"Hollywood to House of Commons?"
The Wise One
by Stephen Armstrong
The Sunday Times
February 8, 2009
- Having worked in stand-up, TV, theatre and films, the "transvestite
with a career" comedian is considering turning to politics -
Eddie Izzard sits astride a stool at the back of the Apple store on
Regent Street, London. In front of him is a crowd of eager fans who have
queued for hours for this iPod Q&A session, chaired by the compere of
Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Simon Amstell, and they are pushing him on the
widest range of topics - from the second world war through the nature of
rebellion to the timing of any possible economic turnaround.
Izzard seems unfazed by the German kid who hands him photos of family
members in uniform, or by advice on investing in Anglo American, the
mining conglomerate, until a girl asks him if he'd prefer a screw-off
head or teapot arms. He opts for the head, and she warns him people
would run away with it, which he complains changes the question just a
little, and then asks for a different questioner. He delivers his
replies so affably and honestly - instead of searching for old
semi-relevant routines to get quick laughs - that he's able to make the
low quality of 1980s motorway service stations as casually acceptable as
his argument that capitalism needs complete restructuring. "I'm a
creativist," he tells the crowd. "I want money so I can create things. I
think that's always been the way. That's what global trade has been
about for thousands of years. Somewhere, the capitalists came along and
wanted to create things just to make money. Then they started that
entire bookmaker dealing that nobody understands. So no, I wouldn't say
I'm a capitalist."
These are difficult times, so maybe it's only to be expected that
worried people would offer up their woes to Izzard rather than ask him
to repeat the old Death Star Canteen routine. He handles them well, but
like a serious-minded entertainer, rather than a meet-the-people
politico handling a town-hall meeting. Yet that, the politico, is the
direction in which he's heading. After conquering street performing,
stand-up, the stage, television and now the big screen, with a hefty
role alongside Tom Cruise in Valkyrie, he's turning his attention to
democracy.
"I'm going to stand for something in about 10 years' time," he says when
we meet before the gig. He is dressed down today, in trainers and a
tracksuit - clearly in full "boy mode". "I'm just going to get more and
more political. I have no mandate, but I have a platform, because I
export British comedy around the world. Hopefully, I can come up with a
commonsense attitude, being a transvestite with a career. I don't know
whether it'll be a Schwarzenegger place, where you actually hold power,
or a Bob Geldof place, where you protest and organise."
He considers for a minute. "I might be able to do more by staying
outside, because you get locked into a constituency and you really want
to help your constituency as much as possible. And will I have to dump
all the work I've done to date - my creative work? I might be able to
keep stand-up, but it's taken me almost three decades to get here... "
He trails away. You sense he'd like to have every string to his bow.
Could he really walk away from his three decades of trying, from Covent
Garden street act through years of honing his stand-up until Edinburgh,
the West End and finally Broadway beckoned? Then his careful targeting
of Los Angeles - "because Hollywood is the hub from which everything
flows around the world" - which is paying off, after years of cameos in
slick flicks such as Ocean's Twelve, his television drama The Riches,
pulled after the writers' strike but critically praised, and finally
with Valkyrie, which he's proud of because it's the first film British
and German kids can watch where they're both out to get Hitler. "It is
weird seeing my face on the poster on Leicester Square Odeon," he
smiles. "Now I just need to get my name higher up."
It's hard to see Izzard letting that work go completely, and you sense a
half-hope that, having defied every rule so far - from transvestites
becoming sex symbols to stand-ups joining Cruise in war films - he can
pull this one off as well. Is he angling to be a character from a dream
sequence: the politician with stage and screen within easy reach, who
can finish his speech on the floor and slip into the limo for the gig at
the O2 before shooting starts with Brad and George tomorrow? He shakes
his head. "I don't know. But I'm just going to get more and more active,
and more and more up to speed on the intense detail that there is in any
argument." He nods firmly. "I have emotional or commonsense arguments, I
can think about things from a logical point of view, but when you get
right down to policy, there's so much more information you need to take
into your brain to understand it and argue it."
It's clear, Izzard says, that the Labour party is his natural home. He
has recently donated thousands, and went toe-to-toe over Europe with
Eurosceptics at the party conference. "We didn't end on bad terms. With
one I said, 'Where are you on Europe?' And he said, 'I like it for
certain reasons and not for others.' Then he said, 'There's a joke about
a Frenchman, a German, an Englishman and an Italian going into a pub...'
I said, 'You're not going to tell me that joke,' and I just talked
loudly over the top of him." Then he bursts out laughing. "Nobody's
allowed to tell comedians jokes." He shakes his head. "People go,
'Here's a joke you can use', and I say, no. It's a really strong rule.
It's legal. If someone tells me one, and I do anything like that in my
act, I could be sued." I'm not entirely sure I believe his legal point,
but decide to let it pass. "Anyway, we've heard everything and judged
everything - and I get very judgmental."
Again with the Europe, Eddie. It's been his drum for such a long time -
for almost 20 years, through no-votes to referendums and currency
rejections, through anti-euro campaigns and low-turnout elections. Why
does a man born in Yemen to a travelling BP auditor, who, while at a
British boarding school, mourned his mother's untimely death (hiding
porn mags under the mattress and vodka in a piano stool), and has
climbed America's stairway to stardom, still think he might give it all
up for this fractured continent?
"Because the stakes are so high - if we can do it, there's hope for the
world," he says in a flurry of earnest energy.
"We used to kill each other. Two and a half thousand years. Alexander
the Great to the second world war. Every 50 years, we'd stop and say,
'We haven't had a murderous killing spree for ages - let's kill these
people. What hats do they wear? Let's kill the blue hats.' Then we'd
make the spinning jenny, and roads, then we'd kill people again.
"Politically, I'm more driven towards the European level. I mean, about
100 people in France know I exist, a few people in Scandinavia know I'm
there. Some people in Germany. It's not like I'm really well known
there, but I keep intending to ramp that up. It's not like everyone
wants to jump into the European political spectrum - the no arguments
are so much easier than the yes arguments - but if you take it from the
world level, or really the human level, then it all makes sense. We do
want a world where everyone has a fair go. If you want to do that, why
not give it a go in Europe? And Europe has to be a good thing, because
otherwise why are we here on earth? I don't think we were given a
reason, I think we have to find a reason, and the reason should be to
try to have a good life and make something fulfilling out of this."
Which brings us to his second big decision of the past 12 months - that,
after many years of doubt and questioning, he has announced he is an
atheist. When we spoke two years ago, he talked about his mother dying
of cancer when she was only 41, and how Hitler had lived into his
fifties. "So if there is a God, he's a bastard," he'd said. "You rack up
all the deaths we've had - stackloads. That's one bastard of a God if
he's up there. And why doesn't he ever shave?"
His new stand-up show, Stripped, which starts a UK tour this autumn,
began life, as many of Izzard's shows do, with heavenly characters: God,
Jesus and Noah often appear in his live performances, bumbling their way
through trying to convert dinosaurs and working out how to persuade
ducks to enter the Ark. He approached the show "hedging around an
agnosticky kind of place. A lot of people stick with agnosticism just in
case He turns up and says, 'I was here the whole time.' So you say,
'Oops, and I said I didn't believe in You!' And He says, 'Yep, you've
got to go to hell for ever.' And you say, 'Where is hell?' And He says,
'Well, it's just south of Croydon.'
"I was warming the material up in New York, where one night, literally
on stage, I realised I didn't believe in God at all," he says, almost
conversationally. "I just didn't think there was anyone upstairs. Which
is good, because you have to be with faith to get elected in America,
but without faith to get elected in Europe."
Post-conversion, much of Stripped is an elegant argument for the
nonexistence of God. Izzard delves into history - via, he freely admits
on stage, the good offices of Wikipedia - and tries to tell the whole
story of everything without a God. "It's not as bleak as that," he
counters. "I'm a spiritual atheist. I'm saying, don't believe in God,
believe in humans - is there a practical difference? I have faith and
belief in people, and if there's anything spiritual above that, it's
goodwill. I've seen ill will in action, and it leads to Hitler. He
kidnapped a country, the leaders of its government destroyed freedom of
speech - well, you know... "
Which brings him back to the idea of doing gigs in Germany and Russia.
"I've been talking about playing in Germany for so long that it feels
like I've done it, but this tour is definitely the one. I even have the
club booked.
I know the dates, I know the place - it's called the Quatsch club, in
Berlin, which translates as 'nonsense'. There is a different sentence
construction in German that might screw me up - but I believe I can sort
it. Anyway, it must be possible, because the world record for live
stand-up is a young German comic called Mario Barth at the Olympic
stadium - 70,000 people. Pisses all over us.
"After that, I want to take Stripped to Russia - all they hear is
threats from us. And I think this is the right show to spread around the
world. I've been through the Bible Belt in America with it, doing these
Q&As after each show. The socially progressive people were saying they
literally didn't know there were 2,000 other like-minded people living
nearby. They'd expected that if they brought up being an atheist in
public, it would cause trouble. Then to come back here for the London
run and have the press say, 'You can't talk about God like this'... I'm
trying to get a world perspective on this, really: a show you could play
anywhere in the world, or anyone can log in to."
This, after all, is Izzard's unspoken mission - or, as he describes it,
his job. "My job is to go around the world, talk and come up with ideas,
put them into an entertainment thing - that's what I like, that's just
for me - but also to tell people in Europe that the Americans, Asians,
Africans, they're all the same as us. Their problems are the same
problems. Love is the same thing. You hear stories about people who have
done things in the name of love around the world, and they're exactly
the same."
What about you and love, I ask him? He is notoriously reticent on the
subject, has no official and squirms when romance is raised. "Well - I
mean... I'm still in the Daniel Day-Lewis position of not talking about
things. I'm sure you'll find out about things at a certain point. Daniel
Day-Lewis got married, you know, and nobody knew about it. And even when
they did know about it, he still didn't talk about it. That's the
continuing situation in my life, and no matter what happens, I'll keep
it relaxed. I always ask the people in my life if they want me to talk
about them in my show, and they almost always say no, which is one of
the reasons I don't do much relationship stuff.
But I do talk about the people in my family who are happy to be talked
about, like Dad - and Dad is the only one, actually."
Izzard makes the same point at the Apple store. "There aren't many girls
who want to be the girl in the show," he says, although a quick glance
at the women in their twenties and thirties who make up a good 50% of
the audience proves that particular point is wide of the mark. "We love
you, Eddie," they shout as he finishes up and leaves the stage. Now all
he has to do is switch that round a little and have them yell "Vote
Eddie!" instead. Then we'll have something of a first for our battered
continent: a charismatic populist politician who can hold a rally or a
room delivering a humanist message. Just don't tell him any jokes.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/comedy/article5670333.ece