Cake or Death's Groovy News

[from SAFC.com]

Comedian and actor Eddie Izzard has supported the Sunderland 2018 bid claiming the club’s facilities stand-up to the best in the world.

Funny-man Izzard was recently in the North-East as part of his 31-date UK tour and was more than keen to visit the Academy of Light in Sunderland after rediscovering football last year.

Izzard had recently completed an exceptional goal, running 43 marathons in just 51 days to raise money for Sport Relief, leading to him having an extra interest in sport and fitness.

Whilst at the Academy of Light, Izzard met with Niall Quinn and the Club’s Head of Medicine to discuss training methods in regards to his marathon runs as well as talk football.

Izzard was keen to learn about Niall’s playing past as well as talk about Sunderland’s 2018 World Cup Bid. The comedian said: “These facilities are superb, I cannot believe how much goes on behind the scenes here.

“I love visiting the north east because of the people and it would be great to see the World Cup come to England.”

Niall Quinn also commented: “I went to see Eddie perform and he was fantastic. If we get the World Cup to Sunderland he will have to come and help make it a great party!”

Eddie Izzard joins a long list of celebrities who have backed Sunderland’s 2018 Bid including Steve Cram, Paul Collingwood, Calendar Girls star Tricia Stewart, boxer Tony Jefferies as well as football teams across the region including Middlesbrough, Hartlepool, Darlington and Carlisle United.

Football fanatics, businesses and residents can still show their support for Sunderland’s 2018 Bid by logging onto www.sunderland2018bid.com

[from Liverpool Daily Post]

IT’S a strange vision of history that Eddie Izzard evokes from his place on a stage set of fake stone walls inscribed with hieroglyphics, Arabic and Ancient Greek.

In a show that aims to cover “everything that happened in this world” he takes a helter skelter of a journey from the creation of the Earth to the time of Moses, not forgetting the boring but very long bit in the middle when there were no people.

Moses struggles with his Commandments (3. Thou shalt not brush your teeth with cream for your ears), Noah makes a mistake with his two by twos and only the tigers, lions and a single squirrel survive the Ark, and the Nazis invent Scrabble to be mean to children with dyslexia.

Izzard continues to demonstrate his ability for languages with sketches in Stone Age speak, pidgin Latin and even dinosaur. He swaps Hannibal’s elephants for ostriches, declares the Bayeux tapestry makers the photojournalists of the 11th century and tries to make God disappear in a puff of fuzzy logic.

It’s typical Izzard, with surreal tales, plenty of physical comedy and characters that all come together at the end – on the moon, with a giant squid.

It’s all new material, with a nod to the past – “covered in bees” anyone? – and he’s as energetic and likeable as ever.

The only drawback is that he’s now become so much of an institution that his comedy lacks the factor of surprise. We expect it to be ridiculous and brilliant all at the same time, and it doesn’t disappoint but nor does it really astound.

Still, given that he’s been doing the Stripped show on tour for a year now it’s impressive that it still feels so fresh. And you get the feeling that although he had the entire Echo Arena in his pocket, he would have been happy enough performing just for his own amusement.

[from journallive.co.uk]

It’s been more than a year since Eddie Izzard returned to the land of stand-up following a five-year film-making, TV-writing hiatus.

And at the end of last week, his Tyneside fans finally got to see Stripped, the show which hailed his return. His double date with the Metro Radio Arena followed the show’s long run in the US, a residency in the West End and then a bit of a break while Eddie ran 43 marathons in 51 days for Sport Relief (including a rainy day run over the Tyne Bridge in September).

For his latest show, the nation’s favourite action transvestite has put the heels and the skirt on the back burner. This is probably a sensible shoe choice, since the show offers a journey through civilisation from the Stone Age to space travel… touching on lots of what went on in between. In the beginning of the show, Izzard announces he has come to the conclusion that there is no God… and he uses the next two hours to prove it, with the help of a string of animal, historical and even human organ characters, delivered in a succession of his signature – and wonderfully absurd – roleplays.

The recurring yanky squirrel and trumpet-playing chicken, together with a frustrated appendix all deserve special mentions… as does the panic-stricken Giraffe trying to communicate the arrival of a tiger to his mates via the medium of ‘Give Us A Clue’, his take on the stories of Noah and Moses and the Spartan soldier who sacrifices himself on a 20ft Grecian spear and lives to lament. A Latin-laden section also had me laughing my little soccos off.

Oh, how we’d missed him.

Eddie has announced that as part of his current Stripped European stand up tour he will appear at The Tivoli Theatre Wimborne on 24th Nov.

Tickets go on sale at 10.30am on Mon 2nd Nov. For tickets call 01202 885566 or visit www.tivoliwimborne.co.uk

Check out some awesome photos by Alfie Hitchcock who’s on tour with Eddie. He’s posting photos on his TWITTER account…

Photos of just Eddie are posted HERE.

[from Liverpool Echo]

EDDIE Izzard is musing, not untypically, on the existence or otherwise of the meaning of life.

“I don’t know,” he considers, “if there is one or not. But I do believe that you only get one life and you have to live it. That’s what I believe.”

He’s attempting to explain just why it is that his career, now 22 years in the making, has more facets than most.

REST OF ARTICLE (with pictures)

[from the times.co.uk]

Having devoted the best part of the autumn to undertaking a 1,100 mile jog around the UK – some 43 runs in 51 days – Eddie Izzard would be forgiven for putting his feet up and congratulating himself on his fund-raising good deeds for Sport Relief. But, no, marathon man is already up and about, rambling for Britain in a touring version of Stripped, the stand-up show he premiered last winter in the West End. You might expect to see a few pained hobbles. Yet here he is, bouncing about in a discreetly outlandish combination of jeans, stripey shirt and ringmaster’s black tail-jacket – the puppyish picture of zing and zest.

Erring on the side of modesty, Izzard only briefly alludes to his ordeal. “I did this run recently which was just to lose weight. It was a bit insane,” he concedes, in that drawly, muttery, posh-urchin way of his, before suggesting that we could all do it because our ancestors were forever running back and forth, hunting and gathering, and being chased by bears.

I’m paraphrasing here, of course. Once Izzard, 47, is in full flow, you can only dash after his quicksilver train of imagination, making incomplete notes. The overarching conceit of the evening, underpinned by much mock-erudition, is that there’s no plan in the universe.

We’re given a wilfully idiosyncratic beginner’s guide to creation, evolution, the emergence of civilisation and so on, all of it pointing to one conclusion, which is that we’re on our own, and we just have to make the best of it.

If you can quarrel with Izzard’s underlying faith in human nature to succeed where religion fails (“Don’t believe in God, believe in us”), there’s little disputing that his surrealistic, scattershot musings betray the divinity of comic genius.

Among myriad highlights, there’s his notion (apropos the dullness of farming) of wedging a trumpet on a chicken’s face – to create a “jazz chicken”, the enactment of a Roman soldier deliberately and pretend-delightedly impaling himself on the spear of an advancing Greek phalanx, and his evocation of a giraffe, signalling, by means of charades, the approach of a tiger.

Yes, seeing him in a stadium, his every move video-relayed, can be like watching a giant TV, but the warmth, lust for life and sheer swaggering pizzazz of this eternally boyish jester transcend the sterility of the occasion.

After 25 years of perfecting his burbling personality, Eddie has become entertainment incarnate.

[from whatsonne.co.uk]

NEXT year’s Great North Run could have a new celebrity face in the running pack, in the shape of Eddie Izzard.

The comedian told the Chronicle today he would consider taking part in the event – having successfully run 1,200 miles around the UK for Sport Relief. That’s 43 marathons in 51 days.

“I’ve never done an organised one, so that is something I must do,” says Eddie, who is at the Metro Radio Arena in Newcastle on Thursday and Friday next week.

“Never say never, so you may see me there. I am certainly keeping up my training and doing two marathons a week.”

Eddie admitted he was absolutely exhausted after his nationwide trek – which raised more than £200,000 for Sport Relief – ended last month.

“It was good to do, it was very tough. I didn’t really enjoy the running, but I enjoyed the stopping.

“Towards the end, I got more into the running. I knew I could do it without it being too hellish. The pain had cut down. the first two weeks were very painful and after that it got less painful.

“To see people happy to come out and run with me. It was wonderful. A very primal thing.”

I suggest it was a huge undertaking for him, but Eddie replies: “I think anyone could do it. No- one has really tried it that much so, if motivated enough, then you would do it. If you were being chased by a bear, you would do it!

“The motivation in the head is very important. It was so tiring and knackering, though, and initially the shredding in my feet was terrible. You get used to it. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

Eddie recently broke box office records by selling out a five-week residency in London’s West End in less than 48 hours.

With bootleg tickets changing hands for thousands of pounds, Stripped was indisputably the must- have tickets on both sides of the Atlantic, coming hot on the heels of an American sell-out tour which played across 34 US cities – including three packed out nights at New York’s legendary Radio City Music Hall.

Stripped arrived at the Lyric theatre, where the live DVD – out on November 23 – was filmed and played to overwhelming critical acclaim. The show sees Eddie back at his very best.

It comes to the Toon complete with a fleet of Stripped trucks, three LED screens, nine set screens and sky trackers.

In January next year, he will become only the fourth comedian ever to play Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Eddie has been hailed as one of the foremost stand-ups of his generation.

He takes ideas and situations and extrapolates them into bizarre, tangential, absurd and surreal comic narratives.

Since his first stage appearance on London’s West End in 1993, there have been a succession of sell-outs and critically-acclaimed international tours.

His musings have earned him countless awards, including two Emmys. While initially renowned as a comedian, he is now equally respected as a film, theatre and TV actor.

Earlier this year, he shared the big screen with Tom Cruise in Valkyrie and, over Christmas, he will star opposite Joely Richardson and Dougray Scott in the BBC’s remake of Day of the Triffids.

Of Stripped, he says: “I did the five weeks in London as an archetype of what I am now doing in arena.

“I wanted to make sure the material was in a good place.

“I’m looking forward to Triffids coming out. A great cast and great story. I really enjoyed doing it – I play a charismatic sociopath.

“Filmed drama is such a long time before you see what you have done. Valkyrie took a year and a half – it is so different to what you get doing stand-up.”

Eddie has announced that as part of his current Stripped European stand up tour he will appear at The University of Sheffield Drama Studio on Oct27th.

Tickets go on sale at noon on Fri 23rd Oct. For tickets visit:
http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/user/?region=gb_northeast&query=detail&event=355109

Oh and here’s a pic of one of five vans that will be shlepping his arena stuff around:

The show, which tapes several months in advance, has already lined up its talent for the year – and this time a lot of them come from the United Kingdom. “We can get anyone British except the queen,” jokes Jean. “We have Eddie Izzard coming, we have Chris Martin from Coldplay and we have Sacha Cohen who plays an Israeli tour guide, who’s extremely angry. He was great. Really, really funny.”

FULL ARTICLE