From: the.wise.one@abel.co.uk   
      
   Eddie Izzard: Hollywood to House of Commons?   
      
   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.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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