Eddie Izzard

I saw Eddie Izzard last month and forgot to finish writing this blog. The day was hard. I had been to see a Private Hell special the day before with Michael Legge and Stuart Goldsmith. Even though Stuart isn't the usual style of comedian I would go and see, I thoroughly enjoyed his set, and Michael's show was very nearly ready! I had a few beers with Michael and some of the audience afterwards and was planning on going home, but Nadia persuaded me to go to the other Phoenix to see Lou Sanders and Grainne Maguire. It was a great evening, but on the morning of Izzard, I had a brutal hangover.

I was excited about seeing Eddie Izzard, and have been for a while but 1115pm seemed like such a long way away. He was playing in the small room in Soho Theatre and it was a work in progress gig for next year's world tour, "Force Majeur". I have never seen Eddie before, but he is a true comedy hero of mine, up there with Billy Connolly and to see him in what I insist on calling The Gregg Jevin Memorial Room (ie a room with about 140 seats) is much more exciting than seeing him in a massive arena.

I left the house at 930 as I had arranged to meet my friend in The Soho Theatre bar at 1015pm. I thought it best to get there early in order to try and secure a good seat, but I guess in this room all seats are pretty close to the stage. We bumped into Rob Sedgebeer and his lovely lady and settled down to watch the show.

Eddie announced that there would be an opening act.A German comedian. Of course I instantly assumed it would be Henning Wehn. Eddie announced Michael Mittermeyer to the stage. I had never heard of him before and he had a few good lines, but most of the material was pretty hack, with talk of Germans getting to sun loungers first and the fact that the German language sounds aggressive rather than sexy. Things took a turn for the worst when speaking about the Beijing Olympics, which involved him speaking in a "comedy" Chinese accent for an extended period of time, which just ended his set uncomfortably. I had trusted Eddie to introduce us to someone amazing, but he let us down. I've never said this about any comic on this blog, but as I plan on avoiding seeing any more of his gigs in the future, I will. He was awful.

After a very short break, it was time for Eddie to take the stage. Now this is the embarrassing but of the blog. I thought I had written this and posted it 2 months ago. Turns out I hadn't. So I can't remember very much so the main part is going to be a little truncated.

He started a little unsure, as a lot of this was new material. I can't remember a great deal of it, but there was a fantastic truly improvised piece about opera singers microphone technique which made him laugh a lot as well as us. There was another part that I had seen before about the tigers massacring the animals on Noah's Ark. That's pretty much my memory of the gig. Sorry about that. Then we left into the cold dark night and had to get a night bus home as all the tubes were shut.