Cake or Death's Groovy News

[from the Telegraph]

David Kerr, the Scottish National Party candidate and the closest challenger to Labour’s Willie Bain, has admitted he is behind but claimed the gap is closing.

But the main threat to a Labour victory is its traditional, elderly support in the seat failing to turn out, with wintry weather forecast for Thursday.

To counter voter apathy, Gordon Brown has also written to 4,000 households in the constituency, which has been held by Labour for 74 years, urging them to support Mr Bain.

Meanwhile, the Tories, Liberal Democrats and the British National Party are locked in a battle for third place, along with John Smeaton, who helped foil the Glasgow Airport terror attack in 2007.

The contest was triggered by the resignation of Michael Martin, the former Speaker and now Lord Martin of Springburn, who had been the local MP since 1979.

Despite the furore over the expenses scandal that prompted him to stand down, loyalty to him and Labour runs deep in large pockets of the seat, one of the most impoverished in the country.

He won a majority of more than 10,000 in the 2005 general election, but only the SNP of the mainstream political parties stood against him.

Mr Izzard, who was performing in the city as part of a nationwide stand-up tour, joined Labour’s get-out-the-vote effort in a surprise visit to Mr Bain’s campaign headquarters.

“He tells me the last days of a campaign are always the most important so I wanted to lend my support,” said the comedian and actor.

“His campaign team have been busy stuffing envelopes and doing all the other things for polling day. I know by-elections are always close but I wish Willie all the luck in the world.”

Mr Bain said: “It’s a great boost for morale and a great way to go into the last 24 hours. This election is going to be close and I will be fighting for every vote to ensure we have a local voice that stands up for our area.”

Senior Labour sources said they fear turnout could be as low as 25 per cent, less than the previous Scottish low of 38 per cent in the Glasgow Anniesland by-election in 2000.

To motivate the party’s traditional support to vote, Mr Brown sent a typed letter to households, a tactic he used in Labour’s successful Glenrothes by-election campaign last year.

“I pledge to you that I will do all it takes to save jobs, rebuild our economy, and make sure Glasgow is not left out of the recovery,” he wrote.

“All politicians have to make choices and choose priorities. Our priority is to help people back to work and get our country back on track.”

He paid tribute to Mr Bain and attacked the decision of the SNP administration in Edinburgh to cancel a £170 million rail link between Glasgow’s city centre and airport.

Alex Salmond, the SNP leader and First Minister, was also due to join the final day of campaigning, along with Jim Murphy, the Scottish Secretary, and Douglas Alexander, the International Development Secretary.

[from People.com]

The comic shares all in his documentary Believe and talks about doing standup in venues the size of Madison Square Garden.

VIDEO LINK

(thanks Beth!)

[from thisissouthwales.co.uk]

SOME comics crack great jokes, but few create a style which becomes so imitated that it becomes mainstream. But such has been the success of Eddie Izzard’s rambling, whimsical monologues, that he has effortlessly conquered America having first spent years charming the pants of audiences in the UK.

So it is no surprise to see the size of the audience which packs an arena more usually used by rock bands, or the warmth of his reception.

Standing alone on a stage, with shirt, jeans and what appears like a ringmaster’s jacket favoured over something more usually found in a woman’s wardrobe, his patter is predictably relaxed and familiar. Themes recur, as he takes us through a journey through time. Dismissing an omnipotent god – or more particularly slavish followers of a bible written by man – he begins when dinosaurs ruled the earth, painting a typically Izzardesque scenario of a church service with a tyrannosaurs rex pastor reading the sermon. His historical timeline rushes us through ancient Greece and Egypt, with a rattle through the complexity of Latin (another familiar theme), before considering the Bayeux Tapestry and making a convincing argument that weavers were clearly the photo journalists of their time.

The internet is acclaimed and dismissed, and Hannibal and the elephants once again finds a place in his routine, before the ten commandments are considered – coveting a neighbour’s ox attracting particularly nonplussed speculation.

Other characteristically random images include feral cows, good sharks responsibly caring for a lost child, and farmyard animals forming a cool jazz band.

He still has the touch for lines which you suspect will follow lines such as ‘Cake or Death’ into popular parlance – his confident delivery is such that for a few minutes” badgers can’t be choosers” seems an entirely plausible consideration.

Cardiff clearly holds him in reverence, and he departs with a (very brief) nod to his time spent growing up in Skewen. Still reeling from his idiosyncratic flights of fancy, for a fleeting moment we enjoy the notion that this still very special talent is as one of ours.

[from the Argus]

Top comedian Eddie Izzard returns to the town of his childhood to re-open a museum.

He will cut the ribbon at Bexhill Museum on Thursday, November 26 after a ten year fight to transform the 95-year-old building.

The £2million-plus project has been made possible by a £900,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, £700,000 from Rother District Council and £250,000 from the Society of Bexhill Museums plus other donations.

Since its “soft” opening in July the museum has been attracting record attendances.

Eddie is patron of the museum.

Comedian Eddie Izzard will perform at 8 p.m. Jan. 9, 2010 at the Fox Theatre. The show is part of his “Big Intimacy” tour.

Tickets are $38-$73, on sale at 10 a.m. Nov. 16 at MetroTix outlets, www.metrotix.com, 314-534-1111, and at the box office.

Presale tix on sale NOW…password: BEES

(thanks Beth!)

[from Wales Online.co.uk]

Eddie Izzard is giving Hollywood stardom a rest while he returns to touring his stand-up. He talks to Gavin Allen about strategic transvestitism and the potential of arena comedy.

EDDIE Izzard has been in ‘boy mode’ so long that America can hardly believe he’s a transvestite.

While cultivating his film and TV career in Los Angeles he made the decision to tone down his wardrobe, and the strategy has served him well.

He landed the lead role in HBO series The Riches, as well as film roles alongside the likes of Tom Cruise in Valkyrie.

“I believed that if I had turned up for the auditions for The Riches or Valkyrie in make- up and a dress, I would not get the roles,” he says.

But as a result, the flip side of this approach is that the Eddie Izzard America knows is perhaps a less colourful character than the one we cherish here, although he certainly isn’t hiding himself.

“I tell everyone I’m a transvestite over and over again,” he says, baffled by the flipped logic of the situation.

“I insist and I beg people to believe it on TV (interviews) and I never thought that I would be on TV begging people to believe I’m a transvestite.

“But I am being strategic about this. I’ve been in boy mode for the last few years, but I know I can be in girl mode if I want to.

“If I wanted to, I could throw on a dress right now and if I went out in the street and people insulted me, then I would insult them back.

“ I would know what to do. It’s all still there. It’s in my toolbox. I am a card-carrying transvestite. Always have been, always will be.

“The thing is, if you are a straight transvestite like me, you have all this boy stuff going on – mainly boy stuff in fact – as well as the girly stuff.

I like football.

“I was going to join the Army when I was younger.

“And I just ran 43 marathons, which is not a terribly girlie thing to do.”

Oh yes, the marathons.

His marathon of marathons in fact. Izzard recently completed 43 marathons in 51 days for Sport Relief on a route which took him back to parts of Wales where he grew up; Neath, Porthcawl and Swansea.

How long did it take him to recover from the feat?

“It wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be,” he says. I didn’t really run for about eight days. But that was it. I was fine.”

Tonight he finds himself back in Wales for the first of three dates at Cardiff International Arena with his Stripped tour.

We now have a steady production line of arena comedy shows, but it was Izzard who started the trend, and while some rail that comedy gets lost in such cavernous rooms, he argues performers simply aren’t doing it right yet.

“Six years ago, I did the first arena tour of the UK and that was a little scary because I didn’t know what I would be dealing with,” he says.

“People will say it’s not intimate, but I’m doing smaller shows too on this tour and if people don’t want to watch it there, then don’t watch it there.

“But I definitely think it’s a good thing. It makes it more of an event. And why should rock and roll get all the arena shows?

“The only way to get good at arena gigs is to do loads of them.

“If you think of the first ever arena gig, when The Beatles did Shea Stadium in 1965, it was a crap gig. Great band, great event but a crap gig because you couldn’t hear anything.

But look at what U2 are doing in stadiums now.

“People have had to learn how to play stadium gigs in music.

“And comedy has to go through the same thing, we just have to work out how to play arenas.

“No-one bats an eyelid when bands play arenas and if it’s a good thing for bands it’s a good thing for comedy.”

Eddie Izzard is at the CIA tonight and on November 19 and 20. Tickets cost £30 from 029 2022 4488.

[from Liverpool Echo]

COMEDIAN Eddie Izzard is quite an enigma off stage, but now along with the whole dressing up in women’s clothes thing there’s another fact Insider knows about him … he’s a massive Beatles fan.

The surreal funnyman made the most of a sold-out weekend arena gig in Liverpool to visit the Beatles Story at the Albert Dock with a female partner and three friends.

And according to our sources he was so fascinated by the Fab Four tourist attraction that he spent best part of three hours in there before spending a hefty £205 in the gift shop.

Our spy adds that Eddie was charming to everyone he met, especially two of the staff who admitted they were fans.

“One, a student, told him she hadn’t been able to get tickets for the Sunday night show so he gave her a pair.”

[from the Evening Press]

MARATHON-RUNNING comic Eddie Izzard has jogged from Stonehaven to Aberdeen – before performing a gig.

The popular comedian hit went for a refreshing 20-mile run before he strode out on to the stage in Aberdeen.

And the Evening Express followed his progress, speaking to him as he raced through the countryside.

Eddie – who recently completed 43 marathons in 51 days to raise money for Sport Relief – set off from Stonehaven and headed along the A90, alongside the dual carriageway into Aberdeen through the harbour area and to the beach.

[from Northernecho.co.uk]

AS a one time devotee of the surreal ramblings of the self-confessed “action transvestite”, it pains me to say that Eddie Izzard’s latest live show in a long time did not leave me rolling in the aisles.

I discovered him through a friend on a VHS cassette back in the Nineties in my student digs, and became a massive fan of his weird disjointed sets that featured talking squirrels and a groovy world view.

Friends would quote lines from his shows verbatim to the hilarity of others and, no doubt, the tedium of many others nearby.

But since then, we have gone our separate ways; he did Hollywood films and US telly, and I watched other stand-ups.

Maybe the problem is that he thinks we can just pick up where we left off.

But I’m now over the complexity of Latin grammar, nonsensical world history and badgers with guns filled with jam.

Okay, I’ll admit some of his mimes are still works of genius and conjure up delightfully funny images. Photojournalists of their days stitching the battle of Hastings in the Bayeux Tapestry cracked me up.

But what did it for me was T-shirts in the foyer with “I’m covered in bees” slogans on, exploiting an old routine about how terrified beekeepers must feel when they realise what it is they actually do for a living.

Such blatant mainstream commercialism.

There are some charming moments in Stripped that explores the existence of God, the history of man and is pure Izzard in the sense that he still has that magic of yore.

But it appears to have dated very badly and you get the impression it is nothing you have not already seen before.

[from Liverpool Echo]

EDDIE Izzard is nothing if not ambitious.

Not only does his show, Stripped, attempt to cover history since the world began thousands of millions of years ago, but he’s also now performed it to thousands, maybe millions across the globe.

You can add another few thousand in Liverpool over the weekend, with the arena boasting an all but full house on Saturday alone.

They gave Izzard a pop star welcome.

And he responded with a two-hour stream of consciousness which took the audience if not on the road to Damascus then at least on a journey of, at times, weird and wonderful discovery.

I make the Biblical allusion because the Middle East-born Izzard is clear about one thing – he doesn’t believe in God.

As he argued persuasively: if there was a God “surely he’d have flicked Hitler’s head off.”

What Izzard does believe in is do to others as you would be done by. Oh, and Wikipedia.

Moving restlessly around the large stage in his jeans and showman’s tailcoat, the Izzard stream of consciousness leapt from computers to dinosaurs to the creator of the Bayeaux tapestry (the front line photo-journalists of the Battle of Hastings) to feral cows and Spartan ninja sheep.

Then there are Moses’ 10 commandments which included “don’t put your knees up on the hot part of a tractor”.

Sometimes you just have to be there.

Izzard’s style of surreal humour is rather like that of a small boy giddy on E numbers and showing off in front of an audience of adults. He’s forever in search of approval but the naughty side means he can’t help spiralling off on increasingly madcap flights of fancy.

It’s an approach that can lead to extremely clever wordplay and images – such as his inspired definition of opera as “rich people watching large people being shaken by small people”.

But it also makes his show uneven, and he relies too much on mugging mime and (eventually) laboured repetition of imagery which gets a laugh – dogs kneading bread dough for example – to carry him on to the next moment of improvised inspiration.

Luckily for Izzard fans there were still plenty of those to enjoy.