We have tickets to see Eddie Izzard tonight, possibly the funniest man alive. If you haven’t seen Eddie Izzard, you haven’t lived, or at least you haven’t laughed enough. He’s got a couple of HBO specials, so you should be able to find him on TV. He does a bit of acting too - you may have seen him in The Cat’s Meow, where he plays Charlie Chaplin, or in Mystery Men, or, more likely, Ocean’s Twelve or the TV show The Riches. He’s a brilliant actor, but his forte is standup.
They have this quote on his website, from when he hustled crayons as a kid. “You need crayons. What if you get stranded on a deserted island? How are you going to write a message?” Impeccable Eddie logic.
I love him on his HBO specials, and we have all of his DVDs. But in person he’s just inimitable. He’s quite free-form, so no two shows are alike. And he doesn’t Americanize his act. So one of the funniest things about seeing him in America is watching the crowd. You can actually pick out the Brits, because there are some things he says, where only the Brits (plus those of us who live with them) get the joke, so there’s just this smattering of laughter through the place. And then he’ll say something really inane, like, “so there was this bloke”, and all the Americans will start laughing, I assume because they think the word “bloke” means something, when really he just said “so there was this guy”.
Tonight is the first time he’s played near us, where we’ve managed to get tickets. I’m really looking forward to walking to the show and walking home, instead of driving for hours. The last time we drove 3 hours each way, and flew out of the country the next morning, and it was still worth it. This time we just have to walk! Excellent.
So tonight, when you’re doing whatever you’re doing, think of me at the Eddie Izzard show. I’ll be the one laughing up a kidney.