that just seemed foolish.

Then I thought I should,

there's an element that you're
positive, do it, it's truthful.

I'm coming out, people can see
it's difficult for me. It's 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.

I think it was a very brave move.

Look, this is me, this is
what you get. This is Eddie.

The show worked and extended twice,
and played for three months,

and it got an Olivier nomination out
of it and I got a video distribution
deal out of it. That was a surprise.

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.

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 centre.

If you have a knife and you're
coming down, you do that and that.

Wow, that's very good.

That's from a book,
I've never practised 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 Luke. He went
down but he kept getting back up.

I didn't even go down, I just
stayed up and I was pleased
I didn't run away screaming.

I've looked at fear
in a big way, because, coming out,

you have to deal with basically
the whole of the world say "Oh,
you're an abominable snowman,"

and me going
"No, don't think so, no."

You have to deal
with this fear thing.

I tend to go towards
things that scare me now.

I think it's positive. Not anything.
Like leaping off a cliff onto
a spike scares me, don't do it.

Let's go, here we go.
Crash helmet on.

Great belly flop, no.

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 it difficult to live with?

Yes, but you compromise.

In that respect it's pretty normal.

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

is the thing that makes him
most attractive.

But yes, 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, pardner - mustard pleated
baggy trousers, and black monk-strap
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-ha.

I just wore whatever clothes
happened to be lying around.

Most comics just look like me, this
big slob who walks out on stage with
what they've been wearing all day.

I was wearing a dress on stage
and the journalists believed
I was a transvestite.

They said, "OK you're a
transvestite but you look a mess,"

and it struck me I had to get it

into some sexy sort of rock
'n' roll place so I stole that
sensibility from Sarah who

was doing rock 'n' roll gigs
and I got her to write the intro.

In every show after that, they
got more funky and rock 'n' roll.

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

You just put on the music and boom,
it blew out the speakers
and everyone knew what to do.

It really kicked.

Pears can fuck off too, because
they're gorgeous little beasts
but they're ripe for half-an-hour,

and they're like
a rock or they're mush.

You take them home and they'll ripen
up, but put them in a bowl and they

sit there going "No, no, don't
ripen yet, don't ripen yet, wait
until he goes out of the room...

"Ripen now, now, now!"

If you just saw Eddie's picture
and had no idea who he was, you'd
never think he was a comedian.

You'd think he was Madonna. It was
a rock picture, not a comedy picture.

I've never seen one person
in a film on a computer doing
a normal kind of thing, going...

Ctrl P print.

Ctrl P print.

Cannot access printer.

It's here!

I can access it.

Print! Ctrl P print. Ctrl P print.

It's five in the morning,
it's only a paragraph!

In 1996, I got my first film role.

By the first day of shooting
I got a huge surprise when I found
out who else was in the cast.

I'd been told that there was this
comic in the movie and for me it
was like... "another comic?!"

I thought "I'm just going
down there" and I walked
up to you, "Mr Robin Williams."

And you went "Mr Eddie Izzard" and
I went errr "How do you know me?"

"I know you!"

I think later on
you brought me the tape.

I said "Can you
watch my tape, please?"

"This is what I do."

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

Yes, and I said,
"May I say honestly, fuck yeah!"

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

I said yeah,
the intelligent ones will.

New York is the taste-maker,
it's the 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 realised I have to get a small

theatre in New York and play it,
and play it and play it,
and just keep doing that.

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

I played to 8,000 people at
the Docklands Arena and then in
New York I was playing to 80 people.

It was like playing Edinburgh
Festival all over again.

I found an issue when I came here,
I had to try and stop Europeans
coming, and get Americans coming.

You had to stop Europeans!
Please don't come.

It you know about Eddie, don't come.

Because otherwise... They packed
the theatres with English.

And then you can't get
any American word of mouth.

But I think you cracked it
perfectly because everyone
tries to come in and go big.

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

Small, like a small thing.
Yes, you did it like word of mouth,
it was a clandestine thing.

Voom, the first stadium you
played was just three people.

It was an 80-seater. Yes, 80-seater.

Only three people there.

But those three people
were good people.

Then the next time you came
it was 300, and now you're up
to a couple of thousand.

CHEERING

Cool is a thing of youth.

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

There are a lot of circles
involved in things, like

politics - extreme right wing,
left wing, politics join up.

Madness and genius joins up
at the back, and also with fashion.

So over here you've got
looking like a dickhead,

and you have average, normal
looking, then cool hip and groovy...

Looking like a dickhead.

LAUGHTER

I personally cruise
that back corner, looking like

a dickhead.
And it is - if you're on the cutting

edge of cool hip and groovy,
you must look like a dickhead.

You've got to be over in there,
but it has to go round this way.

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

cool hip and groovy, "No,
fuck off, it's that way round."

"I want to 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 of Dress To Kill
in New York in 1998, I decided

to go and play the west coast -
San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Robin Williams phoned up 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 in the end, instead of opening
in San Francisco to three cans of

beans and a banana, it was everyone
from San Francisco just turning up.

So it was just a massive
amount of people coming.

'He looks stunning.
That's not a comic, is it?

'That's a superstar.'

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

We stole countries with
the cunning use of flags.

Yeah.

You just sail round the world
and stick a flag in.

"I claim India for Britain."

And they're going, "You
can't claim us, we live here."

"500 million of us."

"Do you have a flag?"

LAUGHTER

Most stand-ups in the UK,
where we have alternative comedy

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

I'd say about 90%
do not have writers.

They are writer/performers.
And that's what's tricky.

You can be a great performer and not
be able to get the material
together, while some

people are great writers and their
performing skills are not so good.

You have to be two things.
That had only

really become starkly apparent
when I did Dress To Kill. I got

one Emmy for writing,
one Emmy for performing.

And you think, "My God,
they're two highly valued areas."

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

Stop it!

And the Emmy goes to...

Eddie Izzard!

CHEERING

There's a hole.

There would never be a hole
on the stage at the Emmys.

Eddie's on location in Vienna where
he's filming All The Queen's Men.

We accept this award on his behalf.
Congratulations.

Un awr. That's two? That's one hour.

What's the number two? Dau. Un, dau.
Tri. Tri. Pedwar. Pedwar. Pump.

Pump. I may do that.

Un. Dau. Dau. Tri. Tri.
Pedwar. Pedwar. Pump. Pump.

If I said to you...

Un, dau, tri.

WHISTLING

LAUGHTER

Pedwar. ..pedwar.

Chwech. Chwech. That's fine - chwech.

Chwech.

Ohh, you missed one!

Pump!
APPLAUSE

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

that's going to get the
best reaction than talking
for an hour-and-a-half.

There's no stand-up in France,
and they're not used to English
people speaking French.

The first gig I did in France,
stand-up gig, was in '97 at La
Fleche d'Or, the Golden Arrow.

He's a Europhile, he wants to do
every country and every language.

He was kind of excited,
you know, and,

oh, my God, we walked into this venue
which was a sort of cavern.

We went backstage to the office

and he just went, sort of like
he does, "Fuck, fuck, fuck!"

Pacing up and down,
pacing up and down, going,
"I just don't know if I can do this.

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

And Eddie was going,
"I can't remember anything.
I can't remember any vocabulary."

I went outside to get my friend
and she sat down with him and just
went through some vocabulary.

And I'm thinking, "Can't remember
any vocabulary?! We're in trouble."

Hello. Hello!

Il faut que vous m'aidiez, oui?

Parce que mon francais, c'est...
APPLAUSE

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.
We'll say you're ill.

"It doesn't matter. I don't want
you to get so worked up about it
that you won't be able to do it."

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

OK. Les anges, les anges.
Il y a une guerre entre les anges.

I felt so sick
all the way through it.

I just stood at the side,
and he would get through...

My French is pretty basic, but
he would get through 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 do they call them?
AUDIENCE SHOUTS

Les petits, les mandarines. Quoi?

Clementines.

Clementines, oui. The feedback
I got was that his French was not
really good enough to be doing it.

WHISTLING

Je retournerai.

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

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

And he is stubborn.

Do you think that the French
people found it funny?

I th... 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,

which I think it is.

Life's there, we're here.

You can go, "What is it all about?"

And just get lost in a circular
argument, or you can just say,
"Get it, grab it.

"Try and put something
positive into it."

And...

that's what I want to 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 work with a language expert.

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

'because that's what
you do in stand-up.'

APPLAUSE

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

seeing as I didn't pass my degree.

There was a thing in my head saying,

"Well, if I work really hard
maybe someone will give me one."

Eddie 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 Spanish,

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

I don't know. I dread to think
of it every time in my head.

A critic reviewed a show
and within the show he said,

"Why do you want to 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.

The Death Star, full of British
actors opening doors -

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

"What is it,
Lieutenant Sebastian?"

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

"My God, man! Do they want tea?"

"No, I think they're after
something more than that, sir.

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

Doing 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 do you lose all your gut
feelings because you are

worried that you're going to hit
comedy instead of hitting truth?

When I did the Ocean's movies,
I felt like I'd got to base camp

on Mount Everest and everyone said,
"We're going up the mountain",

and I was saying, "All right,
I'll be here".

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,

I can call myself a postman.

I want to do Shakespeare because
it scares the shit out of me.

That's a reason to do it. It's like
running the marathons of theatre.

You know, there's the three biggies.

I guess it's Hamlet you play at
a certain phase. And then you go...

At the end of your life
there is always Lear.

That's waiting for you at the end.
I'll start with Lear. Yeah...
And then work backwards.

And do the only 85-year-old Hamlet.
Yeah!

I haven't done Shakespeare
yet, but I did Broadway.

The theatre people of New York were
great and they really welcomed A Day
In The Death Of Joe Egg on Broadway

and there was a huge buzz about
it and it got a Tony nomination
and my dad was there opening night.

No, I got down on my knees
and I prayed to God.

I said, God, I have 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

go into this new type of tour to
develop material to do a thing

because I had to change it because
I was on a programme about fraud.

On Weekend Watchdog tonight,
new fuel at petrol stations

causing a massive rise in
car breakdowns, claim the AA.

We report on Eddie Izzard's
recycled jokes and...

Their issue was he was
doing old material.

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 did an original sin.

I poked a badger with a spoon.

I've never heard of that one before!

Five Hail Marys and two
Hello Dollies. All right.

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 was
just a constantly rolling thing.

I told people I did this.
I told critics I did this.
That's what I did.

We've counted up all the gags on
this video, 55 in total,

and we've 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 saying,

we've heard The Stones, we've heard
these BLEEP numbers before.

You're 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 the biggest oil companies
and then one independent comedian.

We knew we could absolutely justify
the situation and he in no way
should have been criticised for it.

The theatre had got the wrong end
of the stick and they said

"All New Material",
at Birmingham Hippodrome.

People complained to Watchdog saying
I'm trying to fuck everyone over.

They paid £18.50
each for their seats

and by the end of the night in fact
realised there 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
at the beginning of the '90s

to try and change material
over at a faster pace.

People had done the same 20 minutes
sometimes for years.

Back in Morecambe and Wise
times, forever.

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

Was it all new to you tonight?

A lot of it was, wasn't it?
A lot of it was new, yeah. Yeah?

It was told in different ways
and things he'd said before.

He could go in there and read
out a recipe for making cake
and it would still be fantastic.

It's just Eddie being Eddie.
I just felt totally gutted by that.

"I will have the
penne alla arrabiata".

"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 am Vader.

"Darth Vader.

"Lord Vader.

"I can kill you with
a single thought".

"Well, you'll 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 floor".

"No, 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 realise".

He is always excessively
hard on himself.

If you had a room of 100 people
who said, Eddie, you're fantastic,

and one person said, mm, 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.

And it just took a long time to
get round to doing another show.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I've got to concentrate now,
so fuck off, please.

I'm thinking about the arenas
at the end of the year.

I'm thinking,
what if I screw those up?

Yeah, I'm somewhat
stressed about them.

The pressure on Eddie is greater
now than it's ever been in the past.

The expectation is greater.

We've sold 350,000 tickets
across the world.

All the time he was in Australia
he must have been working like a
mad thing.

Audiences are good here.
The audiences have been
consistently good here.

I don't know what it is.

Maybe they just make me relaxed.

They make me just want to
play about, so that's good.

I've heard that kangaroo means
'fuck off' in aboriginal language.

That's what I heard, and I've
asked people and no one seems to
admit this, but the British arrived,

and said, "What the hell
is that bouncy thing?"

And they went, "Fuck off!"

"Oh, it's a fuck off,
it's a kangaroo.

Kangaroo.

A kangaroo. You kangaroo.

She is besotted with him, you know?

And I'm thinking of citing
him as co respondent.

Given how thick and fast the stories
and the loose threads come,

and in apparently chaotic bursts,

it's hard to believe any one
performance of Sexie would
be anything like the next".

'Hi, Eddie. Just wanted
to let you know that

'I've received some old letters
from your mum 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, they were just
so pleased to be there.

He was worried about it because,
basically, stand-up comedy can't
have that kind of adoration.

They have to calm it down
a little bit.

They have to tell their gags!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

CHEERS DIE DOWN

Now, the screaming thing is fun.

And in rock 'n' roll it's great
and I do like to be in
the rock 'n' roll vein,

but in the mind gig that this
is, we have to control our
"whoo" and our "eurgh" and "argh".

We are with you, Eddie.
We want to be part of this, Eddie.

It was almost like some kind
of religious revivalist meeting.

Eastern and Western
medicine is interesting.

Western medicine,
very much a pill driven thing

and you go along and say,
"I've got a bit of a throat thing".
"Antibiotics for you, me old sir."

"My leg has been caught in a
dangerous tractor accident".

"Antibiotics will make
that leg come back".

You kept me laughing
when I was really afraid.

I nearly died a year ago.

I had a brain haemorrhage and I
came out of the operating theatre

reciting your beekeeper sketch
from Glorious.

Thank you so much.

'We're nearing the
end of the tour.'

We've done all of Australia,
New Zealand, 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,
the Hollywood Bowl of England.

Everyone toys around by saying,
"Good night, Wembley!"

You can say that in a very small
place, you can say that when
you're street performing

and it's kind of weird
to get to play Wembley.

He's just always at something,
he's always thinking, he's always
working, developing, scheming.

His day's starting at 9am
and it's finishing again at
3am or 4am the following morning.

At the end of the day, Eddie has
to be fresher than anybody else.

He has to go and face 12,000 people,
14,000 people, whatever it is.

He's afraid of stopping.

He's fighting against it
to such an extent that he

pushes himself beyond that
which anybody else could stand.

I went down to see my dad.

He'd been given some letters which
my mum had written before she died.

"5, Ashford Drive,
Bangor, County Down.

"26th September, 1967.

"My dear Margie and George.

"By now you will 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,

"but 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 and
intend not to let this get me down.

"I persuaded Harold
that we must move now.

"I want to see the boys
settled at their new school
and making new friends

"and our home comfortable
for them and Harold.

"I just want to carry on
as normally as possible.

"I hope you are all well.

"With our 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. I just thought she was ill.

You get ill, you get better.

And then one day, she wasn't there.

I think...

performing was about trying
to get everyone to love...

Trying to get the love of the
audience and that was a swap
from Mum's love not being there.

The big problem is that everything
I do in life is trying to...

..get...her back.

I think if I do enough...

..things...

..that maybe she...

That maybe she'll come back.

Yeah, I think that's what I'm doing.

# Mama, can you see me now?

# Trying to get through somehow

# Mama, can you see me now?

# 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?

# Mama, can you see me now? #

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 could end up living in a ditch

because you thought you were on
top of the world and actually your
career was 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's going
in the biggest and most nicest way,
"love me".

# Can you see me?

# Can you see me?

# Can you see me now?

# Can you see me?

# Can you see me?

# Can you see me now? #

So what do you do?

I'm a comedian.

I'm a comedian.

You've got to believe you
can be a stand-up before
you can be a stand-up.

You've got to believe you can act
before you can act.

You've got to believe
you can be an astronaut before
you can be an astronaut.

But you've got to believe.

# Can you see me now?

# Trying to get through somehow

# Mama, can you see me now? #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

London!

The greatest city
in the London area!

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk

Do I think he's running towards
something or running away
from something?

CROWD: Eddie!

CAMERAS CLICK

I think they meet in the middle.

I don't want to learn! I want to go
out and smash things with hammers!