Talk:Eddie Izzard

Transvestite

removing:

probably most noteworthy for being a transvestite.

AFAIK, Izzard doesn't describe himself as a transvestite -- he points out that a woman wearing trousers isn't considered a tranvestite, and his preference for certain types of clothes is no different -- Tarquin

But isnt he a transvestite?

Um, I've got a recording of one of his shows in which he introduces himself as an "executive transvestite". - user:Montrealais

Really? I've read interviews where he says he isn't, for reason above. The plot thickens. -- Tarquin

The Je suis un travestie executif bit (from Glorious IIRC) does follow his usual spiel of "I don't consider myself a transvestite, but only someone who wants equal clothing rights" -- User:GWO

Le singe est dans l'arbre...

Monkeys notwithstanding, I saw him on stage about ten years ago and he said, several times, "I'm TV". He was careful to explain that it was an aesthetic preference with no sexual significance. -- Heron

I've checked various online interviews, and, yes, he does frequently refer to himself as a TV/transvestite. -- User:GWO

So does this mean I can put the line (or a variant thereof) back in? Sorry if I'm doing this wrong; I'm rather new to all this. :) -- the creator of the entry

Hello, creator of this entry. (register a user name sometime :-) I'd say mention both things he's said. -- Tarquin 19:47 Nov 4, 2002 (UTC)

Okay, I've just made myself one. It's very imaginative, isn't it? ;) -- Oliver Pereira.

Well, labels notwithstanding, he frequently wears clothing generally reserved for women. --AMK1211 19:16, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Rent Dress to Kill, his stand-up appearance in San Francisco. On the DVD he refers to himself as a transvestite, specifically an executive transvestite, not a weirdo transvestite (which he attributes to J. Edgar Hoover). -FeralDruid 18:50, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Eddie on being a Transvestite

I'm adding these quotes because people are continually removing the classification of him in LGBT. If this Talk page is archived, I think this part should remain here to avoid it needing to be posted repeatedly.

If it's important to you that you feel 'self-definition' is key in being defined as LGBT, or if you think transvestitism (uhm, ok, but you know what I mean) is not part of being transgendered, please note these are all his own quotes:

Article at Transgender Zone "It is going to stick around until more generations of transgender people come out," he says. Being gay may have cachet in certain circles — theatre — but society still gets its knickers in a twist about cross-dressers. "There is a perception that certain uplifting things go with being gay, but transgender is still (in) a difficult phase. Yet it is way better being where I am now and not having to lie."

and:

Eddie Izzard: Executive Transvestite (by Ivy D. Vine | Girltalk Magazine Vol. 2 #3 | December 25, 2000)

GT: You present a positive TV image. Do you have any words for people wanting to come out?

EI: You need to do it as young as possible so you can get (on with) your life...it's sort of a life rearrangement thing. The more people that are "out", the world will realize there is a large transgender population. I do empathize, but the only way we can move forward is with more people coming out.

GT: Do you consider yourself a role model at all?

EI: If anyone can use anything that I've done, that's cool. The transgender movement is still in the 1950's like gay and lesbians use to be. Anti-gay jokes are gone from television, but the guy in a dress jokes are still there. They need to get sharp, snappy dressed transgendered people on there. That's why I came out with all the buzz words like "Action Transvestite" or "Executive Transvestite".

Also, a link here to an article from last fall: Eddie Izzard Does His Therapist, first line: British Comedian/Actor Eddie Izzard has started seeing a transgender expert to discuss issues resulting from his cross-dressing.

Character Based on Izzard as a Child?

This article states that the Character of the Malloy's youngest son, who is portrayed as a young transvestite, is based after Izzard as a child. However, Izzard has stated repeatedly on the Fox Movie Channel that the character was already written that way before he was ever was under consideration or on board for the show.

Apparently, the character was already written as being "different," and when Izzard came onto the project, they decided to make the character like him. --AMK1211 05:25, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Acting

An actor? What in? -- Oliver Pereira.

He's been doing a lot of acting recently, probably more acting than standup. I don't think he's been in anything particularly famous, but he's doing a fair bit of it. Only thing I've seen him in is Velvet Goldmine, but there have been plenty. --Camembert

See his web page. There's a list there, but as I hadn't seen any of the, I didn't copy it over. Mostly films, but also London stage. Ortolan88 04:09 Nov 8, 2002 (UTC)

He was in ... a spoof superhero thing. What was it called? He didn't even have a line, but still. -- Sam

That was Mystery Men.

not to nitpick, but he had a few lines in Mystery Men Streamless 16:48, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

He was in the lousy film of The Avengers (the one where Ralph Fiennes couldn't even wear the suit, let alone act) -- Tarquin 10:21 Nov 8, 2002 (UTC)

Dyslexia

I didn't write that bit, but he does atrribute his surreal rambling style to dyslexia.--Crestville 19:48, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• I wrote it. And, yes, he does. --Moochocoogle 23:32, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Two Versions of the Dress To Kill DVD?

when i first saw Dress to Kill on HBO (i'm american), it was around 90 minutes long. i then rented it from netflix and it's way longer (and funnier) - almost two hours long. however, the DVD on sale seems to be only 90 minutes long. is it possible that netflix has some european version? if so, why did it play on my DVD? Streamless 16:50, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

The nearly 2 hour long version is the only version. I should know, I have it all memorized.

There are two versions. The one on HBO (or the VHS version I believe) is 90 minutes. This is also the one you might find on a file-sharing network. The DVD version is longer. If you have both you can notice it immediately because the HBO version doesn't have the San Fransisco bit at the beginning. It goes straight from the jumping around in heels to wanting to be in the army.

Unrepeatable

Uhhh....there's two references in the Stand-up section for Unrepeatable, one for 2004 and another for 1994. According to IMDb, 1994 is the correct year. Made the edit. -Hench 08:57, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

University

Eddie was at the University of Sheffield at one time. What subject?

• According to [1], it was "Accounting and Financial Management with Mathematics", although it's not clear whether that was its actual title or a general description of what it covered. Warofdreams talk 14:43, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
• Not sure if that is entirely accurate, as I can remember him sat in a maths lecture in Sheffield dressed in drag.

Band?

I've read on a couple of various websites that Eddie used to/still does manage a band called "The Wasp Factory" (named after the novel) in the early nineties, but I can't find that many references to it. It may well be the band that the guy who wrote "The Other Side of the Story" below was on about. I'm not very good at this whole Wikipedia malarky anyway, so could someone else who's interested and more adept at this kind of thing add this to the article (if it is true)? -Shaun680 21:50, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Description of Comedy Style

I don't fancy this section at all. It isn't written smoothly and also, 'mime' is not the right description of what Izzard does with the 'sawing wood/baboon' thing. I would call it 'doing impressions' because of course he makes noises. Any objections to a re-write? ParvatiBai 00:33, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

No, but on a side note - he calls it mime. He used to be a mime artist too. It's not reallt impressions.--Crestville 10:40, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh, right-ho! Thanks for letting me know. ParvatiBai 21:20, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Not at all.--Crestville 16:34, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

It's not neutral at all, it sounds like an ad for him. Also, how is Ellen stealing his style? I don't like her comedy, but I think it's pretty different.

"Discography and appearances"

I noticed that the "Stand-up" & "Filmography" sections are ascending by date but "TV appearances" are descending by date. Is this on purpose or did it just happen that way? Also I think maybe his comedy albums should be one section "Discography" & his tv/movie appearances should be another section "Filmography". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.7.157.247 (talk) 15:40, 11 February 2007 (UTC).

The Other Side of the Story

I first met Eddie when we were both at prep schools in Eastbourne, him at St Bede's and me at Chelmsford Hall We ended up at the same local public school, Eastbourne College, where our shared sense of the absurd led us to be friends and to write comedy together. I left in 1978 after 'O' levels, Eddie stayed on, did his 'A' levels and then went off to university in Sheffield. The next time I heard from him was about 1981/82, when I was living in the south of France; he contacted my elder brother Paul to ask if I would be interested in writing some sketches with him and taking them to the Edinburgh Festival - I had to say no, I was barely surviving in France and certainly didn't have the money to go and have a laugh in Scotland. I returned to England in 1983, but didn't contact Eddie again until spring 1988. I just got in touch to see what he was up to. We met up, had a drink, and he told me about his street performing and about how he was trying to break into stand-up. At that time my younger brother Pete was about to finish a two year business studies course, and soon after my meeting with Eddie, Pete and he met for the first time. Eddie said he would be performing an unpaid try out spot (called an 'open spot') at a local club called the Bearcat in Twickenham soon after, so Pete went along to see him - Pete had never been to a comedy club before, but he loved it. He was about to gain his business diploma, and had lots of energy, but nowhere to direct it. He very quickly decided that he would like to run his own comedy club and asked Eddie if he would be resident compere. Eddie agreed and in October 1988 The Screaming Blue Murder Cabaret Club opened it's doors for the first time in an upstairs room in the Rose and Crown in Hampton Wick, Surrey.

In those days Eddie was doing a routine that started, "My uncle served in Vietnam, he was a waiter" (Jack Dee later told him to personalize it, "I served in Vietnam"â was already funnier than "my uncle"). Eddie used this material very successfully on the first night, but one week later, when he tried to do the same routine again, he was met with cries of "you did that last week", which left him somewhat stumped - the free form improvisation that came to characterize his act was still a long way off. It got to the point where week in, week out, Eddie would walk onto the stage, say very little, and then introduce the first act. Pete always believed in Eddie, but felt, as he said to me at the time, "I could do what heâs doing at the moment - "Good evening ladies and gentlemen, er.... please welcome Jo Brand""' and so one evening he took Eddie to one side and told him to go away for a couple of weeks and think about it, to write some new stuff, just to get his head together. Eddie did, he went to the Lake District, and when he came back he had already begun to turn a corner. It was during those early days that I had a joke I thought Eddie might be able to use - seeing as we'd written together before the idea wasn't as absurd then as it might seem now - but Eddie said no, because, and I quote "one day I'm going to make it, and when I do I want to be able to say I did it all on my own". Of course that should have set off some alarm bells, but it didnât, not till much later...

The success of the original Wednesday night at the Rose and Crown led to Pete opening there on Friday nights too. He also opened a club at the Leather Bottle in South Wimbledon on Sundays and at the White Lion in Streatham on Mondays. In other words Eddie had the luxury of doing at least four gigs a week, with the added benefit of knowing that he could try out new stuff as much as he wanted, it didn't matter if he died on his arse, there was no club promoter in the background he needed to impress to try and get a booking. Pete was behind him all the way, he would be back again next week no matter what. This point is hugely important and cannot be emphasised enough - a promoter who didn't care if his resident compere was funny or not was, and is, unheard of - Pete gave him the time and space he needed to develop regardless of immediate success or failure. (He would later do the same for Dominic Holland.) Pete gave Eddie the most valuable thing he needed at that time, something no-one else was giving him - a stage.

It was during this period that Eddie had his first experience of television. He did a show fronted by Arthur Smith called 'First Exposure', recorded in a theatre in Stratford, East London. Eddie died a death, but by the magic of TV the laughs had been miraculously restored by the time of transmission. He was particularly pissed off that night because his brother Mark had come along to watch. However, his second brush with television was to be a different story.

Throughout 1989 and 1990 Eddie carried on doing the clubs, slowly finding his feet and finding the confidence to run with ideas as they came to him. Any comedian will tell you that experience compering a club is invaluable, because it teaches you to think on your feet, and it gets you used to talking to an audience. Jo Brand's very stiff and stylised delivery in her early days was all but completely wiped away by a period of compering. By the end of 1990 Eddie had started to get a name for himself, and was more often than not no longer compering the Screaming Blue Murder Friday night shows, because he was getting regular bookings at other clubs, both in London and around the country. On the back of this he had started touring his one man show to small provincial theatres and art centres by early 1991. Eddie asked Pete to be his agent in late 1989, and then agreed that he should be his manager in 1990, although perhaps 'manager' is somewhat misleading. Rather than tell Eddie what to do, when something came up they discussed it and decided jointly. So when Eddie first thought about trying to do his act as a transvestite, he spoke to Pete about it. Pete encouraged him to do whatever he felt happiest with, and so Eddie tried it, for the first time, in Leicester. The minute he walked off stage after the gig, Eddie phoned Pete, elated, to say that, although a handful of people had walked out, the vast majority of people just accepted him as he was. (When I used to drive Eddie to some of the out-of-town gigs after the show he would always ask, "How many walked out?" - invariably some always would, not because of his clothes, this was before he started performing as a transvestite, but simply because they didn't 'get it'. He was always pleased if people had left because, as he put it, "it means I'm not bland".)

I think that at the beginning of their partnership both thought that they would be equal partners across the board, but it soon became clear to Pete that Eddie's business acumen was somewhat lacking, and so as Eddie got a better hold on his act, Pete took more control of the business. Because of this Screaming Blue Murder were thought of as being Pete's clubs and not Eddie's, and it was maybe because of this that Eddie decided to try opening his own club, 'Raging Bull'. Although Pete offered advice Eddie didn't want him to be involved. He wanted his club to be just that, 'his'. The result was disastrous. Eddie opened at the Boulevard Theatre in Soho, knowing full well that even if he sold every single seat in the place he would still barely break even, and the place was rarely even half full. The move to the Shaw Theatre was even worse, a comedy show at midnight in a 400 seater theatre with no atmosphere on the Euston Road - as Pete now says "arrogance overcame reason". This story is, I believe, more important than it might at first seem. As time went on it appeared that Eddie's idea of good business was simply to throw money at something until it worked. Or even if it didn't. At the time Eddie was seeing a woman we shall call Jane (not her real name). Jane was a would-be singer who fronted a band which shall also remain nameless. Although not a bad singer, she had no charisma, no star quality, and no real talent as a songwriter. Rather than go their own way the band listened to what other Indie bands were doing in an attempt to ride that wave with them, but of course as soon as they latched on to a new style or idea, the wave had already gone. Jane wasn't shy about asking Eddie for help buying equipment, and he bought the band anything and everything they needed, believing that if he threw enough money their way eventually they, and more importantly Jane, would make it.

In early 1991 Stephen Fry and Channel 4 were putting together the Aids benefit 'Hysteria 3' for the London Palladium. Comedian Mark Thomas's future wife, Jenny, was a researcher and a big fan of Eddie, and she recommended him to her producer. Her producer loved him, and he was invited to be a part of the show. This event was televised, and it was this, more than anything else, that was Eddie's really big break. Sharing the bill with Stephen Fry were Ben Elton, Julian Clary, Jools Holland, Tony Slattery - Eddie did ten minutes and stole the show. Although he had a small cult following on the comedy circuit he was unknown to the majority of other acts, TV executives, and most of the audience. They all loved him. When the programme was aired on Channel 4 later in the year Eddie was seen by an enormous audience all over the country, and this time there was no need to dub on the laughter. Afterwards, riding on the back of this success, Pete booked Eddie out across the country. At the Edinburgh Festival he was nominated for the Perrier Award, and at the end of the year he won a Time Out award. His journey on the road to fame had started in earnest.

In 1992 Pete and Eddie formed a company together, called H+I Management (Harris and Izzard). Originally the 'offices' of H+I were at the house Pete and I shared in Surbiton, but in early summer they moved to premises in Covent Garden. H+I was formed because both Eddie and Pete wanted to be involved with a management company of real quality. To be with H+I was to be a sign of being someone special. H+I represented Eddie himself, John Hegley, Dominic Holland, Steve Furst (aka Lenny Beige) and, for a short time, the Reduced Shakespeare Company. In Edinburgh at the Festival in 1993 John Hegley sold out and Dominic Holland won the Perrier Award for 'Best Newcomer', with Steve Furst and his show 'The Gary Glitter Story' breaking even, no mean feat for a play at the Festival. H+I was doing well.

As Eddie had made a conscious decision not to perform stand-up on TV, they decided to make a video. Neither Pete nor Eddie had any experience in negotiating with prospective companies vying for the video rights, but as Eddie said at the time, "weâll learn together as we go" - which led to them both saying "no" to every offer laid before them, and laughing incredulously as each offer was subsequently increased, until finally they came to an agreement with Polygram. This 'learn together as we go' idea is again an important point. This was very much a partnership, both supporting the other as new challenges arose, Eddie as a stand-up, and Pete as a businessman. Pete had booked the Ambassadors Theatre for the month of February 1993, and this was the show they would film. Little did they know, when the doors opened on Monday 1st February, that the show would be such a huge success that the run would need to be extended twice, finally closing at the end of April. Pete produced the Ambassadors run single-handed, a show that was nominated for a prestigious Olivier Award for 'Outstanding Achievement'. (As for the video, it did very well too - Pete can be seen at the very beginning, knocking on Eddie's dressing room door, giving him '5 minutes'). At the end of the year I went to the LWT British Comedy Awards with Eddie, to watch him pick up his award for 'Best Stand-Up Comedian', (we had been told in advance he was the winner). All in all 1993 had been another triumphant year.

At H+I Pete was looking after the business, and he was refusing to let Eddie throw any more company money at Jane and the band, telling him that he could do what he wanted with his own money, but he couldn't fritter away company profits. Suddenly Jane's money-well looked like it might be drying up. Also Pete decided that hiring a car for Eddie to drive every time he had an out-of-town gig was a needless extravagance, instead, why not buy Eddie his own car with company money? Eddie agreed, and everything was fine until one day Eddie walked into the office saying he needed to hire a car for that evening's gig. When Pete asked him why he wasn't using his own car he replied "Jane needs it". In the end Eddie used his own car - whether he hired another one for Jane or not I don't know.

After the success at the Ambassadors they decided to do another West End run. The Albery Theatre was just next door to the office, and free in February 1994. Everything was going fine, the theatre was booked, until one day Eddie took exception to the fact that Pete would be earning twice from the show; first his percentage as Eddie's agent and second his percentage as the producer. Eddie didnât like this, because he felt Pete was "earning too much". Pete pointed out that he was earning twice because he was doing two jobs - somebody else could be brought in to produce the show, but why? - anybody else would need to be paid the same, and having the same person as agent and producer ensured that no deals could be done behind Eddie's back (ie falsifying receipts so that the 'star' gets less in his percentage). Eddie's concerns certainly don't appear rational, but maybe by now Jane was seeing Pete as a real threat to her ongoing ambition to be famous, and also to the money she thought could help her to acheive that Perhaps she was poisoning Eddie against Pete. Maybe we'll never know. On Saturday morning 29th January 1994, two days before the opening at the Albery Theatre, Pete had a meeting with Eddie at the office in Covent Garden. According to Pete, Eddie seemed to be on a high, very chatty and happy. They discussed this and that, watched a pilot of an idea Eddie was working on, then walked round the corner to look over the frontage of the Albery, and generally had a laugh. Then, with the meeting over, as they left, Eddie said "oh, and by the way, I donât want to work with you anymore". Pete was completely devastated. They had never had a contract between them, nothing Pete could fall back on, the whole thing had been done on trust. Eddie was to earn a fortune from the Albery show, and yet when he left the H+I offices he took everything with him, including both computers, though he knew he was leaving Pete in the shit. However, two days after Eddie dumped him, Pete still stood in the foyer of the Albery Theatre as the show's Producer, welcoming people to the first night, many of whom he had invited personally. The show was sold out, but there was a row of seats, right at the front, that was empty. The row where Pete's friends and family would have been.

When Eddie did this I had known him for over 18 years. I still don't know why he did it. Of course show business is littered with people becoming stars and then moving on from their original managers or agents. It can be difficult for the people involved but ,nonetheless, understandable. What I can't understand is why Eddie seemed to take so much pleasure in it. He could have said "sorry, but I need to move on, in a month or two months or six months". He could have thanked him for his help. He could have softened the blow. But instead he seemed to revel in it. Pete had just signed a six month deal on a flat in Soho, so that he could work late if he needed to instead of having to make the last train back to Surbiton. Now he was stuck up there in a flat he didn't want and couldn't afford, and unable to get out. Also at this time he was already looking to put on another West End show that he had taken to the Edinburgh Festival in 1993, "The Gary Glitter Story' - the theatre involved were hassling him to sign for the hire, but he didn't have the signature for the money from the sponsors, though the sponsors had assured him that they were definitely on board. So, afraid of losing the theatre, he signed for the hire, and then the sponsors pulled out. Pete had to plough all his own savings into the show, and the show flopped. Within a few months of Eddie firing him Pete had lost everything. He could have filed for bankruptcy, but he didn't. It took time but he paid off every last penny, helped by various comedians such as Jo Brand, Lee Evans, Lee Hurst, Harry Hill, Alan Davies and Kevin Day, who, amongst others, performed a show at the Wimbledon Theatre to help raise the money. You have to decide for yourself who was to blame for his downfall. Personally I blame Eddie - Pete was distraught about losing the partnership, he lost his confidence and his judgement with it.

I have never spoken to Eddie since, although Pete ran into him in the street in Edinburgh at the Festival in 2001, and they went and had lunch together. When I heard I asked Pete what he'd said. "About what?". "About the way he treated you". "I didnât even ask him, he did what he did, he has to live with it". Which brings me back to the Telegraph article. "There are two lines that will do me on my spirituality"â Izzard says. "Do unto others as you would have done unto you, and what goes around comes around". Well, we'll just have to wait and see, won't we? But I'm sure you can understand that knowing what I do this makes for nauseating reading. When I contacted Pete about writing this letter, he told me: "Eddie once said to me, "Truth doesn't matter, it's what people believe to be the truth that matters. Therefore, get what you want people to believe down in print and it will become the truth". He is playing that game. Good luck to him, you can't change the real truth and in the end it doesn't really matter anyway. No one cares." Well maybe no-one does care, but the fact remains that when Pete met Eddie he was a struggling open spot, and when Eddie got rid of him five years later Eddie had the world at his feet. (Pete went on to manage Lee Hurst through his 'They Think It's All Over' days, and the subsequent very successful tours.)

Just after Eddie got rid of Pete he did an interview for Vox magazine - the article started like this, "Eddie Izzard has never had an agent, never had a plugger, he books his own tours and talks his own deals". I was furious. I wrote to them putting them straight and telling them to ask anyone they liked on the comedy circuit for the truth. Of course I never heard anything from them - "Eddie Izzard is great" sells, "Eddie Izzard once had a manager he shat on" doesn't. I have had similar experiences across the years when Iâve objected to some of the bullshit Eddie comes out with, but with the same response, or rather lack of it. Reading the same dismissive bollocks about this period in his life in your article just made me decide to put pen to paper and write out the truth once and for all. I just want a copy of this to be out in the open, for people to know the truth, so that one day if someone decides to write a proper biography of Eddie they will have this to refer to, because the only three people in the world who know the full story from the inside are Pete, Eddie and me, and Eddie seems to have some difficulty remembering it ever happened.

So there you have it, perhaps not the most earth shattering of stories, but one, for reasons that escape me, Eddie tries to airbrush out of his history. It might be that phrase Îone day Iâm going to make it, and when I do I want to be able to say I did it all on my ownâ (he didnât, no-one does), or it might just be that heâs ashamed of how he behaved. Either way, how much difference did Pete make to Eddieâs career? Eddie probably would have made it anyway, he always had the talent and the determination, but Pete certainly helped him achieve his goals quicker. But what if Eddie hadnât had the luxury of doing four gigs a week, completely free to die without any pressure? What if heâd just had to take the route of so many other comics, and do open spot after open spot, struggling to get a booking? Would it have broken his resolve? His style took some time to develop, would he have stuck with it? Who can say, but it is worth remembering this; when Eddie started out no-one other than Pete thought he could ever amount to anything. As Tony Allen, Îthe Godfather of Alternative Comedyâ, said at the time, "Eddie Izzard - great bloke, shit comedian"... it just turns out that he got those two the wrong way round.

If this is true, I think it would make a nice addition to the article, albeit cropped a bit, or at least linked to as hosted on another webpage. As for proving the truth of the account, your name would be a first step. --Hench 05:40, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but I disagree (about adding it to the main article). This person writes as though his brother was the first person to get shat on by someone once their career took off. Wikipedia isn't the place for the airing of grievances. If every celebrity's article included a full history of dumped managers/agents/friends, the servers would crash. Elizabeyth 14:48, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Put that way, I see your point. Though, I've always had an interest in the people's seemingly random, obscure stories. Hench 04:58, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

So I can't add that Craig David is a shithouse?--Crestville 23:16, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

We'll make an exception for Craig. --195.7.32.133 12:47, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

This story is true. I am over it now but it still galls that Eddie likes to imply he did it all by himself. He certainly didn't. I gave six years of my life to helping him become what he is now. It would be nice to have that acknowledged. People will think what they wish to and no-one wants to think badly about their hero. My brother just wanted to have an article out there to give a true account of Eddie's early years. For me, I was lucky enough to go on and work with Lee Hurst. After five good years working exclusively with a man who was true to his word, I have happily semi-retired abroad. Feel free to e-mail me if you want. KhunPete 03:54, 13 November 2006 (UTC)KhunPete

We would need some evidence of authenticity before we could put it in the article though.--Crestville 15:43, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't strike me as v encyclopaedic, and I think there may be a misunderstanding about wiki biography. This isn't a fan site; an article acknowledges that someone is notable in some way, but it doesn't assert that they're perfect. So I don't know if it's really appropriate to head this section 'the other side'. The only side there is, consists of citable facts. Still to take it at face value maybe the brother of the complainant, if he was a notable comedy writer/manager, deserves his own page? Though probably someone would only be bitching on there about how he didn't achieve it all on his own :/

Funnily enough, I have my own Izzard anecdote. A few years ago, while living in Cambridge (UK) I once got a new flatmate (shouldn't mention his name) who, it turned out, had just been arrested for punching Eddie Izzard in the face after a performance at the Corn Exchange. He'd seen him on the stairs, all in his drag, and it had got him rather confused, so he hit him. Apparently, according to my source, Izzard went down like a big girl in the playground and squealed like a blinded piglet. When the police arrived he insisted that he was Barbara Windsor and had been indecently assaulted by seven dwarfs. Unhappily, at just that moment, a self-inflating life-size Eddie Izzard sex doll tumbled out of his velvet pockets and the amazing resemblance left all in no doubt that the sobbing wreck was none other than well-known comedian Eddie Izzard. According to one of the police officers, as reported in the local rag, "We were gobsmacked. We couldn't decide who to arrest, this Izzard bloke, or the lad who'd thumped him. In the end we decided being a big girl's blouse is not strictly speaking an offence, so we charged the lad with assault & battery and left it at that." Hakluyt bean 21:03, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Uh, huh. Well. With all the crazy elements of that story, I'm most mystified by your flatmate's response to confusion. Once someone told me a confusing joke and I certainly didn't punch her in the mouth. I have trouble with math and I've never beaten the shit out of my Algebra professor. 69.138.104.214 05:57, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

"Humour"

I've added back the British spelling "humour," because Izzard is British. (I know there's no hard-and-fast rule at Wiki about Americanized vs. British spellings, the only rule is consistency, but as long as I was doing a copy edit, it seemed it might as well be British.) I've probably missed some "-ise" vs. "-ize" verbs though. Jessicapierce 20:01, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Nationality

The infobox has him listed as Nationality: English. This is wrong as there is no such thing as English nationality. I have corrected it to British. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ajkgordon (talk • contribs) 07:59, 29 May 2007.

You should try to get consensus before making changes as controversial as that! You haven't even reached consensus on Talk:England yet. Marnanel 22:07, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Controversial?! How can it be controversial? I was correcting an error! Please explain why this correction was reverted and why anyone believes it to be controversial. (Ajkgordon 07:41, 6 June 2007 (UTC))

It's a long story. Anyway, the habit is not to use British as a nationality. Some editors of some bio articles prefer their subjects to be Scottish, Welsh etc. Afaik English as a nationality therefore comes about by default, though maybe some English editors also favour the practice. Also borrowing from the U.S. tradition if your grandmother is Japanese or Polish then that's likely to get a mention in the first line. Editors are also keen to reference Jewish heritage for example as it might not be catered for in other encyclopaedias. So anyway there are pressures, benign in themselves, to have nationality basically come down to 'ethnicity' or identity as people in the U.S. understand it. In the case of Brits this is expressed in the infobox. Actually Brits are probably the only casualty, and I agree it doesn't always make much local sense.

Anyway in the list at the bottom of the article you'll see the Category:English comedians, which itself falls under British comedians - you could add category:British comedians directly and he'll appear on that page, not just on the lower-level English page. Thus he will be rendered British hopefully to your satisfaction :) Hakluyt bean 22:55, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Hakluyt bean. Can you point me to where discussions have taken place on this rather odd habit? I'm having difficulty understanding the logic! (Ajkgordon 07:42, 7 June 2007 (UTC))

sourcelessness and BLP

WP:BLP frowns on unsourced material on articles about living persons. This article is filled with unsourced claims about Izzard, as well as many quotes that Izzard is alleged to have said, without source citations. These need to be fixed near-immediately for this material to remain in the article. wikipediatrix 22:49, 22 August 2007 (UTC)