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We’ve all had that experience of longing to see our favorite superstars in an up-close-and-personal format, possibly away from the bombast and glamour that comes with huge live shows or blockbuster movie performances. The real question, however, is whether we really ARE prepared to approach them in such an intimate setting, especially where most of the gusto and persona is shelved, or at least tuned downward, to reveal the human being that exists behind the fame and glory. We might find ourselves rather disarmed, or hopefully plenty intrigued, when our heros — be they musical, comedic, or of the silver screen — come and tell the tales of times less fortunate, the struggles they experienced, or their hopes and dreams that may be in an entirely unexpected avenue.

Also, when you’re Eddie Izzard, and you show up to San Francisco NOT in full transvestite regalia, you’ll probably throw some people off — but the crowd at this sold-out show at the Palace Of Fine Arts seemed to love every minute of this special opportunity to see the Yemen-born, English-raised, world-celebrated comedian in some of his most personal and self-expressive moments.

With a recently-released documentary about his life, Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story, and a few years of great cinematic appearances under his belt, it was fitting to start off Eddie’s tribute with a short reel of classic moments, which included his magnificent standup performances and several clips from films. When Eddie appeared onstage a few minutes later, accompanied by Arizonan comic host Greg Proops, his first comment was on one of those movie scenes — a dialogue between himself, George Clooney, and Brad Pitt in Ocean’s Twelve – and how fascinated he was by the fact that the script was immensely long for such a small scene with a minuscule amount of dialogue. Proops segued Eddie back towards the start of his story, of his time spent doing street performances and “imposing scenarios”, and the comic took the reigns strongly as he described the journey he had taken — moving from comedic scenes outdoors and in crowds to his own solo standup, and progressing through the London club scene, before his explosion into stardom in the late 1990s, and the first major revision of his act, in the form of spending time and money constructing sets and costumes, in order to really bring a “show” to his audiences.

Those who know of Eddie’s standup, which is both wildly observant and also hilariously tangential, would most likely be puzzled to see such a confident and bombastic performer drifting into gentle nostalgia and gleeful reminiscing. However, if any of the crowd was bothered by it, it never showed; Eddie could effortlessly hurtle around from a serious and dark moment in his early struggles into a jocular moment of self-deprecation, and would have the humor and whimsy of his well-known persona to back up any of his stranger tangents. A fly buzzing through the auditorium caught their eye and became the subject of a debate about free tickets for the show; an audience member shouting out about having seen some obscure piece of Eddie’s work shifted the conversation to point out the comic’s well-known style of muttering, mumbling passages. Even host Greg Proops, while normally rather quiet and solely diving in at key moments of inquiry, became an unsuspecting target for Eddie’s moments of sudden realization, and was hilariously lambasted for tripping over several perfectly normal, but apparently slightly tongue-twisting, misused English words and phrases.

One of the key subjects of the evening, which seemed to run through the entire conversation, was Eddie’s exploration of the world and its languages. Being a fascinated lover of words, pronunciations, and vocabulary in general, Eddie has taken a few of his shows and translated them into French, which was highly popular in the French comedy circuit that, according to his findings, boasts some 500-800 different clubs. The next languages on his list, due partially to their native countries, are German and Russian, and he mentioned making a possible stop in Katmandu in 2013 as part of a world tour of comedy. Language learning, apart from comedy, seemed to be one of Eddie’s greatest sources of joy, and as it is often mentioned in his standup acts, it was exciting to learn that his side-splitting diatribes about languages and their associated cultures was more than a very detailed sketch that he had prepared — he is a passionate linguaphile in the purest sense of the word.

Perhaps most exciting for the audience at this intimate gathering — apart from Eddie’s detailed account of his exciting new role as Long John Silver, or the few moments where he jumped into actual skits from his comedy shows — was the Q&A session presented at the end of the show. Two lines formed at either side of the crowd, allowing any who came up to the microphones their chance to ask Eddie whatever burning or intriguing questions they had for him. Eddie responded warmly, fully, and excitedly to all of his inquiries, and the fans were ecstatic about his reactions. He answered questions about working on his TV series The Riches, beginning his training and regular practice of marathon running, trying out English comedy in even more countries than even he though possible, lamenting the absence of comedic panel shows on American television, and speaking in detail about comedic styles that he enjoyed, tired of, and encouraged. It seemed that he was more than happy to take any and all attempts at conversation, as evidenced by his last inquirer, who conversed with him at length about Russia and the long-standing comics who perform there.

While the setting and content of tonight’s tribute might not have pleased some casual fans, who longed for a flamboyantly-dressed Englishman prancing from side to side of the stage and wondered why he was absent of makeup — even sporting facial hair — the assembled crowd seemed to be incredibly happy for a deeper and more intimate look at the world of Eddie Izzard, and the chance to share a casual and friendly evening with him. Having guessed that a good deal of persona and panache goes into Eddie’s standup, I was extremely excited to get a deeper look at the mind of this whimsical comedian, and was surprised but happy with what I discovered. The very humanized and soft-spoken Eddie Izzard is not something we’re often able to witness — especially in San Francisco, the city famous for his Emmy-winning breakout performance, the cult favorite Dressed To Kill — and was definitely a glowing gem in the treasure chest of Sketchfest shows this year.

ARTICLE: http://spinningplatters.com/2012/01/31/sketchfest-review-eddie-izzard-in-conversation-with-greg-proops-at-the-palace-of-fine-arts-1252012/

[from tiskin.com]

No ho ho! Or why Eddie Izzard”s not joking this Christmas…

On a cold Christmas night in Manchester, a drunk with a past finds a strange man lying next to the canal. His shirt says ‘I am called Antony’, but he doesn’t know who he is. So that’s where Eddie Izzard has been hiding.

The comedian, who has been quiet on the showbusiness front for the past couple of years (he has been running marathons for charity instead), will be back in force in the coming weeks.

He plays Long John Silver in the forthcoming Sky1 drama Treasure Island, but before that he is the mysterious Antony in BBC1 drama The Lost Christmas.

The 90-minute film is a co-production with CBBC and is made with older children in mind, but it contains very adult themes of loss.

There is a ten-year-old tearaway nicknamed Goose who lost both his parents the Christmas before, a couple who lost their daughter, a man who has lost his family and a doctor who has lost his wife.

The mysterious Antony unites them, but it is hard to work out who or what he is.

He can appear and vanish at will, has an array of amazing facts which spill out randomly as he talks and he has a magical ability to help people find what they were looking for.

‘It’s massive to be on television over Christmas,’ says Eddie, 49.

‘It is a bleak subject, but I think people are used to that at Christmas — look at Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol. Like them, this is a film about sacrifice and second chances.’

Ironically both Eddie and Larry Mills, who plays Goose, had a bigger understanding than many about loss, as both lost their mothers at a young age.

‘This is a family film but a lot of kids won’t get the themes of loss because they won’t have experienced it.

Curiously, Larry and his family, and my family, both had family losses,’ says Eddie.

‘That was a strange thing. I didn’t know how to broach it but it was definitely in there for both of us. This is a dramatic film, very much rooted in reality.’

This particular role is unusual for Eddie in that there is barely any comedy.

‘I love that there is no comedy,’ admits the star.

‘I played the character straight and that was fun in itself. He has no fear because he has no memory and that is interesting. It gives you an ethereal quality.’

The end has a twist which only one person in an audience of more than 500 people at the first screening of the drama was expecting.
But, thankfully, it restores a little bit of the magic of Christmas.

‘You have to have that,’ says Eddie. ‘You can’t be completely bleak at Christmas.’

The Lost Christmas is on BBC1 on Sunday at 5.30pm, and CBBC on Christmas Eve at 5.30pm.

> REVIEW HERE

[from thetimes.co.uk]

He drifted into comedy, found he had a flair for the dramatic, and now wants to enter politics. Eddie Izzard’s life is a marathon, not a sprint

> PHOTOS HERE

Eddie Izzard doesn’t really speak English, or at least not a version of it that cares for trifles like syntax. Take the following, for instance: “By the 1700s we’re kicking with the navy and to come to this sun and booze and women and gold if you’re going to be a villain in London why not be a villain on a boat, which is like, it’s like the Millennium Falcon, that’s what the Millennium Falcon I suppose is. I guess it’s Silver being the pirate, or at least a privateer, like Drake. So as long as we put that – that edge – in there then I sign for it.” This was Izzard’s verbatim response to a question I put to him in the small town of Ceiba, in Puerto Rico earlier this year, where he was filming Sky’s new adaptation of Treasure Island. I’d asked how he had come to be cast as the lead, Long John Silver.

Izzard is, of course, famous for his rambling, surreal and gleefully round-the-houses style of stand-up comedy. But in person he speaks very quietly, with little or no need for a listener. It’s tiring enough trying to follow him; it must be exhausting being him.

Not that he is someone who appears to be afraid of exhaustion. After running an astonishing 43 consecutive marathons for Comic Relief last year, the transvestite comedian and actor became a world-class endurance athlete as well. His is an almost wilfully disparate CV, seemingly bound together by nothing more than obsessiveness.

“I’ve got this weird baggage not only of coming from comedy but quite surreal, bonkers comedy – and also being a transvestite. When people say about someone, ‘He just keeps on going’, someone who is just relentless, that’s me. And I like that.” One morning, a few months ago, he realised he hadn’t done a marathon for a while. “I just thought, ‘I’ll do one now.’ So I went and did one. It took me six and a half hours.”

It’s no surprise that his reading of Treasure Island’s Long John Silver focuses on Silver’s pathological pursuit of his goal. Izzard says he wanted to make what he calls “a Goodfellas-y version” of Stevenson’s classic tale. The resulting two-parter is indeed pretty brutal for a supposed family film. “Silver will not stop. This guy is going to go back and get this money from the island – we worked out it was something like 300 million of today’s money. It’s got to be a fixation because you wouldn’t go all the way back there. He’s got to put a crew together, somehow insinuate that crew on to another ship, play both sides off against one another and find this map that he’s been trying to find for so bloody long.”

To help prepare himself for the role, Izzard built an assault course in the director Steve Barron’s house. He then went around it on one leg and a single crutch, endlessly, until Barron ordered him to stop.

It would be convenient to put this down to method, but Izzard is untrained, and anyway, it fits into a broader behavioural pattern. “That’s the thing that I think I can bring to any role – my determination mirrors that of any character I want to play.”
One thing strikes me over the course of my conversations with Izzard, both here in Ceiba, where, at one point Izzard waves towards the harbour where Silver’s vast pirate ship is anchored, and later, in London. I love Izzard’s comedy. But he doesn’t make me laugh once. Has the comedian been put away for the time being, along with the make-up and the women’s clothes? (Izzard still maintains he’s a transvestite, despite having been in “boy-mode” for a number of years.)

“You develop [comedy] as a social skill, but then once you start doing it as a professional skill, you start switching it off as a social skill – because otherwise it feels like ‘this guy’s never off’ and that becomes an embarrassment. That’s why comedians turn it right down. And anyway, I am so f—–.”

It’s little wonder he’s tired. It’s coming to the end of the shoot and Izzard has been hopping about on a single crutch for months – first in Delaney, during Belfast’s coldest winter in decades, and then in Puerto Rico. Today he’s filming a scene where he has to run – in as far as a man can run on one leg – through dense undergrowth. His crutch keeps snagging on creepers; he keeps falling over. And when he falls over, he has to fall over like a man with one leg.

It’s funny, the first time. Then it’s a question of watching Izzard solving a problem. He likes solving problems. “I realised that I have to flick it out to the side and then bring it back in,” he says to no one in particular. “I can do it but it has to be under the surface. For some reason, I can get it out to the side, but not the front.” They go again.

The endless retakes (in this case, in brutal heat) are one of the clichés of an actor’s life. But for Izzard, who landed his first lead role in The Riches, a US comedy drama about a family of crooks, back in 2007, it must all still feel pretty new. On Treasure Island, he’s surrounded by Hollywood’s Elijah Wood, soon to reprise his role as Frodo Baggins, and British acting stalwarts such as Rupert Penry-Jones and Philip Glenister. Donald Sutherland, as Captain Flint, also makes an appearance.

“I’ve always been so envious [of actors]. I was saying to people in my twenties and thirties, ‘Can I go to drama school? Can I go now?’ People said, ‘Don’t bother. You’re already doing gigs.’ I’m no good at anything straight off the bat but I’ve learnt by just watching everyone.” He says that The Riches was his finishing school after years on the stage and in supporting roles in films and television. Izzard’s slippery con artist was his strongest role to date. Being inscrutable, you might conclude, is a particular strength.

In his stand-up prime, Izzard was so effervescently brilliant that he’d make you feel as if you’d do anything to borrow just a fragment of that intellect for a single minute. He had his live audiences in his pocket. How could screen-acting be more rewarding?

“Comedies are like desserts, really. They hit – boom! – and it’s great and people love that. It is much more like a sugary dessert or like a cokey, speedy drug and endorphins are released. But dramas are main meals. They take longer, they have all these different tastes going on, and it moves you from one place to another.” He burrows further into the analogy. It starts to sound like one of his routines. The disheartening thing for Izzard’s comedy fans (and there are a lot of them — he sold out nearly 50 gigs this year) is that he never really wanted to be a comedian.

“I wanted to act when I was seven. I mean, I loved comedy on telly. I thought people were really funny, but it wasn’t what I was planning. Then at 12, I made someone laugh and then I discovered Python, and thought, ‘Oh, you can do that yourself.’ And then I got the gigs.” As Izzard points out, though, realising his acting dream hasn’t exactly been a doddle. He’s been plugging at it for 17 years.

“I had to fight for the roles. And some people will sniff and go, ‘Well, no, you do comedy. You’re not allowed to do this.’ Well f— ’em, you know. This is what I was born to do. It’s never moved.” But it’s hard to believe Eddie Izzard entirely, because his stated goals do move. Next – as widely trailed by the man himself — is a career in politics. “It’s dead set,” says the long-time Labour campaigner. “About 2020 is the plan, MEP or Mayor of London. I can’t shuffle off this mortal coil and not stand for an election. I could be rubbish when I get in there, but I’m very determined.” He cites Schwarzenegger and Reagan as examples of actors who have moved into politics, even though their ideology is so opposite to his; I counter that the British tend to like people who remain in their category. He comes back at me with Michael Cashman, MEP and former EastEnders star. I’m not sure if he’s joking. I don’t think he is.

The question for the marathon man, then, is how much is enough? Or perhaps: how can a man who is always striving ever be happy?
In acting terms, you could say he’s made it – a leading man, fronting not only Treasure Island but the BBC’s big Christmas family fable, Lost Christmas, about a man who wakes up in a snowy Manchester street not knowing who he is but blessed with the power to find lost things.
Izzard, however, doesn’t think he’s quite there yet.

“I’m just hacking my way up the dramatic mountain,” he says. He says he scrutinises his own performances, likes some scenes, winces at others, and concludes: “I’ll get there.” He won’t talk about his love life at all. Does he have many close friends?

“No, I don’t seem to have. There are a lot of people that I am friendly with but they aren’t people from childhood, you know, ‘Stevie I’ve known from the old days.’ I never had that. I kept moving, kept going to different schools.” Izzard’s childhood was peripatetic as he followed his father, an accountant who worked for BP, from job to job. He was born in Yemen, moved to Northern Ireland a year later and then to south Wales when he was five. His mother, Dorothy Ella, died of bowel cancer when he was six and he and his eight-year-old brother attended boarding schools from then on, in Wales and, later, in East Sussex.

Following his mother’s death, Izzard has said that he cried until the age of 11; today, his production company is called Ella Communications. He withdrew emotionally for most of his teens. Nor did he find that telling his peers he wanted to perform was the way to make friends.
“I found that with ordinary people, if you said, ‘I want to go and be an actor,’ there were a lot of them who said, ‘You can’t.’ I couldn’t talk to those people, I just couldn’t, because if you’re trying to hold on to this little fledgling idea of ‘maybe it can work, I can be an actor, performer, whatever it was’, and someone’s just going, ‘It just won’t happen mate,’ they crushed it so easily that I couldn’t talk to them.

“I always thought that would happen with friends: that they might go off and work in insurance, or be a civil engineer, and then I’m going to go and do all this weird stuff. So you’d hang out and talk with the people who did do this kind of crazy stuff because they’d find that normal.”
He obviously knew that he was different, and you feel that ever since he’s been trying to prove, in one way or another, that he’s also better. I suggest that this kind of endless striving is generally driven by fear. “There’s a fear, yeah: I’m always trying to be four steps ahead of my career disappearing.” Yet if he goes into politics, his career will disappear. An actor can at least be judged a success. Whereas all political lives, I remind him, end in failure.

Surprisingly, for a man who devours books, he doesn’t recognise the line.“Is that a quote?” He chews on it for a minute. “It is interesting, because if you go and try to do something positive, people are still going to hate you for doing it.” So why bother? Right now he sits somewhere between admired, feted and adored.

“Because I can’t leave it to the right wing. I cannot leave it to the right wing. And I think I’m good at finding the centre of an argument. I remember growing up and seeing people arguing and saying, ‘Hang on, you two are agreeing. You realise that? You’re just shouting. But you’re actually agreeing.’ I do think I can come up with new ways of doing things. I’ve done things differently right out of the box.”
Meanwhile, back in Puerto Rico, Izzard is indeed his own man. It’s not that he’s unpopular – Elijah Wood has said Izzard is the reason he signed up – but while several of the other actors put in some piratical stints on the sauce out in San Juan (the “rum-sodden” relic that Hunter S Thompson so detested), Izzard remains aloof.

Later, I ask him why. He says he was working too hard to join in the fun. “They might have had more energy to spare. I was never one to say, ‘Come on, let’s go and get slaughtered down the town’ every night. In a way it would be nice to do that, but I’ve never had it in me. I have other things in me: I have the 43 marathons.”

‘Treasure Island’ begins on Sky 1 HD, Sunday 1 January, at 7pm

[from the guardian.co.uk]

The comedian, 49, on the Iron Man triathlon, spiders and doing stand-up in French

I plan my life with military precision. I plan very, very far into the distance, 20 or 30 years ahead. I’m going to do an Iron Man next year. In 2020 I’m going to run for Mayor of London or become an MP. I can tell you all this off the top of the head, but there’s room for spontaneity.

There is something rather relentless about me. I’ve been pushing to be an actor since the age of seven, it just took me a long time to get here. My school reports say: “Eddie is a very determined child”, and it bothers me that I can’t remember what I did that term to be seen as so determined.

The secret to running is thinking. If you have an enquiring mind, like mine, you can understand how I got through 43 marathons. I looked around me, took in the history of the places I was passing through, and let my legs take over like a machine.

I’ve been sticking with a “boy” look for quite a while. First there was boy-mode, then I established girl-mode; now I’m back in boy-mode because I’m auditioning for more acting roles. Somebody on Twitter recently said: “You can’t do that, you’re a transvestite person.” But I can. It’s my life. And I will. I can go “flame on” and “flame off”, like a superhero covering himself in fire, then making it disappear.

I have totally come to terms with being 50. In fact, I am 50. Well, I’m not. I’m 49 and three-quarters. But I feel ready.

Learning a language is not rocket science. Every French person can speak French, every German person can speak German, and there are no Mandarin Chinese people sitting in the corner saying, “Our language is too hard, we can’t do it.” Last year I did 71 stand-up gigs in French; next I’m going to do Russian, Arabic and Spanish.

One of my greatest fears is spiders on my face. I can’t walk down a path where there are bushes on either side and cobwebs in between.

I try not to have treasured possessions. The iPhone is very useful and there are family members close to me, but my mum died when I was a kid and I don’t think I’ll ever get over that. I hate the idea of getting attached to someone and then they pass on. People say time heals, but it doesn’t.

There is something to be said about crying on aeroplanes in the middle of the night. I do it frequently. You know, long-haul flights where you have a glass of wine, watch a movie and bawl your eyes out? Altitude makes people lose it.

My homes in London and LA are usually empty. They are not very lived in but my body is. I feel very alive. I’m living this life and that makes me happy.

Can I choose between comedy and acting? I don’t have to. That is the beauty.

Eddie Izzard plays Long John Silver in Treasure Island, starting tonight at 7pm on Sky 1

[from telegraph.co.uk]

Eddie Izzard talks to Adam Sweeting about his new BBC drama Lost Christmas, and remaking Treasure Island Goodfellas-style.

The globe-trotting Eddie Izzard isn’t sure exactly where he’ll be for Christmas. It won’t be Australia, where he has just finished performing his Stripped tour. Maybe it will be somewhere in Europe, since despite all the current turmoil, Izzard’s belief in a Euro-Utopia burns undimmed. But wherever it is, he’s adamant that he won’t be doing any end-of-year comedy shows.

“I always have time off at Christmas,” he declares. “Some performers will work at Christmas or New Year, because people pay good money, especially on New Year’s Eve. But they’re awful gigs. Terrible! I refuse to do them.”

To compensate, Izzard is starring in BBC One’s Lost Christmas, a mystical fable of redemption set in a snowy Manchester on Christmas Eve. Izzard plays the enigmatic Anthony, who materialises in a weird flash of light and sets about reuniting the various characters with things that have gone missing in their lives – dogs, wives, bracelets, parents or children. It sounds a little bit Dickensian?

“It might look like that because it’s a fairytale,” Izzard muses. “But I think it also has a feel of It’s A Wonderful Life, which is a classic beyond classics. It’s a little sentimental but it has a nice edge to it, and I’m going to make my family sit down together and watch it.”

He co-stars alongside Jason Flemyng, Geoffrey Palmer and Steven Mackintosh, each of whom has his own personal demons to grapple with, but Izzard’s character is kept deliberately mysterious. It’s gradually revealed that despite his sinister, shaven-headed appearance, he brings amazing healing powers.

“He doesn’t know anything except loads of really useless facts, and everyone thinks he’s bonkers,” says Izzard. “Then he becomes bonkers-but-useful, because if you grab his hand he experiences visions which can help you find something you’ve lost. Eventually there are cathartic resolutions of these losses and the conflicts between the characters. I think it’s a beautiful little gem of an urban fairytale, and it’s some of the best work I’ve done.”
Not that he isn’t also glowing with pride about his work in Sky 1’s remake of Treasure Island, due in January, in which he plays a bald and brooding Long John Silver, with a rather splendid crimson parrot perched on his shoulder. It’s an all-star knees-up, with a roll-call including Rupert Penry-Jones, Elijah Wood, Donald Sutherland and Philip Glenister.

“It’s a big, fun, rollicking epic,” raves Izzard. “We shot it in Dublin and Puerto Rico just before I did Lost Christmas, and it’s like the Goodfellas version. It’s much more kick-ass than the way it’s usually been done.”

But before that, there’s Christmas.

“I love Christmas,” he proclaims. “My mother would always get me and my brother to write down the things we wanted and we’d put them in the fire and they’d go up the chimney to Santa Claus. After my mum died my dad would write messages from Santa on Christmas Day, so it was always a great time.”
Naturally, Izzard has his own list of favourite Yuletide TV events, those ones that only keep improving with age. “I like to watch Christmas movies, especially Scrooge with Alastair Sim. The Great Escape is one that bizarrely always comes up, and I love Trading Places – it’s not really a Christmas story but it works at Christmas time.”

Is he a Downton Abbey man, or a Strictly Come Dancing fanatic?

“I know Strictly exists,” he mutters. “Is it like Pro-Am golf but with dancing? I haven’t actually partaken of it. I’ve heard Downton Abbey is a big smash but I’ve yet to get it on my iPod. Touring around the world means you miss some of the big things on telly.”

Though he claims there aren’t any particular presents which he covets, he will insist on having an authentic, full-scale Christmas meal.
“When I was doing my arena tour a couple of years ago, I liked having a Christmas meal every day. I think turkey’s great and brussels sprouts are great and roast potatoes, though you have to be careful with the roast potatoes. ”

Special measures were taken to nullify the threat of soggy sprouts. “We took our own catering people with us,” he says smugly. “If you get to the point of playing 15,000 seaters, you can at least ask for some decent brussels sprouts.”

And in January, Izzard can burn off those excess pounds by running a few marathons (he famously ran 43 of them in 51 days in 2009).
“Yes, I do keep it up,” he confirms. “I’m doing triathlons now and I will do more marathons. You’ll see it all on Twitter.”

I put it to you, Eddie Izzard, that you are a driven personality.

“Yes, I think I am,” he agrees. “Once I got a break, I didn’t let it go. I thought ‘let’s push it forward and see where we can take it. Let’s see how good you can be.'”

Lost Christmas is on BBC One on Sunday 18 December at 5.30pm

[from metro.co.uk]
TV chef Jamie Oliver and comedian Eddie Izzard have joined Channel 4’s annual Christmas round-up The Big Fat Quiz of the Year along with Miranda Hart, while show favourites Noel Fielding and Russell Brand will not be returning.

Hosted by Jimmy Carr, the comedy quiz show, which looks back at the most notable moments of the year in news, music, TV and showbiz, is now a regular fixture of Channel 4’s Christmas schedule.

The quiz will see some new faces this year, with Jamie Oliver and Eddie Izzard among the celebrities confirmed for the 2011 round-up.
Both have never appeared on the show before, nor has comic Miranda Hart.

The new additions will join long-serving team members Jonathan Ross, David Walliams and David Mitchell, with cameo appearances from stars who made their name during the past year expected along the way.

Fans of the show will be disappointed to hear there will be no Noel Fielding or Russell Brand however, who had the audience in hysterics in 2006 when they formed their quiz team The Goth Detectives.

The Big Fat Quiz of the Year will be broadcast on December 27 at 9pm on Channel 4.

Tony Award nominee Eddie Izzard will be honored with an SF Sketchfest Tribute at the eleventh annual San Francisco Comedy Festival at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 at 8pm.

Izzard will be on hand for the event, which will feature a selection of clips from his career, and he will also participate in an onstage conversation and audience question-and-answer period.

Izzard received a Tony Award nomination for the Roundabout Theatre’s revival of A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, and his other stage credits include Lenny, Race, and The Cryptogram. He has also performed in numerous solo shows around the world.

His many film and television credits include The Riches, The United States of Tara, Velvet Goldmine, Shadow of the Vampire, The Cat’s Meow, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, and Across the Universe. In 2010, Izzard’s documentary Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story received an Emmy Award nomination in the category of “Outstanding Nonfiction Special.”

For tickets and more information, click HERE.

[from The Press Association]

Eddie Izzard has revealed he has become such a master of walking on one leg he can almost run.

The actor and comedian – who in 2009 completed 43 marathons in 51 days for Sport Relief – stars as Long John Silver in a new adaptation of Treasure Island to air on Sky1 at Christmas and had to train to play the one-legged pirate.

Eddie revealed: “The whole one leg thing, that was tricky, because you know if you have one leg now you have two handles and two crutches, so you can get around.

“This is one stick and no handle, getting that right was really hard. I can go forwards and backwards on it.

“I can even do a fast walky-run for the chase scenes. And yes, I have kept the crutch.”

The 49-year-old stand-up enjoys a challenge after perfecting his French to perform 71 gigs in France.

Next year he plans to do stand-up in Berlin, Moscow, Cairo and Madrid, all in their respective mother-tongues.

He admitted: “Those will all be pinnacles to climb. My Spanish is – there’s not much there, but I could probably get it.

“Russian will be tough, Arabic will be tough, German I did two years ago so I can.”