eddie Izzard at the Lyric in London

Eddie Izzard: Keeping it surreal
Now that a comedian has called a venerable actor and left him a series of detailed messages about sleeping with his granddaughter, there are few heresies left in comedy. There is one that remains, though. If you say you don't like Eddie Izzard, you are going way beyond the pale.

Because everyone loves Izzard. Saying you didn't like him would be like expressing an aversion to chocolate, or puppies. He inspires the same manic affection among his admirers as he himself felt for the Monty Python team in his childhood, when he learned their scripts by heart to pass the time in chemistry lessons. Mention his name at the pub and your friends are likely to chime in with half-hearted versions of his rambling anecdotal style; casually let it drop that you are going to see him live and they will likely assault you in the hope of getting a ticket.

For that's the only fly in the Izzard ointment: these days, his live shows are few and far between. As far as most of his hardcore fans are concerned, there just isn't enough of him being funny to go round. Those DVDs of his 1990s performances are getting worn by now, and his insistence on straight dramatic roles frequently far from hilarious, as in his role as the Nazi General Erich Fellgiebel in the forthcoming Tom Cruise film Valkyrie doesn't leave much time for anything else.

"I actively try to be less well known in comedy," he explains. "If you get too well known in comedy, I think it blocks people from taking you in drama." In recent years, Izzard has worked mostly in America, in film and television, and he hasn't been seen in the West End since 1996. That is, until this week.

The early reaction to his new show, Stripped, is as adoring as ever. "Thank heavens for the return of Eddie Izzard," wrote one critic. "He seems to me to be one of the comedy greats, a modern stand-up who can bear comparison with such giants as Frankie Howerd, Tommy Cooper and Ken Dodd."

That's exalted company indeed, but few would dispute it. Unfortunately, it is hard to say exactly why Izzard is funny without reference to the man himself: to rehash his jokes in the explanatory effort is a bit like trying to explain what a Picasso looks like by saying it's a picture of a jug. His self-consciously virtuosic style leaves no room for mistakes, and no chance at paraphrase. "Really I'm just a bloke talking crap," Izzard says. "I'm a child of Python: I'm just talking nonsense."

In Stripped, he speaks about his passion for Wikipedia, gleefully detailing his pursuit of obscure subjects through the endless rabbit warrens of embedded underlined links, and it isn't hard to see his brain as a kind of synaptic Wikipedia, making hypertextual connections that the rest of us would miss in the blink of an eye.

to read more go to...http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/eddie-izzard-keeping-it-s­urreal-1029923.html

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[izzardian09]

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[izzardkingfanvideos]

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[RaineyRedCloud]

Im serriouly in love with this man!!!

[tcbink]

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