Will the surreal Eddie Izzard please stand up
The comic, actor and serial marathon runner may put the gags aside when delivering his political diatribes but it will be funny business as usual as the ‘male lesbian’ takes the stage in Hong Kong for the first time
Eddie Izzard has been described as Britain’s surrealist-in-chief – a child who was weaned on Monty Python and now counts several former members of the troupe as ardent fans, along with Prince William, who “has all his videos”, according to the young royal’s father, Prince Charles.
Izzard is also one of the few comedians who crosses global boundaries. The comic, who turned 55 this month, is in the middle of his mammoth “Force Majeure” tour, which started in 2013 and will see him perform in Hong Kong for the first time, on February 23, as part of a jaunt through 30 countries.
It is easy to see why he is so successful. His nonsensical intellectual flights of fancy mark him out from his more humdrum, observational rivals – as too does his flamboyant appearance; he has described himself as “a straight transvestite or a male lesbian”, more recently preferring to define himself as simply transgender. But it is also not all that taxing to fathom why some people find him so irritating. He has become increasingly political and, when in full flow, his schtick is devoid of the humour, wit and rabid originality – let alone the silliness – that make his comedy so popular.
Nineteen years ago, he went on the BBC’s flagship political programme, Question Time, his appearance on the panel later being described as “reminiscent of the moment when Culture Club once informed us, insightfully, that war is stupid”.
Izzard’s descent into political fatuousness was illustrated most clearly ahead of Britain’s referendum on its membership of the European Union, last year. As one of the leading celebrity campaigners on the side of Remain, he appeared again on Question Time, going toe-to-toe with the country’s top Brexiteer, the then UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage. It wasn’t his finest hour. The Independent newspaper described him as not just having made the journey from “incoherent and unpersuasive” to “actually awful”, but as providing “millions of viewers with one of the best adverts for Brexit we have seen in a long time”. It also referred to the insistence of Izzard, “a highly intelligent man”, on slipping into “a frankly bizarre kindergarten lingo about the need to stick together and cooperate rather than be divisive”. (And the paper was on Izzard’s side of the EU debate!)
I am reminded of this as he chats to me over the world’s most crackly phone line from the Spanish leg of his tour – where he is performing in Spanish, his fourth language – for, to my great disappointment, I am being treated to Earnest Eddie at his most banal.
