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[from newsandstar.co.uk]

Forty three marathons. 1,100 miles. Undertaken after just five weeks of training by a 47-year-old comedian.

Whichever way you look at it, Eddie Izzard’s fundraising epic for Sport Relief was hugely impressive and inspirational.

A recent three-part series on BBC3, condensed into a one-hour version on BBC1, gave a fascinating insight into his trek last summer.

Eddie’s adventure took him through Cumbria and the documentary covered much of this in some depth.

He struggled over mountain passes and did a stand-up show at Theatre by the Lake in Keswick and visited the Outward Bound centre at Ullswater, which brought back fond memories of a childhood holiday. But Carlisle was conspicuous by its absence.

One minute, Eddie was trudging up a dauntingly steep hill on the A6 between Penrith and Carlisle.

The next, we saw a caption saying ‘Carlisle’, marking the end of that day’s run. But there were no crowds or brass bands to herald his arrival.

The News & Star journalist who ran with Eddie for part of his journey recalls him entering the city up Botchergate before making his way through the centre and up to Scotland Road with little or no ceremony.

But it’s not too late to show your appreciation for his remarkable endeavour. Donations are still being accepted at www.comicrelief.com/donate/eddie

[from the New Statesman]

The other evening I saw Eddie Izzard, the celebrated Jack-and-Jill of all theatrical trades, complete 43 nearly consecutive marathon runs. Obviously I didn’t witness him doing this in the flesh – it took him 50 days – rather, I sat in a well-upholstered chair in the desiccated warmth of my own home and watched his astonishing feat on television.

I witnessed Izzard jiggling along the verges of arterial roads, I watched him serving ice creams to fans from his special van, and then, as the long miles began to take their inevitable, crippling toll, I looked on while he writhed in agony beneath the competent hands of his sports therapist, Jo, as she massaged his legs on the unsettling coverlets of mid-price provincial hotels.

For infinitesimal moments I wondered why it was that Izzard chose to stumble-stump for day after day within inches of lorries vomiting fumes – but of course, I knew the answer: if he had gone off-road, it would have been impossible for his support crew of vans and rickshaws to remain with him, filming every pace of this very modern odyssey. On the one occasion when he did divert along a canal towpath, Izzard had to film his own progress using his camera-phone, wonky footage that duly ended up in the finished documentary.
Gorilla tactics

Still, there was a grim fascination to the tale, the watching of which was itself a kind of endurance – I mean to say, he was mad to be doing it, and I was equally deranged to be watching him doing it, when there were thousands of things more profitable and enjoyable I could have been doing. There were further parallels between Izzard and I; while he was proximately solo – the only transvestite comedian to be running 43 consecutive marathons – in the wider scheme of things he was part of a crowded field, for not a day goes by without some celebrity or other embarking on
a punishing go-round.

Nor is it the notorious alone who do such things; the great commonality of our nation – if such a thing exists at all – often appears to me to be bound together by nothing so much as a bizarre collective impulse to run, jump and skip about the place, usually en masse, preferably while dressed up as gorillas and waving little flags. From an anthropological perspective, an observer would be forced to conclude that if these inutile and painful exertions have any purpose at all, it must be a sacred one.

Such an alien philosophe would be right. There was a religious impulse driving Izzard on his round-Britain hobble, the same one that drags the rest of the Volk sportlich out on to the highways and byways: charity sponsorship. Sponsorship is the alpha and omega of contemporary beneficence – its sole commandment: Thou Shalt Sponsor (and be sponsored).
Sponsored fun

Do it, because not to do it is to be marked out as someone who is, ipso facto, both mean and mean-spirited – because it’s fun, isn’t it? Fun for the fundraisers, and fun for those for whom the funds have been raised. Fun even for the fund donors, for they can join vicariously in these noble achievements while funnily toggling their mobile phones so as to donate.

But what is sponsorship, really? My late mother was wont to observe that if people really want to help, say, dementia sufferers (as Izzard did), why don’t they do a sponsored bedpan emptying, or Complan-feeding, thereby killing two birds with one altruistic stone? The answer is that, by and large, the people who solicit sponsorship couldn’t give a toss about the eventual use of this money. It’s a colossal displacement activity, this charity sponsorship lark, for if all these kilojoules of energy were geared to the commonweal, we’d be living in a far happier and more equitable society.

Moreover, charity-sponsored events tranquilise those unquiet spirits who might question the prevailing status quo. Worse still, the activities that are sponsored decouple achievement from the realm of the meaningful. In place of martial prowess, we substitute speed-eating Melton Mowbray pork pies; in lieu of discovering new worlds, we pogo-stick along the M62; instead of agonisingly bringing news of a crushing naval defeat by the Persians just the once, Izzard scrapes his soles over the bitumen again and again – ad tedium, and ad nauseum.

Added RADIO TIMES INTERVIEW (.pdf) to Eddie’s Sport Relief page and Articles page.

> SUPPORT EDDIE & DONATE TO SPORT RELIEF

[thanks Beth!]

Amazon.uk has started taking PRE-ORDERS for Eddie’s newest book:

Eddie Izzard is to write a book about his 1,110-mile run around Britain, in a publishing deal worth ‘a very significant’ six-figure sum. The book – due out in September – promises to examine his motivations for running 43 consecutive marathons, as well as describing his reactions to the places he visited en route.

This is from comedynews.org

Eddie Izzard is to write a book about his 1,110-mile run around Britain, in a publishing deal worth ‘a very significant’ six-figure sum. The book – due out in September – promises to examine his motivations for running 43 consecutive marathons, as well as describing his reactions to the places he visited en route.

[from conventrytelegraph.net]

THE agony of everyexploding blister and every aching muscle was written across Eddie Izzard’s face in Marathon Man … and still he kept running.

His challenge was to run an incredible 43 marathons in 51 days for Sport Relief notching up more than 1,000 miles along the way.

The popular comedian had never done a marathon before, but undeterred he took the road and began running.

Eddie soon discovered the pain of the long distance runner as blisters began popping up and his legs started to struggle with the challenge of clocking up miles every day.
The experts told him to walk up the hills, to take a rest when necessary, but Eddie wasn’t having any of it. He was relentless even when it was plain to see he was
totally exhausted at times.

“The positive thing about today,” he said lying wearily in the back of the support van, “is ….? There’s nothing positive about today.”

Eddie Izzard: Marathon Man on BBC 3 captured Eddie as he kept going and
going in all weathers and conditions.

It was hard to watch as he struggled in the early stages, but then Eddie seemed to find the physical and mental energy to push ahead with his challenge.

He put up messages on Twitter along the way, was welcomed by passers-by …
and never stopped.

It seemed an impossible challenge, but steady Eddie got the job done.

[from denofgeek.com]

Normally on Den Of Geek, we plan what we’re to write about, but I just couldn’t help myself in spouting about this well hidden nugget of British TV. Eddie Izzard is a unique personality who has successfully combined acting and being a stand-up comedian, but a sportsman he’s not. So it’s with some degree of incredulity that I tuned into BBC Three to watch the first of three documentary episodes where, for the charity Sport Relief, he sets out to become an extreme athlete.

In the first of three portions he starts his running career in London with the objective to run to an old family home, with bitter memories, in Wales. The terrifying reality is that Eddie has committed to run more than a marathon’s distance six days out of seven, a horrific total of 43 in just 51 days. He attempts this with just a few weeks’ training and no history of running! It’s obvious from the outset that the future for Eddie involves pain and personal sacrifice of a nature that most of us will never actually experience.

The shock, and I don’t think this is a giveaway, is that Eddie might be a transvestite, but there is nothing ‘girly’ about his determination. Beneath that amiable exterior he’s a man of steel.

Adding to his adventure are a support team of people, some there to capture his initially awkward running style and torturous feet-repair sequences, others drive his accompanying ice cream van and provide other means of practical or moral support. They all seem very nice people, but it’s also plain to see that they’ve met in a pub beforehand and rationalised that Eddie isn’t fit or marathon ready and is a ‘comedian’. And, as such, if he gets through the first of the 43 days on the road it will be a miracle, and any more are highly unlikely.

Some of the giveaways to this are things like the battery-assisted tricycle they bring along to film him, which after a few days has entirely flat batteries – like they’d assumed it wouldn’t need to go that far.

They also, as things get tough (and they get tough very quickly), keep trying to offer him ‘outs’ which, frustratingly, Eddie almost entirely refuses to take.

I was massively impressed by his determination, given that I’d be dead in a gutter before I’d got out of earshot of Big Ben. One day turns into two, into three, into six. Eventually he gets a ‘rest day’, which is tempered by the information that he’ll need to walk 15 miles on that day just to stop his legs seizing up entirely.

As an interesting extra dimension to the athletic challenge, Eddie also runs to the home in Wales where, as a small child, he had the traumatic experience of his mother dying. This isn’t presented in an overly sentimental way, but in more of the context that, as we all get older, we’re often drawn to connect with powerful events from the past, even painful ones.

The first episode ends entirely implausibly with Eddie having ten Marathon distances under his belt and even more pain on the horizon. If his courage doesn’t make you want to sponsor him, I’m not sure what might. My only concern is that the BBC decided to relegate this to the relative viewer-free pastures of BBC Three, which makes me wonder what it is exactly Eddie would need to do to justify a BBC One or Two slot? Those that made that scheduling decision should be forced to repeat his challenge, I’d suggest.

Episode two is on at 10:30pm BBC Three on Thursday, and I’ll be tuning in to see Eddie run….

[from herald.ie]

Eddie Izzard is in the British Olympic medical centre, telling a doctor he plans to run a marathon a day, six days a week, for seven weeks — a round trip of 1,166 miles through England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland in aid of Sport Relief.

“I’ve run before,” Eddie tells him, “but mainly for buses.” Ha-ha! This is Eddie Izzard, after all, brilliant stand-up comedian, accomplished actor and also a transvestite more used to treading the boards in high heels than pounding the roads in trainers.

No, but seriously, what running has he done? “When I was a kid I ran around a bit in the playground. I think I was built for running,” says Eddie, who looks like he was built for lying on a sofa.

Ha-ha! And how long has he been training?

Three weeks. A professional athlete would normally take nine months to prepare for a feat like this, so how long has Eddie got? Five weeks. The doctor puts down his pen and turns to the camera crew: “Is this for real?”

But it is for real.

Five weeks later, having been whipped by his trainer, Dr Greg Whyte, into the best possible shape a tubbyish, 47-year-old man with no running experience can be, Eddie sets off from Trafalgar Square for his first 26.2-mile stretch, English flag in hand, accompanied by the camera crew and the medical team, travelling in an ice-cream van and a battery-powered rickshaw.

Eddie’s running technique is as digressive as his comedy act. He stops off to sightsee, nips into a shop to buy a Calippo and admires some ducks.

Nine miles in, his stop-start routine catches up with him as old injuries begin to flare up. But he makes it to the end, slowly, in 10 gruelling hours.

By the end of the second day, his legs are already seizing up and there are blisters on his feet. The medic lances them, gives him painkilling injections and fits orthopaedic inner soles to his trainers to compensate for his flat feet.

He looks mentally and physically exhausted by the third day.

This is no vanity-driven celebrity star trek. Eddie’s in agony all the time. The blisters become infected and he strips a long tendon in his right leg.

His manager, though, knows he will carry on. “He has no fear,” she says. “He’s walked the New York subway in six-inch heels.”

Eddie perks up when he’s joined for a few miles by a 72-year-old athlete who ran across America in 64 days straight.

Everyone, this man says, runs to prove something to themselves. For Eddie, charity aside, the goal on this first leg seems to be to reach the house in Wales he shared with his mother, who died when he was six.

When he does, it’s a moving moment, full of happy and sad memories.

It seems to regenerate him, driving him on through the Brecon Beacons, a punishing series of steep hills. Episode one leaves him nine marathons in, his brain and body at last beginning to click together.

There’s a lot of running ahead, but this is a terrific piece of television, funny, touching and genuinely inspiring, and worth every painful step. Go, Eddie!

[from the Guardian]

Documentary about comedian’s 43 marathons in 51 days for Sport Relief attracts 665,000 viewers

BBC3’s documentary about Eddie Izzard’s 43 marathons in 51 days for Sport Relief was watched by 665,000 people last night, Thursday 4 March.

Eddie Izzard: Marathon Man had a 4.8% share of the audience between 10.30pm and 11.30pm, according to unofficial overnight figures.

It beat ITV2’s American Idol, which had 316,000 viewers (2.3%) between 10.30pm and 11.30pm, but was narrowly beaten by the second half of a new episode of Skins on E4, which averaged 678,000 viewers (3.8%) between 10pm and 11pm.

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