The Joe Rogan Experience - #1289 - Eddie Izzard

Episode Date: May 2, 2019

Eddie Izzard is a British stand-up comedian, actor, writer and political activist. He's currently on a world tour with his show "WUNDERBAR" and can be seen in the US this summer.

3, 2, 1, boom! And we're live! How are you? What's going on? I'm good. I'm pouring coffee in the first seconds of our chat. That's the good way to do it. With a cafetiere, I think it is. I think that's named in a French way. A French press? That's what they're called? Is it called? Well, I think it's called a cafetiere, but it's probably called a pot of coffee. That makes sense.

That there's a French word for it that we just ignore here in America. They did invent a lot of the food. You know, because you have herbs, you know, herbs. And I used to do this bit of material, which I really enjoyed saying, you know, the difference between British and American. You say this, you say that. And you say herbs and we say herbs because there's a fucking H in it. Right. And I used to say, there's a fucking H. And I and i used to say this is a fucking h but and i

thought why has the h dropped off for america i think it's because but a lot of french guys would have come over immigration and they would have done a lot of cooking you know these french guys know about cooking and they do the elves and they they cut the h off totally so i think that was an influence from that probably julia child julia child was she she French? Yeah, I think. Wasn't she? She is now. I mean, she's into French cooking. Oh, right, okay.

That was her thing, right? Lafayette, maybe Lafayette is sitting next to Washington and saying, we will use Albs with this stuff here and then we can do

the Revolutionary War and then you guys will win and then we'll hate each other forever. Well, you guys also do a lot of weird stuff where you put like a U in color

and you have a Y in tires. What do you put in tires? in color and you have a Y in tires. What do you put in tires? Do you ever put an I? T-I-R-E-S. Yeah, I think we had first dibs on the language. Yeah, I don't understand what we did do there. No, you guys got on the Mayflower and they said, okay, we're going to talk like this.

We're going to say woo a lot and we're going to get rid of the Y in tires. We're going to invent tires to get rid of the Y in tires. We're going to invent tires. Get rid of the Y. Yeah, I just think the U in color and honor is a U in honor as well. And we've got it and you've got it out. I think yours is more logical. Honor. Yours is more logical.

For honor. Yeah. But not for herbs. No, herbs is, I think that's more French influence. I agree. Yeah, I always wondered, because I grew up in boston and i always wondered like those were the first people to leave england and europe like what the fuck happened to their language because they developed the most disgusting brand of it well you've got your a's your boston

a's which i can't hear strong boston coming out of you yeah i got rid of it i heard myself on television once when i was like 19 years old i was like holy shit what is that well you guys had or you used to have uh their mother father brother says yeah fucking cat and it's the ah yeah and we say mother mother father sister we don't have an r at the end of our mother brother father sister and you yeah we say mother instead of mother and the rest rest of America has a much stronger R. And Ireland has that. That's a very Irish-influenced thing. And for us, the R, when I'm playing American, when I was doing roles like that, the R was the hardest thing to get.

Hard, hard tar. I remember friends saying, hey, I was cooking this thing, and it came out like hard, hard tar. And I thought, that is the one to practice because that is just hard, tar we'd call it hard hard tar which is just doesn't sound the same you've spent a lot of time over here i've only the only time i've ever spent in uh england is working uh like a little bit of downtime doing stand-up and and hanging out over there but most of it's just been working either working for the ufc or i'd never really get a chance to really spend time in england i'd like to i'd like to do that just to kind of understand you folks well i'm a different breed when i think at the base having played 45 countries now i think

everyone is actually the same when you get down below a level but you know if you're going to reach for you there's got to be a number of things which would make it seem different and brand names will be different than your sports does you know everyone's sports doesn't have everyone's policies and that kind of thing but underneath it all it's going to be there's going to be more mainstream people's going to be alternative people there's going to be and the whole spectrum now like in the old days it used to be everything was mainstream and a bit of alternative now we i think your country my country we have a whole spectrum of what's interest people it's much more open in that way yeah no i certainly agree we yeah it's the the collection of people is very similar it's just they're operating in a different environment a different theater right yeah yeah and uh you know we're tightly

smashed together what would be we, 65 million? And you're 300 million. And you're such a large, your country is so large compared to us. Yeah. Because there was this thing of only 10% of Americans have passports. But if you look at the area, something like that. But then if you look at where the 10% can go in America, it's just so huge. So it's slightly more understandable why a lot of americans say i don't need a passport

because i'm just going to go to that place which is miles away that's understanding of you but i think you know i think it would do everybody good to go somewhere like like asia like every time i go to asia i always think okay people are like this too like this is this is an interesting thing to experience like thailand in particular which i really loved right thailand is uh it's amazing because it's like wow they might they hit like this perfect frequency where everybody's really friendly and really nice and it's it's a you know they call it the land of the smiles it's this very unusual environment there where everybody seems like warm and greeting i don't think think I ran into one rude Thai while I was there. That sounds very interesting.

And I've, yeah, when I toured Asia, but unfortunately it was kind of in, out, you know, touring gets in and out. But that's interesting about the Thai. Thai is more than any other country. Because I'm sure they must have a black market and a thing and some gangster, some Thai gangster. Maybe they're very nice gangsters. Maybe they're the nicest gangsters we know. I'm sure they must have a black market and a thing and some gangster some time maybe they're very nice gangsters maybe the nicest gangsters we know i'm sure they're not ask you first before they shoot you i'm sure when it gets to the drug smuggling and yeah sex trafficking and all the other days we're gonna do sex but would you mind awfully if polite drugs smugglers i mean they they have obviously a very open environment when you go you see bangkok

it's like muay thai fights and chaos and a lot of expats wandering around drinking it's just you know there it's a different sort of world over there but when i was there i was in chiang mai and it's just super friendly people beautiful landscape very nice have you been in vietnam no never heard it's amazing though but yeah i mean i find that from an american perspective Super friendly people, beautiful landscape, very nice. Have you been in Vietnam? No, never. Heard it's amazing, though. But, yeah, I mean, I find that from an American perspective, it would be very interesting people going there,

even if they were there before and during the time of war or after, just to see how people are because they fought for so long. There's all the French stuff before that, the end of China, but even before America got involved. They call it a thousand-year war that they fought anyway it's interesting i i hope new generations coming along don't bring the baggage of before of you know previous generations and we can all move try and move forward into a world that's more positive even though it doesn't necessarily look like that well what has always been really interesting to me about vietnam um that i learned from bourdain was that they they don't hold any grudges towards americans which i find incredible i i got that

sense of it i have not played they haven't been there but i got that sense that they were looking forward they just accept it that's the past and they don't have any grudges and just like it's an amazing attitude it is an attitude. I suppose it's better if you... They did an empirical... Is it empirical? They didn't do a massive conga in the end. America left, and so they got what they were... I assume the majority of them were trying to get.

They can run it however they want to run it. Yeah, it's tragic, the things the wars are going to do. I was going to be in the military when I was a kid. That was one of my – I wanted to be in special forces. And you look at me now being a transgender guy with that. But, yeah, that was where I was. I know Trump wouldn't have let me in the forces right now if I weren't applied right this second. But, yeah, so I follow everything i i kind of run my

life on on a military that sounds a bit weird i run my career on a military thing it's quite difficult to you know any career putting it together kind of weird what's your next move what's this how so you like strategize isn't that yeah oh yeah strategy at the wazoo i plan 50 years ahead really oh yeah well if you think about you came out i came out as transgender 34 years ago that's not the first good thing that an agent wants to hear you're transgender that's 85 this is such a hot thing this is even now they would say okay well it's got a little better than it was for about 10 millennia it's a little better now but it's still not the hottest ticket that everyone's we want transgender guys in here for this that the other it's not the top of the list right and i've also got boy mode and girl

mode and i do drama dramatic films in boy mode and then i'm touring in girl mode and doing stand-up and i campaign for politics in girl mode and i just how do you do that i just switch change you know take off heels flat shoes yeah because if you were just talking like if you you didn't have makeup on and you didn't have the heels and the nails you just seem male yeah yeah well it's uh i think it's genetically inbuilt you know there's some i think there's quite a lot of people maybe who were um uh the the way they're like they live their lives they live their lives, they live their own personality. They're not particularly male or female, I feel. But I've always felt since I was four or five,

I wanted to express this side of myself, and it's built in. I think it's genetic. And if you analyze masculine and feminine, if you really get down to it, I find it impossible to come up with anything that was particularly masculine, particularly feminine, except for the ability to build muscle mass is easier for men, in inverted commas. That's it. But, you know, great footballers, soccer players, men and women, athletics runners, men and women, strong character men, weak character men and women, mathematicians, whatever. Whatever it is, there's nothing that you can really say,

ah, that is only a good shot with a gun. No, anyone could do that. We're all humans. And we get fixated by the masculine and feminine. Whereas if it's a tiger, if a tiger's attacking you and trying to kill you, you don't go, now, is this a girl tiger or a boy tiger? We don't care about it.

And they don't care either, the tigers. So you've always felt like you gravitated towards feminine things? No you gravitated towards feminine things? No, gravitated towards both. I gravitated towards playing soccer. I was in the first team for two years when I was a kid. Was planning to do officer training corps and then go Marines or paras and then go into special forces, RSAS,

which would be the equivalent of your Delta Force. And that was a distinct plan. I knew a lot about that. And I thought, which war are they going to send me to actually which one they send me to and it could be the idiots that i'm at school with will send me to the wrong war because world war ii is very clear and then after that every other war is kind of hazy uh but there's all this feminine side girl side i'm not sure how to do it the articulate even after 34 years it's difficult to articulate but i wanted to express that um and if i look more like a woman than i you know it it would be much

easier but um yeah so i decided to do that in 85 when it wasn't cool and i got i've had a lot of fights in the street a lot of people screaming abuse at me um taking a couple of people to court or just reporting police and then we went to court and uh yeah and you fight you fight your fights instead of going to do a military fighting thing i've i've done i i've said this might be wrong for me to say this but i say i've done special forces civilian division you know fighting people's people's feet and now performing four languages i've run over 80 marathons i'm going into politics next year and uh and yeah and i came and the transgender thing is it's in a better place than it was back in 85 well it's certainly now i think because of probably

caitlin jenner and the the movement that you're you're seeing for to accept people that want to do whatever and anything they want to do. Yeah, it is just we're more accepting of each other. We do seem to be more, what's the word? It begins with a T, more open, more allowing. There's a word for it which just walked out of my head, but anyway, that word. But, yeah, and at the same time, people are going around doing more killings and stuff. Well, there's more people.

Yeah, there is more. There's just sheer volume of humans. And the population growth is insane. It took us like 200,000 years to get to 1 billion. Yeah. And then it's taken us, I don't know, 50 years to get to seven and a half billion, which is scary. Yeah, when I was a kid, I think the United States population was less than 200 million. Now it's 300 million.

And global was whatever it was. Now it's seven plus, bordering on eight billion people. When I came out, I think it was 6.5. And I think that's just running away. When I came out, I think it was 6.5. And I think that's just running away. And one of the weird things is if we are having less wars, if we're getting better health to people, then more kids are around. And some people in, I suppose, lower income backgrounds around the world, they will say, well, we need to have six kids because that's what, you know, for work, much money. Yeah, that's what we do.

But as economics get better, people have less kids. And that hopefully that should calm down there should be a bottoming i think they feel there'll be a leveling off of the population yeah i've read that theory that they believe that industrialized nations and westernized society when people start having two careers um you know and then two career households people are less likely to have a bunch of kids. Yeah. So as people do better, they have less kids. Yeah. Yeah.

So I'm a glasses two-thirds full person. That's what I feel. Instead of a glasses half full, half empty person. So you're optimistic. I'm a big – Me too. I couldn't be here in the hills with the nails and planning to do this. I've got a film coming out and I'm touring the country and then i'm going to politics as well when you first started wearing women's

clothes and dresses and makeup on stage did people think it was a gimmick what did they think they did i don't i decided not to call them women's clothes just i just say that my clothes i would just wear dresses right you know like women can wear trousers or pants and we used to call that men's pants and i said oh that pants fuck it so um but yeah they i first started talking about it and not wearing anything uh again look kind of boy like and male like and then you were talking about it like i had the first joke this is my first ever joke i had this about two years before i did i said look you're doing stand-up um so if you're from a minority it's kind of a good thing so if you in stand-up terms so if you're from a lower income background you can say rich people god they are so easy for them if you're a woman

you say men ah men if i'm ethnic background you say white people oh it's white people so if you're a white male middle class stand-up, it's useless. So, thank God I'm a transvestite. That was my first laugh. And everyone thought, he's making jokes about something that he's not. And they wouldn't believe me. And journalists were going, I don't know why he's doing this. Because he's doing pretty well now. But is this a joke?

So I thought, I better wear a dress that puts the makeup on. And then they said, okay, he's doing this. He is serious, but he looks a mess. This kind of baby elephant thing I was doing. You've got to get your weight under control. You've got a better haircut than that. And you've just got to fail a lot. And there's a humiliation period. I mean, this is the weird

thing about coming out. It's kind of humiliating. People say horrible things. They say, what the fuck is that? Somebody said to my face right there as I was walking out of a restaurant. So I thought, that's not very nice. And you have to be able to deflect it and go, well, you're obviously a scumbag. So fuck you, man.

Is it mostly men? Yes, and occasionally women. Occasionally women, but, yeah. I mean, people have lower character or lesser character. If you're a strong character in yourself, you don't care. Live and let live. What the hell? Right.

You know, people, okay, it doesn't quite look together, but, you know, life's tough enough. But if you want to put someone down, you raise your own status by doing that. And they will do that. And so I have stood in the street, and people have unloaded swear words invective to me, and I've just, I, fuck you, and I fuck, and I fuck, and I, they go, what, you fuck, and I fuck I've just I fuck you and I fuck you and I fuck you and I fuck you and I fuck you and I fuck you

and I fuck you and there's literally two or three of them or one of me just screaming at each other and I just won't back down now this happened recently

it was nine months ago someone outside my house in London just having a go at me so I had a go at him they knew who you were as well yeah they did

they knew exactly where I live we said we're going to do your house is our you know who the hell is this asshole just because of the way you dress well it was he added that into it there was a there was an altercation over i was just packing my car because i was just driving home to see my dad and somebody said you got to give me a ride in your car i said and i so someone heckles me like that in the street i just come back with the you will never have a ride in your car. I said, and I, so someone heckles me like that in the street. I just come back with the, you will never have a ride in my car.

I have to give you, why do I have to give you? So that happened, and then this guy went off. And, you know, this and that and the other, and it's just screaming at me and so on, shouting back at him, giving him word for word. And then I went, I said, who is that idiot? And they said, oh, that's this guy. Oh, he's a known, he's a nutter. You know, he's just, he does this. I went, all right, maybe I should mention it.

Because he said he's going to do it. I'll mention it to the police. No, it doesn't matter. Two weeks later, same thing. Who's shouting at me? Oh, it's the same dickhead. So I thought, right, next time I go past the police station. So now he knows where you live.

Well, he always did. He was right in front of the house. That's always fun, isn't it? Yeah. Well, and he said, we're going to do your house when you're away you know so this was the that was his opening gambit we're gonna do your house when you're away yeah i'm letting the letting you know they're a coward yeah well it was it was uh not very positive he didn't run a pr company i don't think that's kind of terrorism right they're trying to strike terror in you when you're away well yeah that well

that is yes that is the hatred thing is did you think about just going out there and fucking them up i don't think i'm quite that i would have liked to if i'd gone through the military thing if i'd gone through i would learn how to do that you know and i've never have crabbed my guard myself up to the thing i do need to crab my guard myself up but i haven't got got there. Well, we were talking before, and you were trying to tell me that you were lazy. I'm like, fuck you. I saw that thing that you did, that documentary where you ran a series of marathons in a row with no training at all. And I remember thinking before that I had this opinion of you, and the opinion of you was you're a funny guy.

You're a funny comedian. You have good stand-up you obviously work hard at it but then i saw that and i was like oh okay there's something going on there like that's a different kind of human being the kind of human being that could push themselves into doing that day after day after day and i looked at your feet where your skin was literally falling off and you're taping everything up. And that's a person that's got – you have an iron will. That's a very unusual will for a comedian who doesn't really exercise.

Like when you were doing – I mean, you maybe exercised a little bit, but you weren't in shape. No. And you decided to run how many marathons in a row? Was it the UK one? The first one. Yeah, that was 43 and 51 days 43 marathons in a row in 51 days with no training at a dev week i did have training six weeks training yeah which is not a lot but they did they said that you know sometimes if you run a marathon you should train for nine months before that yeah and i thought

well if i'm going to do 43 that's going going to be – I'm going to be training forever. And I can't be bothered with that. But, you know, and it's happened in your civil war, maybe in any war. I'm somewhat encyclopedic about your civil war and Revolution War to a bit and World War II. But on-the-spot training, you know, training as you go along. That's what I did. The first 10 marathons trains you for the next 33. What was it like when you got over the first day, though?

The first marathon, you must have been like, what the fuck? No, first day is okay. Really? Because, well, it's all in your head. It's more mental than it is physical. And so the first marathon, I've heard of people running marathons, run, walk, stagger, not very fast, get it done, boom. The second marathon is weird because you go, I've done one. I'm on the second.

And you can't really rejoice. You can't punch the sky. You can't put a medal around your neck. You've got up at 5 or 6 in the morning, and it's midday, and you're going through your second one. And then you're through the third one, and then you're through the fourth one. And then it was raining, and my feet were shredding. For the moisture? Yes, it made it too soft yeah and they were rubbing on the on the running shoes and i i didn't know how to how do i fix it when i'm actually wearing on it all the time so we started

bathing in surgical spirit which you call something else um it's it's a it's a ethanol methaneth anyways it's some sort of alcoholic spirit, and it takes the moisture out of your feet. And so it became like stones. It's kind of like we say – anyway, if anyone looks up surgical spirit, if you Google it now, you'll see what it's called in America. But it's some sort of alcoholic thing that just removes moisture. And so it made my feet, my toes like little stones and kind of tough. And actually that got us through. And then I started, and also apparently,

because I did 27 mountains in 27 days in South Africa in 2016, and that was, the temperatures were crazy on that. But it seems that the body will switch on a healing property that we've got latent in ourselves that we don't use, and you will heal quicker. You will heal faster the more you get so i got you get stronger in both the british one and the south african one i got stronger as i went on really the first 10 days are the key thing and after that it's kind of easier you're used to it your body just adapts and understands yep this crazy asshole is going

to do this crazy asshole and the brain goes what kind of marathon shall we run today as opposed to what the fuck are you doing what kind of marathon yeah well i think that's what the brain is doing because the first day the brain is going you're going to do what this marathon but we don't okay the second day the brain is going now we're going to we're doing another one you know third day fourth day fifth day this is insane and then day 10 the brain's going okay you're on this kind of kick or something i understand let's let's try a better amount of this don't push it too hard you know you the brain starts talking to the body and somehow it levels out round about main then it gets surreal marathon 18 marathon 23 i remember marathon 31 that was a lovely it's just so weird yeah but it was fun and you own the road you know uh woody guthrie this land is

our land is my land the you you become like it's your land it's like it's everybody's land because you're running on the roads of this country i grew up in and you feel that the roads the fields the birds i didn't listen to any music i wanted's like a safety thing for traffic. But also you could hear everything that's going on, birds, you had rivers running. I ran past somebody's house. This was on about day two. And there was a river running there, and it went through the back of this guy's garden.

And he said, oh, hello. And I said, I went and visited him, and I washed my feet in the river. And then I put the socks back on, and I carried on running. I thought, you can do weird things. I took blackberries out of the bushes like I did when feet in the river. And then I put the socks back on and I carried on running. I thought, you can do weird things. I took blackberries out of the bushes like I did when I was a kid. It just became feral, this holistic or feral marathon. That's what I was doing. It's not run.

It's not people shouting from the sides. No one cares, really, which is fine. And I'm just wrapped up in this other place. And it's beautiful. I mean, it's really zen well it seems like it would change you

yeah like accomplishing something like that like on the last day the last run when you cross the line what was that feeling like? well there's a picture

you brought up that picture they put up some flags and stuff that was beautiful I tried to do it a five hour marathon now if you know the speed it's two

hours is what they're trying to break now so this is really slow but then having done 42 marathons it's maybe it's fair and uh i i missed it by about 30 seconds but it was it was beautiful to finish it i was really quite strong all the way through i didn't stop at any time that was that was good in south africa though i i did 27 and 27 days salute to nelson mandela's 27 years in prison and day five they put me in hospital because they thought my kidneys were given up uh were you experiencing rhabdo is that what it is you know yeah yeah yeah your first brother ever talked to who's known about rhabdomyolysis yeah i got rhabdo in 2012 um and how'd you get that i was on a uh anti-cholesterol drug just a sort of health drug your cholesterol's a bit high take their thing once a day

and side effect is rhabdomyolysis which i couldn't spell being dyslexic and i was peeing brown pee and and uh did it there's no pain. A lot of lethargy. I was really tired. I thought, this is a bit weird. And this is without exercise you were getting it? That was on marathon three and marathon four. So I had trained. Had I trained before that?

I'd done some training before that one. I'm a bit weird with my training. But, yeah, so there wasn't a huge amount of training before that one. But third marathon, and I started peeing a bit of brown pee. This was not through the whole series of marathons, or it was? No. Well, I tried to do South Africa twice. So 2012 was my first one.

After day four, on an anti-cholesterol drug, trying to control my cholesterol, and I started brewing brown pee. And then they said, you've got to go to hospital now. The guys, we've got to put fluids through through you you have to go see a specialist the specialist said you can't continue this 27 thing because you have to get all this stuff out of your system otherwise the kidneys because it shreds them you know the shreds the muscles into the bloodstream clogs up kidneys kidney failure very dangerous a lot of fighters get it really yeah yeah um a fighter died from it um recently in Boston, in the Massachusetts area.

Yeah, it's apparently something that happens when fighters overtrain as well. Like sometimes they're not doing it scientifically, so they're not analyzing their heart rate, their heart rate variability, and they don't know that they haven't really truly recovered, and they continue to push themselves because they want to prepare harder. And they have this sort of mental mindset, just train harder and you'll be better off. But that's not necessarily the case if your body can't physically keep up with the recovery. And sometimes they'll go into a fight overtrained and then they wind up getting robbed out from the fight. It's happened several times. And it's caused a few

deaths yeah well they said this you said you carry on right running now in 2012 you won't make it so 2016 did you get off that medication yeah i would think that all that running you wouldn't need that medication i would have thought but you know they check you out and you say yeah close was just a touch wow you know you'll be on this for the rest of your life. That stuff scares the shit out of me, those statins. Yeah, it goes to a scary place. But 2016, day five, bloods were looking a bit weird. Day off, so day 27, I did double marathon. And that was kind of an interesting day.

So you run one marathon. The last day of your run, you've only done 25 marathons, and it's the day 27. And when you go through that finishing, the final flag, where you should be waving flags, you've got done 25 marathons and it's the day 27 so and when you go through that finishing the the final flag where the you know you should be waving flags you've got another marathon to go and it's just yeah my brain i thought this is kind of good but you've got it's 90k you're going to do today ignore it carry on and it was a rough rough old day that's uh five hours then another five hours five hours plus another five hours plus in the end it was six uh i took 11 hours and 50 minutes to run 90k so i did double marathon in 11

hours 10 that's damn good yeah it was good enough and there's they got a they got a comrade's marathon in south africa which is 90k and they got a 12-hour cutoff so i said i will do 90k in 12 hours the double marathon was at 84 and then i did another 6k after i'd finished that last moment must have been orgasmic when you finished it must have been incredible finishing the 84 was beautiful you finish at the steps of nelson mandela statue where he was made uh president and that was beautiful and and rough i'd had to speed up in the last hour because of complications. So I actually got faster. I don't know if you've ever done a thing where you're knackered and knackered and said, now go.

Why did you have to speed up? There was a window. It was a thing called Sport Relief I was doing it for. So it was raising money, and I wanted to finish inside the camera window. They had a window until 3.15 South African time. Police escorts were needed at certain bits otherwise you'll get carjacked things and and it's and you won't survive this bit so i said can't we just ignore the the carjacking thing no you can't ignore it so i said okay stop the clock put me

in the thing drive me to pretoria stop me off and then i'll run there and we'll just continue it on there so we had to do that so we got behind because i wasn't running because i had to be driven across this dangerous period of uh part point of road to be dropped to pretoria then i just had to run the kilometers off so they have like a carjack area yeah they have certain areas where there's it's kind of out there there's no one really out there and you just go along there and they'll you know anything can happen so um my my field producer fixer he was just saying we don't do this just you can't go there so i said well just get me closer to the finishing line and then i'll just run around doesn't really matter where i'm running now we know it's pittoria we know we need to finish

i need to just run that distance so i ran the distance off but the time had got behind so i had to speed up from 7.5 kilometers an hour to 10 kilometers an hour. So an extra third of the speed, which was kind of evil. I moaned a lot that day. I was just moaning, whining, God, I can't do this. But I was never considering not doing it. And I got there. The live feed to London finished at quarter past,

and we got there about 13 minutes past we had about two minutes and they just caught it before they went off it was like you know like in a film you know it was perfectly designed i just knew if i got that probably i'd get more money i raised more money an extra 100 grand because we've seen this idiot finish he's actually doing it you know um so that was beautiful and then i talked to the there's a very interesting thing because you know if you're talking to it was a press I talked to the – this is a very interesting thing. Because you know if you're talking to – it was a press. I talked to the press after that. It was a Sunday.

And so they kept talking. Normally they say, we can't talk anymore. We've got two minutes and then we've got to talk to important people. Go away. That's what normally happens if you're talking to live press, national press. But I was on the thing and they just kept talking to me. Because obviously a slow news day. Nothing was happening.

And they say, we've got this idiot who's just run 27 marathons. And they kept asking me other questions. And what favorite color do you have and what how how big are your legs and what i like your legs yeah i just i don't know what they were asking me but in the end these two interviews i did with national press i just said i'm gonna go away now i'm gonna stop this i had to stop my own interview which i've never done in my life and i realized they've just got no one else to talk to they're desperate did you notice a big change in public perception of you once you completed those marathons yeah the um yeah the certain community and if you're a transgender guy and you come out certain people

go but i i crossed into a line of well if you're going to do that and you i hate i know you do some comedy you do the drama stuff we think you're you're a bit bonkers and out there. But fair play. I got to pass a fair play to you if you're going to do that. And I was trying to do selection. You know, SAS, they have selection. Your Delta Forces, Naval Seals, they all have this thing that can you just go on and on and on. It's the stamina thing.

And that was my civilian selection for my own whatever, civilian special forces. Just to understand yourself. Yeah. I know I can go a lot further. I mean, coming out as transgender, when you're straight, I'm straight transgender, so I fancy women. So I'm a wannabe lesbian.

So if you come out, you could stay in the closet. And down the millennia, if we go back to the ancient Egyptians and further, there's probably a lot of guys said, I don't tell anyone about this. I just, I fancy women. I just go, I just won't mention this kind of feelings in my head.

And I thought I should mention it because if people shout and scream at me in the streets, I will, I will fight that at least verbally fight that. Or, you know, if they start going for it. I have had one fight in the streets, and I landed one punch. Yeah? Yeah. I taught myself jujitsu.

You had a fight on the streets because of this? Yeah, yeah. The guy was just giving me, oh, Tracy, oh, he's all dressed up. And I was a street performer for four years at Common Garden. So I was working on the streets and just knew a lot of people going around. I just said, Matt, you don't have to be like this. We can all – there's space enough for everyone. Live and let live.

He kept giving me stuff. He was a bit drunk, I realized that. So he was just going to stay on that wicket, keep saying that. And I said, just chill out, chill out. And then the third time, I just said, oh, just fuck off. And I went – no, I unloaded a load of swear words on him and then he swung for me which was the handy thing because that came up in court and then i swung back and i landed one punch which i was pleased about and i was doing the wipe on wipe off stuff

i was doing this blocking yeah from a jujitsu book that i taught myself jujitsu from a book if you could believe that which is you know you get these books with the different moves in and you can't teach yourself that but i did judo when i was six actually as well so i like the idea of doing these things but i felt judo was always at the bigger kid you all get in pajamas and the bigger kid just throws you around a bit i could never quite get the hang of it i couldn't throw the bigger kids i could do it now but i've never anyway yeah this is a fantastic video online of a very old judo expert and i think he's in his 70s or his 80s and he's working out with these young men and you see his mastery of judo as these young

powerful men try to manipulate him and throw him around and he effortlessly watch this this old man when you see him he's very very old and he's throwing these guys around and me as a martial arts expert these these men are not doing this willingly this is legitimate like even that guy tries to throw him and this is a black belt who's trying to throw him but he's so good and his his use of balance and leverage is so amazing he just knows where to be. Like, see how he just throws himself into a perfect position? I mean, it's really stunning to watch. And this looks like it was from the 50s or something like that

because it's really old. Yeah, does it say? It just says 75-year-old judo master. I mean, this is an old man. And the young man is much larger than him. I mean, significantly, like 25% larger than him, at least. Maybe even, he looks like he's twice as big as him. And he cannot throw this old man.

It's really amazing. Judo is a beautiful art. He's going more and more full on, isn't he? He's going, I gotta get this. He's trying. I mean, he knows that this guy's a master. But it's just, look at that. God.

Like, it's incredible. I mean, the way that guy's body can but it's just look at that like it's incredible i mean the way that guy's body can toss these people through the air and yet they they are helpless they can't do anything there's no way that look at that boom three times 75 years old i mean that hurts my hips just looking at that you know you you can have many different martial arts that yeah yeah which ones do you jujitsu and striking martial arts my background was in striking which is in taekwondo and then eventually kickboxing and muay thai and then i got really into jujitsu when i got older and what and jujitsu what's the difference in jujitsu is uh grappling it's always choking people it's like you it's not

throws like judo there are throws in jujitsu, but it really comes from judo. It comes from the ground fighting aspect of judo, which is not as emphasized. But the Brazilians really, really emphasized it. They figured out what the best way for a smaller person to defeat a larger person is through leverage and jujitsu is really the only martial art that i can think of that works like you think of a martial art in a movie like in a bruce lee movie like there's all these people and they were always bigger than bruce lee but bruce fucked them all up but in the real world that doesn't usually work like the bigger people have such a giant advantage when it comes to striking.

You're never going to see a heavyweight in the UFC fight a bantamweight, a person who weighs 135 pounds. It's just too much of an advantage. In jiu-jitsu, it's legitimately possible for a 140-pound man to strangle a 200-plus-pound man and do it relatively easily if they're talented i i saw a documentary on bruce lee and he had the way of no way yeah which really appealed to me i mean that is like a philosophy quite apart from a fighting philosophy but um to be so trained up

in so many things that they do not know what you're going to do and i kind of adopted that well he had to overcome significant prejudice to adopt that perspective because when he was studying martial arts you were supposed to be loyal to your style so if you learn kung fu you were supposed to be a kung fu man for life yeah you weren't supposed to also dabble in boxing and wrestling and all these different things that he was interested in. He was interested in taking what's useful from all different martial arts and applying them. So in a sense, he was really the founder

of mixed martial arts, which you see today. In the UK, they have Cage Warriors, and the US is UFC, and it's worldwide now, the art of mixed martial arts, of putting all the different styles together and you can do whatever you want within the rules. Now, I liked the attitude of that.

It's sort of a life attitude. I mean, there's obviously the fighting attitude of it. And then there's the life attitude of just be prepared for anything and everything. Yeah. And be like water. Like that was his other thing. Yeah. Just go around things.

Move through things. Yeah. Like don't headbutt things figure out what's the best way what is the what's the best best path yeah you know yeah i just um i haven't learned well i think i'm waiting for someone to give me a really hard time and i say now i am checking in and i am learning martial arts. Do you live in England? Yeah. There's so many places

for you. And I'm here. Are you in London? I live everywhere because I'm always touring and filming and so I just keep moving. But yeah,

I know, but you've got to make the time, especially if you're moving around all the time. Yeah. You'd have to line it up so, okay,

we're going to check in with this guy and that place, this, and you'd have to take it and it's got to going to check in with this guy and that place this and you'd have to take it it's got to be something that you're serious at as opposed to dabble I didn't want to dabble

like stand up when I'm filming I still do stand up when I'm filming and if I'm doing stand up I will think about doing drama drama and comedy are related but different so I keep pushing both you've got to keep everything match fit for life like marathons I can drop marathons now Drama and comedy, they're kind of related but different. So I keep pushing both. You've got to keep everything.

Match fit for life. And that's what I – like marathons, I can drop marathons now. I just did three marathons. I just dropped three marathons. I got home from playing Australia, took the train up to Berwick-upon-Tweed on the Scottish border, ran up to Dunbar, which is one marathon, ran across to Edinburgh, second marathon. Are you running a marathon with other people or are you just running it for yourself? No, I just get a backpack, put my stuff in there, change of clothes, wash kit, off I go, no backup. And is this something that started because of the series of marathons that you did? Yeah, and I want to stay match fit for life.

Because that's what I noticed. Everyone's a natural. All animals are natural animals. And there are the wild animals, which we were. And then there are domesticated animals. We are self-domesticated. But we are actually designed to be wild. We're supposed to be match fit for life.

And I think as time goes on, you know, people get back into training or whatever. They say, oh, that really hurts, so I backed off. I think it hurts because you're not doing it enough. I'm not sure if this is pure science. This is just a feeling for me maybe that that i need to stay fit and running and swimming and whatever i'm doing and the less i do the more the body punishes me if i'm doing it all the time if i'm always i try and run every morning i almost did this morning but i had to get up and do stuff today but i if i miss one then that's kind of good because that's

a you know recovery time but i would just do hit training high intensity interval training every morning and then the ability to just drop three marathons drop seven marathons in seven days you love that yeah I love to have that in my back pocket and I don't think that's that's not allowed that's not in the list of things you're supposed to have but I know I can do it now and I can do it with just a backpack on well you can do it too because you have autonomy you can kind of do whatever you want to do, right? Yeah, in the earning a living when you want to go make the time. Yeah. But there's also the actual – that's not supposed to be on the list of what humans do.

Right, right. You don't just go off and run three and three or seven and seven. And I love that. That's kind of – that's out there. Well, there's clearly people that are doing that. Oh, yeah. Everything I've done, someone's done way more than I've done. Yeah.

And I kind of know, I feel that even if I don't know that for sure. I have one crazy friend. His name's Cameron Haynes. And he's actually a famous bow hunter. But he's also an ultra marathon runner. And when he prepares for these like Bigfoot 200s or it's like 200 plus miles or the moab 240 yeah 238 miles in the desert he runs a marathon a day so he'll run a marathon every day and then he works a full-time job he's legitimately crazy and you know he's he always does that he doesn't take any days off and he works so run a marathon day so you're running them

get up really early really early run in the, run in the morning, run at lunch. Running at dawn is beautiful. In Africa, if you can imagine the African dawns I got coming up. Were you worried about something running up and grabbing you? What, on that thing? I wasn't. I mean, they told me I was supposed to have security. I wasn't. I was kind of cool.

Well, that's for people. Were you worried about people? Yes. Were you around any hostile animals? I was in the Mountain Zebra National Park. And if you've ever been on a safari, they tell you to sit in this sort of shower bank, big open-top vehicle. It's got metal bars over it. And they say the animals, they know the shape of that.

They know it's metal, and metal doesn't taste very good. So you'll be fine. And there's a guy with a gun, and you feel good. But when I went there, of course, they said they said well you're running outside near the vehicle and i thought is this right this probably be good television but i'm not i don't isn't there okay i'll just stay close and if something's coming and they did i said what about how are the lions doing they said the lions have eaten yesterday they're fine and they told me you know and that's what lines they can't they never go off for snacks.

Lions are kind of organized like that. We ate yesterday. We ripped apart some animal, and we don't need to go and have a bag of crisps. So they knew? They knew that the lions were welfare? Yeah, they knew where they were and that they were okay. But they said, the buffalo are around, and they can stamp you to death. I didn't know buffalo were so.

Black death, they call them. Really? Yeah, they call them black death. They're responsible for so many They're not as responsible as hippos Hippos are number one But they fuck a lot of people up man They don't take any shit

If you think about bulls Like when people try to ride bulls Yeah Like domestic cow bulls Yeah They're ruthlessly aggressive animals Yeah I mean they'll fucking throw you through the air

Now think of them but wild And in Africa and fighting off lions. And that's African buffaloes. I mean, they are ferocious animals. And they're just, I didn't know what I had to do. I know that with hippos, if you come in between their water source, then they'll just kill you. They'll fuck you up. I didn't know what I had to do to buffaloes, whether I had to write to their grandma.

Yeah, if they find you to be a threat at all, they're just so powerful. They just launch you in the air. There's a great video that I was watching this morning of a lion that was trying to take out a small buffalo, and the other one got behind the lion and launched it through the air. It was literally flying like 40 feet in the air,

like flipping head over heels because there's the strength of this thing to take a giant cat and just with its head just whoop and just flies that wasn't the one with the crocodile as well no no this was one that was it was like on the side of a dirt road all right have you heard about the busy go to busy wild on instagram i think that's the uh have you heard about the crocodile one? Go to Busy Wild on Instagram. I think that's the... Have you heard about the crocodile one? Yes, I saw that one. Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it?

Because I feel that buffalo there are acting like the local townspeople. Yes. And I think the lions are the SS, and the crocodile is another form. Yeah, this is it. This is the video. So it looks like the lion's attacking this one. Look at that. Boom.

Oh, it's actually not nearly as high as I thought it was. Maybe I'm thinking of another one. Yeah, that one's pretty good, though. I mean, just to see it do that. Oh, you know what I'm thinking of? I'm thinking of relentless enemies. That's what I'm thinking of. There's actually a documentary about this one particular strain of lion.

a documentary about this one particular strain of lion that there was a apparently the river split sides or the river changed its path and it turned this area into an island and the lions had to adapt because the only thing they could eat was buffalo which is very difficult to kill you know usually they're eating antelope and other smaller things that aren't nearly as dangerous right so these lions developed and became far larger so the female lions are as large as a normal male lion and they're hulking like massive muscles and they're just enormous it's just enormous strain of lion that's exclusively eating buffalo and there's a whole documentary it's a national geographic documentary i think it's really good but it's just incredible to see these things walking around i mean they look cartoonish they're like the hulk

so it's hard to tell you'd have to compare them to a regular lion but there's some images of these things walking around they just look so much larger than a regular lion because they just had to adapt and i would think that if you're running around like if you're running you got to think like you're you look like something that's trying to get away well if me running in that park yeah no i was right next to the green vehicle so the big metal green vehicle was there and they just said stay close so i was one door flip away from i just launched myself into the it was open top so i would have been in that vehicle before they got to me i hope did you hear about that woman from uh she was uh an editor on the game of thrones and she was in one of those parks and she had a window rolled down and she they told her keep your windows

rolled up at all times she was trying to take better photographs, and the cat reached in and grabbed her and pulled her out of the vehicle and killed her. This was last year. And they're a dangerous creature. Yeah. And you're just out there running with them. Yeah, well, I... Yeah, this is... Oh, is that a picture of it?

Yeah. Oh, God, they have a picture of it happening? It was in 2015. Oh. Was it really that long ago? Yeah, I just looked it up. Yeah, it picture of it? Yeah. Oh, God. They have a picture of it happening? It was in 2015. Oh. Was it really that long ago? Yeah, I just looked it up. That's crap. I thought it was last year.

No, it was... My facts are terrible. I'm fine, bro. Look at that, though. That is just so awful that they actually caught it on camera. Well, she just thought it was... You know, she was safe. She's in the car.

Reached in, grabbed her, and pulled her out. Yeah, I... You're out there the car. I reached in, grabbed her, and pulled her out. Yeah. You're out there running around. I would have. There was a guy with a gun next to me. I hope he's a good shot. He said he knew how to shoot things. I don't know.

I played my cards. You know? Yeah. Sometimes you play your cards. Well, it must have been kind of exhilarating, too. There's something about it, right? Well, there. I was talking to the zebras. I just. I out because you know obviously they were not dangerous there's a whole lot of non-dangerous ones it was actually the first day and the it was about marathon

10 or 11 or something and i felt you know once you're over the 10 mark and i'd never got there you know if you've done the whole south african thing and failed and people were tweeting about me eddie is a you know africa kicked your ass. You know, you just go TIA, you know, this is Africa. You're going to take us on? We're a huge fucking continent. TIA? That's what they're saying? This is Africa? No. It's a big Africa. Because Africa is...

Did you tell them, hey man, I was on medication? No, well, it didn't really matter. They were just in that whining. So I just had to come back. And I tried three times to come back. And then i came back and uh three times yeah i kept trying can we set the data can we get back and do the thing but now we won't haven't got enough money to be able to do that that won't be able to set up okay and then suddenly it's on it's on it's on and i didn't i couldn't train again and uh so i thought let's

just go get it done and then day five was in hospital. Day six was in hospital as well. After two-thirds of the marathon on day six, I had to go to hospital. For what? Well, it kept – what happened? My doctor had gone away, but my trainer thought – he thought I just didn't look good. It was 35, 38 degrees, whatever. What is that, like 120 Fahrenheit? I just didn't look good. It was 35, 38 degrees, whatever. And I'm used to running into it. What is that, like 120 Fahrenheit?

Yeah, I'd say 110, 115, somewhere up there. And I was not used to that. And so I would have made it, I feel. But he wanted me to see an expert. So I saw a nephrologist. I didn't even know what the word meant. Nephrologist? Nephrologist is a kidney expert. I thought that would be a renal expert. But no, it's a nephrologist i didn't even know what the word meant but that nephrologist is a kidney expert i thought that would be a renal expert but no it's a nephrologist and it's very

cool black dude and he was there in south africa and eastern east london it's called is the city so it's the big place and he's going what are you doing who are you i'm running for mandela what and while i'm doing this thing and okay and uh he said it's it's okay we've checked out your kidneys you're all right your blood's uh it's it's okay. We've checked out your kidneys. You're all right. Your blood's, it's your hydration. Hydration is terrible. So we're going to put three liters into you, and you'll be peeing like a horse all night. And I didn't pee once.

So, yeah, that's what my body was saying. You need some hydration. Wow. And after that, it got better and better. And so day 11, I got into this national park. So there's no one else there, just me and animals and the security people and whatever with me. And it was kind of beautiful. It was just beautiful.

And the sun was great, a sunset going down. There was a rainstorm as well in the middle of it. There were wild animals out there. I don't know. I just felt, again, this zen, weird place of beauty. and also knowing i'm getting stronger i'm getting stronger i've gone through the barrier um and i also because i'd written i'd run four marathons then a day off and then the fifth sixth day i ran two-thirds of a marathon so i'd run four two-thirds marathons in six days which is not good numbers for your head you need five and five or something and something but four But four and two-thirds of a marathon in six days, it just didn't work.

And then I ran another marathon and I said, hang on, I've got to run a marathon in a third and get these numbers matching up. So I caught up the third marathon and then it was always day seven and I've run six, eight marathons in nine days. It was always one day behind. So I thought last day I'll do a double marathon and that will be a good climactic end of my south african thing what what is going on with your mind when you're doing this because you you're not listening to any music and you're in this sort of meditative state where

you're just left foot right foot left foot right foot breathe in breathe out yeah it's i'm saying it's kind of zen but it's not in a kind of like I'm listening to my heartbeat or anything. It's more like I just feel it's just some sort of beautiful thing of maybe because that's what we used to be as humans. So maybe I'm reaching back into some past memory. We humans just used to be as humans so maybe i'm reaching back into some past memory we humans just used to be out on the plains and we were looking for honey wild honey or berries or some root stuff and and if we could trap something we'd get you know i don't know what it i can't quite work out what

it is but i just find it beautiful and i do know that you're getting vitamin d in you're getting stronger from that um somebody once read my. I never do the hand palm reading, but I was at a Halloween party and there was a palm reader. I'll try it. I'm in a good place. Let's read my hand. And I can't remember what she said except, you need to get out more.

You need to get outside more. And I thought, okay. I always felt that I need to be out back doing stuff. Because when I was a kid, I lived for soccer, for football. I used to run like a crazy idiot. I loved that game. And then from the age of 12, I went to a school that didn't play it and I never played sports this is one of my gifts to myself accident I think from the age of 12 you know in your teenage years your bones already moving and setting and at that time I was hardly doing anything so I think

I've my knees have never gone people say running on the knees my knees have not gone I've got a whole theory about the the heel of the foot which it should never, you know, sprinters are always on the toes. All running should be on the toes. And I think if the heel hits, that's what causes the knees to scroll. I could be wrong on this. No, no, that's correct. That's not how people are supposed to run. That was actually changed by Nike.

They developed a running shoe with a fat heel, and they changed the way people way people run they change their gait and it's responsible for a lot of injuries i think so and i noticed on horses if you look for the heel of a horse it's right up by their bum because the the the toes you know the hoof is the toes and then you go all the way up that leg and right by the bum is that's the heel it's's just an enormously long foot. And you go, well, that's never going to hit the ground. And dogs don't do it. Cats don't do it. We are the ones that use this heel thing. Obviously, initially for walking to make us balance when we went from the chimpanzee guerrilla stage into the, you know, we need to balance.

Yeah, but even then, I mean, most people, if you just give them, if they're barefoot, like children, for example. Like one of the things that I was reading this book about barefoot running and how important it is to develop this and that most people that have problems from that they're really having problems because their feet don't have strong muscles in them because of the atrophy and the way they were describing a regular running shoes is essentially like a cast and that you're you're so used to being protected in this cast that everything sort of just gets mushy yep inside of it and then you're you're so used to being protected in this cast that everything sort of just gets mushy inside of it and then you're also striking down on the heel which is a very unnatural thing and when i watch my kids run like my kids will run with me sometimes

and they naturally know to run on the balls of their feet that's how they naturally run and when people start running heel first that's where all the problems come. It's just not a normal way for people to run. Yeah. And I was also initially in South Africa running on certain road surfaces where they just dropped. Instead of doing a tarmacadam kind of covering, they had just put rocks. Obviously, some lorry had come along. This truck had just dropped rocks out of the back to sort of hold together the mud in the rainy times. And very uneven surface, very hard on the foot. out of the back to sort of hold together the mud in the rainy times.

And very uneven surface, very hard on the foot. And I was doing these very thin-soled shoes. What kind of shoes are you running with? Well, I kept changing them now. But there were the Vibrams and then there were Vivo barefoot ones. Oh, so you were running in barefoot? Were you running marathons in barefoot shoes? Well, initially I was. And then my trainer trainer it just got so hard that my trainer said look you're gonna wear these and then i left it to them to choose my physio and who's olympic level so he said right these are

gonna be better for that i prefer you not to be in these so i said okay you tell me what shoes to wear i'll i'll take care of running the marathons but i do remember seeing little south african children running on the roads next to me where they call hey we'll run with you and they had completely nothing on their feet and they could deal with these sharp rocks i thought were really sharp i was every few steps was great whoa ow ow and they were just yeah and they were just uh they had they were laughing and running along no because their feet had built up like in this very, this very house. Ah, this is South Africa, yeah. This is a weird water. No, it's kind of fun because I go right back there.

I ran with flags. That's a beautiful thing. And I was running in the Eastern Cape and they're looking at a white guy. What's a white guy doing? And this is very rural area. So I learned to say molo, molo. That was in the African National Park. That was the rain.

So I learned to say, Molo, Molo. That was in the African National Park. That was the rain. That was the day where the rainstorm happened. You could see the thunder and lightning. That's the truck there on the left. You can see the thing. And this guy just turned up out of the blue to track me down.

What did he give you? He just gave me a letter saying, thank you for doing stuff. But if I ran with the flag and I said, Molo to people, and I led to say, how are you in Cusa. Cusa. This guy seems like he's wearing women's clothes as well. Yes, he's wearing a skirt. And I think he's a transgender guy with less hair than me.

Yeah, he's bald, but he's a transgender guy. Now, do you take hormones or anything? No, not at the moment. But I could. I could transition. But then I've also got these boy genetics going on in on i mean i really think it's genes i think they're going to find out how it works but i can't prove that at the moment but if i transition over then i'll just be on the other side of this kind of fence that we give ourselves and i've decided okay i'm gender fluid i'm just going to have like a superhero boy mode and girl mode like the human torch can go flame on flame off so i'm going when do you just do you decide some days today i'm boy

mode i can but i tend to uh do sort of block periods now but when i campaign i'm in girl mode but i'm doing films dramatic films i'm in boy mode um unless i play the transgender character you have to think about it? Not really, no. But it's easier for me to be in girl mode because then if I can deal with that, you know, some people stare at you and I have a confidence now. I carry myself with a certain confidence.

They go, oh, he seems to be quite confident, so I'll just relax about that. And I can actually control other people's embarrassment because if they don't know what to do, I'd say, hi, how are you? Can I have a cup of tea? Oh, yeah. Well, we sell tea.

Oh, no. That's why you're here. All right. Okay. So I can just relax people by just chatting to them. And then boy mode is quite easy for me to do because I just go boy mode. And I scrub up quite well in boy mode. But you've given thought to transitioning?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. well in boy mode do you have you but you've given thought to transitioning yep yeah yeah um but uh you know the part of me wants to be um steve mcqueen in the great escape and part of me wants to be elizabeth taylor in looking like at home in a cat in a hot room of virginia wolf no cat in a hot tin roof more like which i just saw on the plane yesterday so these are the two looks i go between they're going well i kind of both of them. And as a kid, I thought, you know, can't I look more like Steve McQueen? Because I kind of fascinated with Steve McQueen and what he went through to get to where he was. And he was so driven.

I don't know if you know about the Steve McQueen story. You know that he was in a film with Paul Newman and he was like 93rd on the list of credits. Someone up there likes me if you watch it you can see him there's a knife fight between Paul Newman and Steve McQueen and he's like a heavy you know young thug kind of heavy guy

but he's just a small player and then the second film he's in with him is Towering Inferno where they are equal billing and I think Paul Newman is first and Steve McQueen is higher if you look at if you look at the names on the poster Paul Newman comes in from the left so his name is first and Steve McQueen is on the right but higher than Paul Newman

that's how they got that equal billing you know how do you put equal billing if you're gonna start from the start reading from the left? Right. And if you remember the film, they come out as two guys. You say, yeah, they're both decent guys. Yeah, these are both heroes. Yeah, that's a funny thing with actors, right? Billing.

They want to make sure that their name is read first. Well, that's – I mean, you've got to have egos to do these things. I mean, so many things need an ego to do them. And then hopefully you can dial your ego down when you come off stage. Some people can't do that. When it comes to billing, if you know about Steve McQueen and his mom was a sort of sometime prostitute and had men in and out of the house with her

and his dad was just never there. And he found himself through a boys retreat, you know, because he was breaking the law. And they sent him off to this place. And then they told him to talk these kids out of train wild horses. And that was one of the first things he did. And he was just so ambitious. And with Yul Brynner in Magnificent Seven.

Because if you know that film at the beginning, he's got Yul Brynner. Do you know that film well? I don't remember it. Well, Magnificent Seven is a great film. So he's got Yul Brynner with his coloring, but no hair, but such an amazing look, and Steve McQueen at the beginning.

They go up to Boot Hill to bury this Indian guy up at Boot Hill and people are not allowing it. There's racism in the town. And they both go up and they ride shotgun. Again, two heroes. But he was, Yul Brynner was the top guy. And apparently Steve McQueen kept going, you see what Brynner's doing? You see what his caravan is, man?

God, he's got all this stuff here. And he just wanted to be the top guy. Yeah. And he got there. And it's a beautiful story. It doesn't end brilliantly. But, you know, Bullet is great. Great Escape is great.

Yeah, he was a fascinating guy, Steve McQueen. He became a race car driver, like serious race car driver. Yeah, he came second in the one before. There's a documentary on Le Mans, the 24-hour race. And he did a race in America, which I think was a 12-hour race. And they came second. With a broken foot, he did it. And he was just kind of a force of nature.

But he would also do crazy things. I mean, really crazy things, which are just not. Well, he died fairly young, too, right? At 50, he died. He died of cancer. He was smoking and drinking and drinking yeah i don't know what it was yeah how do you know we still don't know why people get cancer my mom died when i when i when i was six and she was a nurse and never smoked and she died of bowel cancer i mean what jesus what is that yeah nothing makes sense if you when unless you put in random into the world.

That's my theory of the universe. It's a good theory. Yeah. If you put random in, it makes sense. After 13.5 billion years, we've had about 300 years since the Enlightenment. And I just think we're lucky enough to be here. We've had five great extinctions,

and we could have a sixth, or we could look after ourselves. Treat other people as you'd like to be treated yourself that great rule do unto others as you'd have done to you and that if we did if we all did that tomorrow the world would all work yeah just how do we do that how do we get that going well it's better than it was yes it's better than it was even though it seems kind of hellish if anyone's pissed off with politics at the moment track yourself back if you're going to look at politics from any time back in history it's always been hell it's always been rubbish it's always been all over the place yes and uh i think um transparency as opposed to opacity if that's the word you know the more

transparent things are the more you can check hey that guy's lying about that you know if we could work out what's the more we can check. Hey, that guy's lying about that. You could work out what's a lie and what's not a lie. That would be really nice. I don't know if we could have lies on all the time. I think it's going to be mind reading. Mind reading. I really think that we're going to have technology within the next 50 years that allows people to definitively understand whether or not someone's being honest, that would, it would make it. I'm sure someone could get a bad side of that, but you think up front, you think there's

a lot of good stuff on that. Yeah. Someone could say, this is going to happen. No, I want this to happen. A lot of people's scams are going to fall apart. Yeah. What do you call them? Ponzi schemes?

Yeah. Ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes. Yeah. A lot of that's going to fall apart. Why are they called Ponzi schemes? Was there a guy called Mr. Ponzi? Yeah, I think so, pyramid schemes. Yeah, a lot of that's going to fall apart. Why are they called Ponzi schemes? Was there a guy called Mr. Ponzi? Yeah, I think so. I think you can...

There's a bunch of those little terms, like Fagazi. Jeff Ponzi, I think. Fagazi is one that people use for fake. There was a limousine company that was writing bad checks, Fagazi Limousine Service, and it became like a thing on the East Coast where, oh, this guy, he's a Fagazi cop. That means you're a fake cop.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah, Fagazi became a big word. Charles ponzi there he is jeff ponzi look at that dirtbag look at him he looks happy 1920 he's about to leap over his own walking the roaring 20s just ripping people off do we tell people as you're listening please look up charles ponzi on yeah and yeah so that's it and how did he die did he explode hopefully Please look up Charles Ponzi on Wikipedia. And yeah. So that's it. And how did he die? Did he explode? Hopefully he exploded. He got hit by a meteor.

It'd be nice. So you are running for something now? What are you doing? I'm going to go. I've said that for nine years, quite consistently, I would like to say that I was going to run in 2020. We had set terms in our politics like you already had. You've had a four-year. We arranged it into a five-year, but then we've gone back to the old system,

which is where the prime minister of the country can choose when they have an election, and it can be anywhere up to a day, the next day after the election or up to five years later. So we have no idea. So the prime minister can decide, you know what? We'll have another election in two weeks. Yeah. And they wouldn't do that for them. But we had a general election in 2015.

And then in 2017, having been in for only two years, Theresa May was persuaded that if you go for election now, you're going to win big. You're going to win tons of extra seats. And then we'll be able to do whatever we want. But in fact, they lost seats in that election. So, you know, sometimes they grab it. Sometimes you go in the fourth. There's a traditional thing of going in the fourth year because if you've got all the economics going and everything's pretty good, okay, let's go now. We've got a year to spare, but let's go in the fourth year because we know we're in a good place.

And then you have to allow, I six weeks for election campaign but yeah that's we do that i think other countries do that but i'm sure to america you go that sounds crazy but anyway that's what we've been doing for some time what are you going to run for a member of parliament for some constituency hopefully in england would be my thing, as opposed to United Kingdom, because there's Wales and Scotland. Is this a step? Are you going to move further along the line? Are you going to eventually? No, that would be, once I stand for an MP, then I would, Glenda Jax, I don't know if you know Glenda Jax, but she did this.

Well, Arne Schwarzenegger, you know about him, because he went away and then came back to the creative work that he was doing to doing films. But he went away for seven years. So I will go away for a period of time and put my career to hibernation. And just do politics. Just do politics. But you have a set period of time where you're going to do this, and then afterwards you're going to retire?

No, I would do it. No set period of time. I'm just going to go off and work as hard as I can, as far as I can, and then I come back when I choose to come back. So no stand-up, no nothing during that time? You could do stand-up if you're raising money for charity, if I'm raising money for the Labour Party or my party. I think that would be allowable. I think my constituency members wouldn't mind that if I was raising money for constituency.

But if I was just doing it for myself, well you can write books you'd have to write books and articles it's all a bit hazy but i'm not sure if you have the same system in we have a similar system yeah uh my friend doug stanhope was running for president briefly kind of as a lark and uh realized that he really couldn't do stand-up because if he did stand-up he would have to allow equal time for everyone else who wanted to perform who also had something like his stand-up performances were then thought of as political campaign right performances something along those lines it was like some weird bullshit that he was going to have to navigate that he decided to just get back out of it yeah but he was bullshitting the entire time

really he was just doing it for fun no i'm gonna do it i'm gonna go in i think a lot of moderate people don't go in i consider myself a radical moderate i do radical things with a moderate message and already done a number of things like that in my life so i'm just going to take that in and what's your goal my goal is to try and encourage my country and the world to go in a positive direction. I think I've been saying this politically that I think this is our last century on Earth or it's our first century on Earth. I think the next 80 years is for everything. We're going to choose everything here.

We're either going to wipe ourselves off the planet or we're going to make it a fair world for 7.5 billion people where you have a right to have a fair world, enough democracy transparency enough money to live a life to have a family not everyone not billions of people living on one dollar a day or two dollars a day so i think we need to get to there because then immigration raises its head your country my country every country in the world and that's all people moving around because they haven't got enough money to live on or they haven't got enough security because there's a war civil war and if we could get beyond that then a lot of those problems drop away so but and going into politics and talking about a global vision of the future and whatever is a is slightly it's a very difficult thing to do because people are going to say oh you've just asked for that how is that helping this this global vision but i just thought we seem to be trying 1930s politics again and uh in political areas so i thought well i'm gonna i'm gonna look for a vision a positive

vision of the future and i know when i came out as transgender in 85 there was no way i could imagine anything i didn't know where it was going to go i just thought i need to go out there need to argue or discuss at least try and set up a positive image version you know because uh you i'm not sure what age you are but i think you're 51 51 so you know i'm 57 so remember in the earlier years of our lives it was just so out there transgender you need to talk about it right there were gay and lesbian people out but transgender was like some crazy out there place what the hell are you on about and that was that was when i came out in the middle of that and it wasn't uh it wasn't an easy thing but i just thought i'm if i'm not going to do

special forces i'll do this civilian that is a hilarious group of choices special forces or transgender well i did the the civilian special forces but then i had to fight on the streets and argue people and yeah and be and it's all mental, isn't it? Right. And it isn't in any way the same because people are shooting bullets at you and people are dying and getting blown up. So I know there's a massive difference there. But everything in the end is psychological. And if I wasn't going to do that, I was going to try and do this.

And I would take risks in these areas of, you know, I'll go out and people say things in the street, whatever they do, and do this and i would take risks in these areas of of you know i'll go out and people say things in the street whatever they do and do that and then i'll run the math so you were going out knowing that you might have to be in an altercation yeah i was sure that was going to happen teenagers are the hardest because they just point and scream at you yeah they're little assholes teenage boys they scare the shit out of me my friend eric said it's my friend eric crisp he said it to me once he's like you know because uh he was dealing with some teenage boys in his hometown and he was like the teenage boys are the most fucking dangerous animals on the planet because they have all this testosterone no one's really giving them

any guidance yet they're sort of just out there wild and they're trying to outdo each other one up each other yeah you know and and then they're they're cruel they there wild and they're trying to outdo each other one up each other yeah you know and and then they're they're cruel they're cruel and they also are insecure and so one of the ways to combat that insecurity is to try to make someone else feel like shit it's like some weird natural instinct that people have well that that is that's what gossip it hatred gossip is mild hatred and gossip when you say so and so they're less they're less, that you lower their respect or their value or whatever by saying something. Or you can do it as an action. And in doing so, you raise your own.

Yes. By saying, at least we're not them. Right. Because they are a shithead. Sure. And they're less than us. And that has gone on since the the dawn of time unfortunately well that's where you see the social currency of today's like shame climate like shaming people for this or that or attacking

people for whatever various thing they're doing trying to get public shame against people especially people that haven't really done anything wrong what they're doing is they're trying to do that to elevate themselves and they see someone in the public eye i see someone who's famous or rich and they're saying that person's a fucking loser and they're you know sports figures and perfect example you know like some super athlete and they drop a ball you fucking loser you know and they're they're doing this to sort of maximize this sort of this like this downfall this if they see anything that's going wrong with that person's life and if they can accentuate that and pump it up but somehow or another they think it elevates them it actually

is the opposite it's terrible for them it's terrible for everybody but they have this natural instinct this competitive instinct to push down the person they think is elevated too high well i think it leads into the trolling thing online that if you do it from behind a firewall of no one knows who I am. No one knows who I am. And I remember there was something. We have banknotes like your banknotes that had a woman on the back of one of our banknotes,

the Queen's pictures on the front. And then they changed it up every few years and they took the woman who was on the back of it. I think it was a 10-pound note or something. They took her off and they changed it. And then there was this campaign, we need to get a woman on the back of another different note if it's not going to be that.

And two people trolled this, I think two women, saying you should die, you should be raped. I mean, hellish stuff. One of them turned out to be a woman who was actually attacking another woman. And you think, what's going on in your head where's that coming from but behind this firewall you can yeah you can go to any place of well so it's almost like they don't think that a person that they're attacking online is an actual person they're not getting the social cues from them they're not looking

them in their eye yeah i just think it's a piss poor way to communicate with people i don't i don't do any communicating with people online i don't i don't do any communicating with people online i don't go back and forth with people on twitter i don't i don't comment on things i don't anything i talk so fucking much as it is doing this i'm like i've said enough i don't if you don't know how i feel about things jesus christ if you listen to this goddamn podcast that's me all right i don't need to comment on other shit. I definitely don't need to comment in text form back and forth with the person and try to explain myself. There's no benefit in it.

I used to, when I was doing stand-up in the clubs and people might shout out, fuck off, you asshole, you know, from the front. And I thought, well, you're drunk, you're an idiot, whatever, I don't care. And I would not think that person really knows what they're talking about. So I wouldn't go into a thing. I would try and destroy them with, you know, put-downs and stuff. But that's what's happening online if someone's coming to you. And I used to not worry about it before. And suddenly I was worried about it.

And I thought, no, actually, I'm not worried about them. It's just literally like thousands and millions of hecklers. It's really what it is. It is. It's a heckling thing. The last one I did was I said something and someone said, Eddie, fuck you. millions of hecklers yeah it's really what it is it's a heckling thing somebody i came up the last one i did was somebody i said something and someone said eddie eddie is a fuck you and i wrote back no fuck you i just thought that was a very witty response that's like five-year-olds that's what

they say yeah you're a loser he just yes exactly no you he was the loser and then i just connected so stupid you never really feel good about it even if you get a real good zinger on somebody you're just like what am i doing with my life yeah there was uh uh yeah my dad's bigger than your dad thing that's what's going on and my dad wasn't terribly tall so i could never use that what does it matter it has been yeah and does that really work for him no he keeps bumping into storeways when he goes he's much too tall my dad yeah so you're you guys are dealing with brexit right yeah we've got a how's that change the climate of england well it's made it's made it very toxic very um kind of like what's happening over here you know it's all gone and polarized like with the

build the wall stuff yeah yeah and it's it's one side of the other there's no one in the middle in a way if if you look at secession and American Civil War that was bound to happen at some time if you go back to the Constitution and 17 was it 1787 that was supposed to happen and i think once you've european union no one's ever tried from countries that have hundreds of years of history to choose to try and learn to live together work together some shape or form this tricky thing we're trying to do it's the hardest thing politically that's ever been done in the history of the world um and i think that's because i'm saying the american model with native american lands and rolling over manifest destiny is a different model it's a different way of things happen it's a different time as well yeah

different time and native americans didn't have this idea of oh we mark this off and we've registered this land so the idea that people learning to work together is tricky. At some point, someone was going to say, I think we'd like to change this or we'd like to move out. So this fight was bound to happen. And so it's very toxic. I'm not getting too right at the center of it because you could just, you know, probably like you have on your news broadcast. You can listen to people talking hours and hours and hours. What do you think about?

What do you think about? And it doesn't seem to get anywhere. Right. So I've worked out what my worldview is, this view that everyone's got to have a fair chance in life. I know that automation is happening right now so there's going to be a whole load of uh people who won't be able to get jobs because the unskilled labor force their job's going to get automated that's going to get tricky so the universal wage is probably going to have to come in the idea universal basic income yeah universal basic which everyone's going to have to get and it's not going to be a negative thing it's going to

be something okay then you can go off and you can retrain or you could live your life and and then there's artificial intelligence parity by 2050 next 30 years and that's what does that mean we can't even work out what that means um i think it's going to get harder before it gets easier and so i'm going to just i always do the long game i always do the long game so you know i came out and back in 85 and i just thought well hopefully it'll get better over time and now this will run up in 2019 and it's definitely better than that was but it can go backwards forwards but i just i'm going to try and shoot for that and the the everyone have a fair chance in life and as to brexit where that goes you know positive negative you know i'm against it so i was just going to it. I don't need to think about whether I'm against it. I just know that I want the younger people are coming online to vote now.

They're old enough to vote. And they, 78% of them want to be part of Europe. And the older people who are passing away, probably 78% of them wanted to be out of Europe. So it's a fear thing, like fear of immigration, fear of? Well, there's a thing. You have to be brave and curious rather than fearful and suspicious. And these are the two ways I think people can go. If we're brave enough, we can be curious and say, hi, how are you? Where are you from? And what do you do? Can we learn from you? Can you learn from us? I think that is

the way for humanity to go forward. Or you could be fearful and suspicious. Hang on, no, back off outside. I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to know about you. And that's the fearful and suspicious way. And I think we have to be brave and curious. Otherwise, we're not going to make it. So for us in America, you're essentially dealing with a bunch of different countries that speak a bunch of different languages, whereas we're dealing with a bunch of different states that speak the same language. But it kind of doesn't make any difference yeah that's interesting because i thought if everyone could get the hang because english has become a lingual franker for the world hasn't made much difference and america shows you can be completely at loggerheads whether

you're saying the same words or not i think if you're not saying the same words it's easier for people to say who are these people we hate them because they can't understand a single word they're saying that's easier but it's an easier way to be xenophobic slash racist on it. And I've always said a xenophobe is just a racist with a xylophone, which is my joke, which I got to use somewhere in a political situation. But it doesn't seem to make the big difference in the end. We have enough ways of translating and stuff. And most people in most countries now can reach for english if they need to you know like some people i think putin will always speak in russian um any any leader of a country will

probably use their own language first and talk to their own country people first and then they might throw in something in english or in an interview so but we can always tend we can work out from vibe you know where most people are standing it's coming in so uh well i think that we're probably pretty close to some form of viable translation technology like you know google had these uh google earbuds yeah you can do it on the google app without even the earbuds if you go to google translate and you hit the microphone on there you can can just say, hello, good afternoon, and if it's on the French button, it'll come out in French.

So I haven't done it in the field. I would like to get out to somewhere out in the sticks. Actually, I should test it out. I'll make better. The Google earbuds, I think the idea is that if you were talking to me in French, it would translate it instantaneously to English. It's probably a beta version of it now or like a clunky version of it but ultimately we're going to have something that allows you to do that there's also google lens you could i used that when i was traveling

or you could take the the camera and you look at it and it translates yeah foreign languages into that's on google translate yeah it's amazing so the google translate verbal one at the moment does line by line so you have to say a line yeah receive a line yeah i mean just think about what technologies existed 20 years ago and how more much more advanced they are now and then add that to translation and that exponential increase it's probably gonna we're probably gonna lose a lot of these barriers of misunderstanding it is interesting interesting. I do think we have created some amazing positive things going forward and we tend to bank them

and then we don't get a hit of, wow, we've got that now. Yeah. Like we can make coffee quite easily. We can do the grinding of coffee beans. But then we just go, okay, and then we'll find something else to piss us off. Right.

So trying to keep ourselves happy because when we're happy enough, and it's usually economics, when people happy enough there's less racism less immigration problems there's less everything's less yes and when everyone's runs out of money they get pissed off i'm totally understandably but we need to make the economy of the world work and then it would be an easier place but what how do we do that how do you make the economy of the world work yeah no yes that's an easy line to say and it's very difficult to work it out but i do think as you gradually learn to live together work together as we gradually come together i mean it's like in the european union

say in america if certain parts of america or european union are having a tough time then money goes to those places having a tough time to try and get them back on their feet so that they can come back in and start making enough money to be able to help other parts. And that's the idea. And that's logically a model that should be able to work in the world as we head towards it. Because, you know, we know that wars are terribly expensive and a lot of people die. That doesn't seem to get anywhere. Surely we should have learned this as we go back.

So wars of conquest, I don't think they're going to happen anymore quite like you know the idea we're going to invade this thing like the old empire stuff yes which i think the nazis did the last version of that from now wars of conquest are now being replaced by wars of defense wars of defense or wars that are hidden behind things you know under some other auspices. Pretense. Yes. We need to – we've come in to defend these people.

They didn't need defense. Right. What was Grenada about? I still don't know what Reagan was doing in Grenada. He unveiled attempts to control natural resources. Oh, is that right? Yeah. Well, I think that's what a lot of these are.

Yeah. And, you know, and then it's economic wars, I suppose, too. And then stopping terrorism in its tracks and trying to keep these radical terrorists from taking over certain countries and strongholds, but we really haven't done a good job of that. And then it's political will you need to do that, and then people in their countries, understandably, don't like people dying abroad.

And then, you know, wars of defense, do they? I wonder whether that's going to happen. You know, there's this thing called right to defend, the idea that countries that are better set up should be able to go in or should be willing to go in and defend people having a really tough time and try to get the politics to work on that. You know, if someone is menacing, when Hitler was menacing within his own country, offend people are having a really tough time and try to get the politics to work on that you know if someone is menacing this year when hitler was menacing within his own country no one did

anything like when stalin was menacing in his own country no one you know because about 30 million died understand but no one went in no one said hey we got a you know whistleblowing time to go in and help you just we didn't go in well we don't even go in for north korea i mean we're in this weird position with north korea where you have this military dictator who's clearly oppressing his entire nation and this strange to see in 2019 the limited internet i mean they have like an intranet they have like their own version of the internet where they have a few websites you could visit yeah they've got everybody locked down and extreme poverty, extreme hunger, like the ones that have escaped from North Korea. I mean, they've had these soldiers and they're malnourished.

They have parasites. It's an awful, awful condition. It's happening right now. And if you see when North Korea does military maneuvers, it looks like the Nazis. And you thought, well, that Nazi thing, well, you know, I don't like the nazis at all but how'd they get all these people doing that you say oh the north korea

could do it well hang on this is just a thing if you spend all your time just marching up and down you can make that happen and lenny riefenstahl can go and film it and with low angles and make it look dramatic make it look fearsome yeah but we're we're better off globally than we were during world war ii right the world is better off the world is better off in the western world it's more progressive and more open-minded since you came out in 1985 versus in 2019 where we're sitting here today yeah it's a different world it's a different environment i definitely that's why i'm a glasses two-thirds for i do think we are in a better place there is more tolerance it does go you know a few steps forward one step back and then always you're always gonna have charlottesville there's nazi

rallies you're always gonna have like weird pockets of racism and where you think you're like i can't fucking believe this is still happening yeah but you're gonna have a little those setbacks i don't know there was something like in Germany something like 10,000 people We're wanting to vote for the Nazi party or maybe it's more but you know, that's a country of 80 million So let's get the perspectives, right? Yeah, if certain things happen there on television you go whoa And that's obviously why they do them right to create an outrage get on television and you go wow, that's it's all over It's happening everywhere. Oh, well, no, it's in a this small place It's all over.

It's happening everywhere. Oh, well, no, it's in this small place. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, sometimes, well, the beautiful things that human beings can do is stunning. We, you know, we have so many stories of just amazing things that humans do. And then you put the horrible things that we can do, that goes on forever. Yeah.

If there was a God, I don't believe in a God, but if he did come down and said, what are you guys doing? Who are these bastards? And you guys, well done, you guys, but who are these bastards? And you guys, well done you guys, but who are these bastards? Well, I don't, you know. Well, they've always said the Lord works in mysterious ways. So, look at the world. Pretty fucking mysterious. Maybe it's evidence they're correct. I think World War II was a

test for God, because 60 million people died, and at some point we were thinking, okay, how many people need to die before you come and blow a whistle and just say, whoa, what's the guy with the mustache doing? Get him off the board. Flick him off the board that was my test for for god and he didn't come so i think it's up to us kids well he didn't come when we mean what they did the nazis did was obviously horrific but what we did when we dropped nuclear bombs on hiroshima and nagasaki that's pretty fucking horrific as well no intervention whatsoever from the big guy

no no he didn't come in i mean he didn't catch the bomb in midair going hey there's kids down there That's pretty fucking horrific as well. No intervention whatsoever from the big guy. No. No, he didn't come in. I mean. He didn't catch the bomb in midair going, hey, there's kids down there. There's women down there. These are not soldiers. This is a city. I need to say this.

And I know I'm not taking the. The Japanese, I thought the Nazis were fanatics. But the Japanese at that time took it even more fanatical. You know when the last Japanese soldier surrendered? You know what year that was? It's like 1980 or something. 75, I think it is. There's another one you can Google. He was on an island.

I mean, how fanatical do you need? Oh, they're committed. Still 1975, I think 74 or 75. Yeah, okay, I give up. Well, they have an amazing warrior culture. I mean, you think we were talking about martial arts, a giant percentage, including judo and jujitsu, of martial arts came from this one island. I mean, they perfected so many different martial arts.

And it's more the Japanese than any other country in Asia. Well, I mean, they, I think the Thais did it best. I think the Thais developed the best striking style, and then the Japanese developed the best grappling style. But the Japanese are known as more warlike than the Thais. You never hear the Thais, or did they used to be? The Thais figured out the best way to gamble on fights. They figured out the best, most brutal style of fight,

and that is they incorporated a lot of things that other people didn't, including like leg kicks and knees and elbows. And they fought really often. Like they would have these, like to this day, they have Lumpini Stadium and all these different stadiums in Bangkok. They have these stadium champions and they have matches on a consistent basis. And so these people are fighting from the time they're really, really young. Like they're taking like six and seven-year- and they're and girls as well and they're sending them off to these thai camps and teaching them how to fight and then having them fight you know they'll have a hundred fights by the time they're 16.

wow yeah it's just it's with thailand it's very strange because they're so friendly they're so smiley and friendly yet they developed probably the most fearsome, striking style on the planet. And then they've got a transgender thing going on as well. Yes, they've got a lot of that going on. In the Venn diagrams of what's going on there, what is intersecting here? So much great food. I mean, they have so much cool shit, the beautiful environment. It's a weird place, man.

Thailand's a weird place. I love it. Do they film Apocalypse Now, though? I think they did. Was that in Vietnam? No. Maybe they did some of it in Thailand. I think they did some of it in Vietnam.

No, they did nothing in Vietnam. Nothing? It was too close to dates-wise, you know? Was it Thailand? I bet. I mean, it took fucking forever. It makes sense. Philippines. Philippines. No, that's right. It was too close dates-wise. Was it Thailand? I bet. I mean, it took fucking forever. It makes sense. Philippines.

No, that's right. It was Marcos, yeah. Because Marcos kept saying, I want the aircraft back. I want the helicopters back. So the helicopters would come in and they'd piss off somewhere. Isn't it funny when Marcos, when that whole regime went down, all we heard about was Imelda Marcos' shoes. Yes.

I remember the whole thing. The Beatles had a bad time there because they were invited to a place that they didn't know about. Oh, right. And everybody got mad at them. Yeah, and that's where they last toured. And they were in the back of a truck.

They were holding on, literally in the back of a truck, going, why are we playing all these places? You know, that's when they started getting a hold of their, we're going to do what we want to do rather than what someone else wants to do.

So, I mean, I'm with you in that I am ridiculously optimistic. That's good. I think that, I think people, I mean, I follow Steven Pinker's logic of that people will sort of look at the horrible things that we have today and say, God, this world is terrible. Now, there are definitely terrible aspects, but this is without doubt the greatest time ever to be alive that we've ever seen, at least in recorded human history. I would agree with that. I think communication is a giant part of that. It is.

This global world, which we thought was going to be a beautiful thing, and then people said, oh, no, it's a hellish thing. In fact, it's got beautiful aspects and some hellish aspects as any invention has you know like the internet hey you can teach someone how to save their life on on the internet ah you can also teach them how to make a bomb on the internet you know so yeah i think this is always the way every next step we get we will have some positives then we'll hit all the negatives yeah and then we'll go back to some more positives so So, yeah, I've got to be optimistic. Yeah, well, I am an optimistic person.

Otherwise, I just wouldn't be here. But this military aspect that I mentioned, I'm flipping back to that. But, yeah, I do try and think I need to do this. I think that's a good thing to do. Now I need to do that. For nine years I've been saying I'm going to politics. So I'm going next year. But it might not be a general election.

I try and plan ahead because if I randomize it, if I just float – because a lot of people do, wow, this happened and then that happened and then I was – and that could be a wonderful life. But I have my river analogy. If you're canoeing down a river, if you go at the same speed as the river, it could throw you onto rocks. It could give you a wonderful ride. It could be anything. But it's up to the river. Whereas I pedal like crazy. Sometimes I backpedal like crazy. i have actively backpedaled against things and and

sometimes usually i'm pedaling faster than the speed of the river to try and guide myself through you see that whenever do these canoeing um well anyone driving a boat through a river when i look at human interactions objectively part of me has to consider that there's a possibility that we need all this negative in order to reinforce the positive. That there's some component of human life that desires or relies upon negative things to reinforce positive things. That this yin and yang that we exist under, that we see the horrors of war and horrific poverty and all these terrible things and horrible violence, we see this and it actually serves to reinforce our desire for positive things

and push our society in a more positive direction i mean i almost think that this is when we see national tragedies and shootings and all these different terrible terrible things there's there's all this fear and anger and frustration but there's also action and the action might we might think there's a lack of action by politicians or a lack of action by the police or a lack of action by whoever we think should be responsible for mitigating these horrible situations that happen. But publicly, the social fabric of the world, the way people communicate and interact, I think it reinforces our desire to not have that happen. It reinforces our understanding of peace and our our love of peace and i think that these these bad things that we see in our world they almost propel us

towards a better world because human beings are constantly striving for improvement and innovation this is one of the things that we do we want things to be better and bigger and faster and stronger and we want our society to be better at all times. We never say, this is good. Let's keep it just the way it is. We never say that. So my thought is that even what we're experiencing in this country, it seems at times that we're almost like on the brink of civil war

between the right and the left and people lying on both sides and conflating people's opinions and changing people's perspectives in order to suit their own narrative that i think that this ultimately all this angst and you see it from the outside and you look at it go what the fuck are we doing i think it's a natural part of the way human beings figure out life i shall respond to that. Sure. Yeah. I think almost the same as you. I would articulate it slightly differently. I noticed that humanity only sometimes gets going and does things when it's right up against the wall.

You know, somebody that needs these things to go on. If you took a World War II scenario, we went right to the wire on that and then suddenly we came back. And maybe not even, it wasn't even the political will on that. It was just – if the Japanese hadn't bombed Pearl Harbor, we wouldn't – you guys – we wouldn't have had you guys in us – with us for a D-Day. World War II, yeah, sure. And all that – all the forces and the money and the armaments and the tanks and the shermans coming in you know we needed that coming in and without the russian people we wouldn't have won world war ii and that was and they were

in this agreement so i i can't quite work out humanity i do think positive i do think the negatives you can appreciate the positives more i do think one thing on on the brexit brexit hate thing that's been going on is a lot of young people are coming on saying well so we're going to lose all this stuff the ability we could travel to to europe without visas we can work there we could retire there we can get a health care there all across europe and that's going to suddenly we cut off and we are roaming charges are going to go out for that all that people are valuing what what they uh they could lose a lot more so yeah the yin and yang the you can i think i think it's going to go on this way.

And also, once we get to a good place, I've noticed that a lot of people will say, okay, I'm not going to be politically active anymore. I'm just going to carry on doing my life and other people can sort things out. I've noticed that people will get activated to get to a result, maybe an election result or something or a referendum or whatever it is, and then they will just back off. They get frustrated. They get frustrated or they just think well that's done that's bagged and in a positive way maybe and just say but now i'm not even going to pay attention to what's going on but things will start rolling backwards so um i think we're going to keep having it like

that maybe the but the percentage of positive things to negative things has never changed over all the years over the last 10 000 years it's just there's more people in the world doing more positive things than doing more negative things maybe humanity hasn't changed because our brain sizes haven't changed even back to the cave men days you know even back the last 100 000 years the size of our brains has not moved so we if you went back to 7 70 000 years ago we would still be able to have conversations like this even though we wouldn't have the radios and things. It would be more on our tribe.

I think our tribe is better than your tribe. Actually, Steve, I don't know if our tribe is better than that tribe. I just think maybe they're similar. There's some good people in that tribe and there's some shitheads in that tribe. We need to maybe trade with them more. We can go to war with them, but then we could die. And Shirley could die and Kenny and Roger at number 22.

Because those conversations were happening in a slightly different way, I think, all the way back. And they weren't all just going, me, food, you, nice, good, three, five. It wasn't that. It was maybe, you know, millions of years ago, but not 100,000 years ago. And we only started speaking 100,000 years ago. So what we've developed since then. I'm fascinated by us as human beings

because we were just another animal and now we are kind of an amazing animal. We've invented beautiful things. We landed on the bloody moon. You guys landed on the moon, which I as a child thought that we landed on the moon, but in fact you guys landed on the moon. But Apollo 11, they kept it quite open.

I think Michael Collins in the command module said this is for the world, and there was this kind of feeling in Neil Armstrong. It's a nice, yeah, I grabbed hold of that. As a kid, I was growing up, you know, a bit younger than me. It's a pretty weird thing to think that we went from not being able to talk to space travel in 100,000 years. Yeah.

I mean, that's what they think, right? They think that people didn't have real language 100,000 years ago? Yeah a hundred years ago too genetic um i think it's about a hundred thousand years ago that's when it came up and the first words we said was let's go to the moon a hundred thousand years what's your name jack kennedy okay jack good idea well let's put it on the back burner for a moment what do you think happened that turned us into this do you ever stop and think about well i don't think it's a bloke upstairs floating in the clouds because they used to live in the clouds and then we flew through the clouds

and no one ever mentioned, hey, he's not in the clouds. So it's a randomized thing. I think these, like dinosaurs, 165 million years of those bastards. Right. And all they did was eat, kill, eat, kill, poo, and have sex.

That's all they did. Those four things for 165 million years. We've had 300 years since the enlightenment of human rights and democracy and stuff like that. If we say the Greeks did a great thing, but really it's the last 300 years. They had 165 million years of that. But why did they come along when we had all these creatures in the sea

and suddenly huge ones? Something happened, something something twisted randomizing thing it's i i we i don't maybe we'll never know but it has happened and i just don't think a bloke did it upstairs with a big beard he said now is the time that you speak and now you make handbags and now fight wars with the mg42 and now now it i just it i just think it happened and we need to roll with it and try and make humans work on this planet because then we're going to be going to mars soon and you can just say in the future if we got it going on mars at some point the martians go say we want to vote we got our own martian government you sure you earthlings you know

they're going to treat us the same way americans treat the british yeah and then the martians come back and attack us the martians actually come you could just see that in some sort of you know 100 years down the line sure yeah it could definitely happen you know and i so i i i despair about humanity and i and i and i i celebrate humanity i do this thing, actually, which I think is nice. I'm going to say this. Because obviously I'm doing a tour at the moment here in the U.S., but I'm going to come out of this U.S. tour on the 75th anniversary of D-Day,

and I fly to Caen in Normandy. Are you doing a stand-up tour? Yeah, I'm doing a stand-up tour of the whole of America. Are you doing any dates in L.A.? Yeah, I'm at the Dolby Theatre from the 26th to 29th of June. Okay. The Dolby that was the Kodak. I want to come out.

Yeah, yeah. If I'm 26 or 20, I'll look at it later. We'll work it out. Don't worry. Yeah, it's all on eddieazar.com. But I go to Normandy, 75th anniversary of D-Day, and they fought the Battle of Normandy in German,

obviously on one side, and then French and English on the other side and so i do three shows in german first show 50 minutes in german and then i do 50 minutes in in english and then 50 minutes in french and then we have a buffet and everyone hangs out and we eat and i meet everyone and we all the german speakers the french and english speakers yeah i'd heard that you're doing that that is incredible that you're doing stand up in multiple languages yeah that's how long did heard that you're doing that. That is incredible that you're doing stand-up in multiple languages. Yeah. How long did it take you to learn that?

Well, I did French at school for eight years. I did German at school for two years. So it was partly a sort of low-level political thing. I just thought if I'm an English guy going to France to do it in French, then maybe a French kid would go, well, fuck it, I'm going to do it in English. Right. And now the Germans are doing it in English, the Russians are doing it in English, the Spanish, everyone's going to English because you can have a Hollywood career,

potentially, or be on television in English. You can also tour the world in English now. You can use it as a bridging language. We were talking about Google Translate. I know French kids, my friend Yassine Balouz, has performed in Helsinki in Finland. And Finnish kids have been watching in a second language. They've been watching in English and listening in English. And he's been performing, a French guy performing in English.

So they met and laughed in a second language, which I think is an amazing thing. But now you can tour the world that way. So this is the thing. But anyway, so I'm going to go to Normandy. And it's a commemoration that the battle happened 75 years ago, and it's a celebration that now we don't go to war in those three languages anymore. And you have different 50 minutes for French, different 50 minutes for… Exactly the same ideas, but the words are all obviously either German or French.

I'll give you an example. I had – I said Caesar. I talked about Julius Caesar. I said, Caesar, did he ever think that one day he would end up as a salad? Okay. Oh, this warlike guy, he's now a salad. And in French, Caesar, est-ce qu'il l'a jamais imaginé? Did he one day imagine qu'un jour il finirait en salade?

One day he would finish up as a salad. In German, Caesar, était, Hätte er je gedacht? Did he ever think? Das ist ein Mal that he one time als Salat enden würde. As salad end up would have. So you've got the verb right at the end. But they still laugh at the same place.

But maybe about half a second later, split a second later. As salad end up would have. So you have to really have a deep understanding of how to structure those sentences. It's just practice really. You know, anything in life um you could do it if you were taken out of here you speak you don't speak any language anything so if they took you and and suddenly for some reason you were had to be in any other kind of thailand say say somebody dropped a big block of heroin into your thing just as a test, as a social experiment. And they filmed this all. And you say, hey, he's smuggling.

So you have to go to Thai prison. This is kind of an extreme example. Anyone. And then you'd be learning within one month. You'd have basic sentences going. Anyone who goes to prison is going to have. Sure. If you work in a restaurant, if you work anywhere you work where no one's giving you any English coming in,

you just have to pick up the words and our survival instincts would pick them up and then you might have a strong accent but you'd be we you me everyone we can pick it up so i just again use the art i can set up this artificial scenario of i have to do this so i had to learn french so i started before i this show this wunderbar show which is a German title meaning wonderful and I started it in French so I jumped because I improvised

to work I don't write anything I just go and go hey chickens what's going on with chickens chickens chicken with a gun

dangerous you don't write your act no I just improvise it really and I sort of workshop it endlessly until it gets it and then you memorize it

well I know it because I said it last time right so in French I was just going les poulet les poulet c'est dangereux non un poulet Donald Trump until it gets it. Ah, that's a good thing. And then you memorize it. Well, I know it because I said it last time. Right. So in French, I was just going, les poulets, les poulets sont dangereux.

Non. Un poulet, Donald Trump, c'est la même chose. And I compare things. Do you record and listen to recordings? Yeah, record every show and never listen to them. Ah, you record on your phone

or do you have a professional setup? No, we have a professional setup. So we're sometimes not with the laughter mixed in. I've just been listening back to the German shows in Berlin and the laughter's very low in the mix.

So I'm saying these jokes, and I'm going, is anyone laughing? Oh, so it's just from the microphone. Yeah, there's a feed there, but they had another one, but they had it mixed low. But yeah, you need to have a second microphone on the audience and just bring that mix up. Right.

Or maybe bring it right up. Yeah. It's incredibly funny. But I just found doing it in another language, it's a positive thing. It sends out a nice message. It's hands across the water. Can we learn from you?

Can you learn from us? And the comedy is, I do this sort of Python-esque, Monty Python-type surreal comedy. And so I just need to find that audience in France, that audience in Germany, that audience in Thailand, if I was there. You know, I've played Kathmandu.

I met a kid from Kathmandu in New York on the streets. He said, are you a comedian? I know, I've played Kathmandu. I met a kid from Kathmandu in New York on the streets. He said, are you a comedian? I said, yeah. Where are you from? He said, I'm from Kathmandu. Wow, Kathmandu, a kid from Kathmandu. What are you doing here?

Well, I'm a student. But your English is good. Yeah, it's pretty good, yeah. Well, can I do a gig in Kathmandu, you think? He said, yeah, I think you can do a gig in Kathmandu. So I said, okay. That was in 2010. It took me seven years.

I got there in 2017. How was it? It was good. Unfortunately, the local, Leicester, the locals, they'd had these couple of earthquakes, which you tend to think, oh, everyone has earthquakes. But no, they hadn't had them for ages, and suddenly they had two very bad earthquakes.

So they were getting over that. So I was mainly aid workers, unfortunately. But I was there. But I can go back. No, it was a nice setup but i played you know i went all through and uh in tokyo and i played in hong kong and in shanghai and had all the the guys from uh because you have the the people from the communist party come along to check you out so i'm not going specifically in on certain things but anyway you know my stuff is all the people from the comedy what the communist party you know the communist party yeah you know

because it's shanghai i thought you were saying mainland china comedy party no sorry the communist party yeah sorry just me mangling my word oh so they come and check you out to make sure you're not violating anything yes you certain areas you're not supposed to go, whatever. I don't know. I just want to do the gig. But it wasn't like I was going to change. I have weird stuff about Gandalf talking to butterflies and talking about my ancient kings like Henry VIII

and William the Conqueror and stuff. So apparently they stayed. They normally disappear after a while. But anyway, so it's uh it's good to get out you know you said as you said play the world see the world to see travel broadens the mind yeah i don't play very many play i played in australia and england i've done gigs in stockholm and northern ireland dublin a few other places in europe But most of the time when I go on vacation, I just go on vacation. I just go to experience it, just to have fun, just to be there.

So have you never written your act down? No, I couldn't. See, I used to do sketch comedy, like a Monty Python thing. And I wrote those. And then I was doing a street performer for four years. And that's very unwritten. There's's no that's very difficult to write that's difficult to actually develop material for that so I did that for four years so I got into this thing of street performing like how so what would you do we were double act

initially me and my partner Rob and we did weird things like escaping from a woolly jumper he just wrapped a woolly jumper and I returned from a woolly jumper. He'd just wrap a woolly jumper around and I would tend to escape. A woolly jumper? What is that? A woolly cardigan, a woolly pullover. You call them pullovers? Okay. Yeah. Like a sweater? Yeah, a sweater. So instead of a straight jacket, he said, we take this woolly sweater. Just take a sweater. Just ridiculous.

Yeah, ridiculous. Making a bowl of cornflakes disappear because... You ate it? Yeah, I ate it. So at its best, they go, this is insane. These guys are crazy. And they clap and they give us fivepence. And when it was at its worst, they go, these people are insane.

This is awful. And they walk away. Then we did sword fighting. That was good because I directed Three Musketeers at university. And so we were showing you how to kill someone when drunk, when you do all these different moves so that was quite fun then I went solo

and I was doing escapology from chains and ropes and then from a five foot unicycle from a pair of manacles escapology meaning escapeology is that a real thing?

is that what escapology you guys really call it that? yeah what do you call it? I don't know I don't think there's a name for it I've never even heard of that

I think Google will tell us there is an escape artists I know there's escape artists es it. I've never even heard of that. I think Google will tell us there is an S. Escape artists. I know there's escape artists. Escapology. Does it exist? Houdini. I don't know.

Here's a word. There's a thing called Escapology Live Escape Games, World Escape Rooms, and there's a bunch of them. I don't know if it's the same thing as escape rooms. No, those are escape rooms. Yeah, yeah. Escapology should be a Wikipedia. An art form, it sounds like. It's not really an art form. It's a craft.

Well, no. Houdini was an artist of that I was a I was a a jobbing crafting person there it is to practice escaping from restraints

there you go yeah there you go steel boxes barrels bags things so I was escaping

from ropes and chains and you made a conscious decision to do this like on the street like this is how you're developing yeah that was developing because I couldn't get my sketch comedy thing wasn't going i there's a

thing called the edinburgh festival we have scotland yeah you know that one so i did 12 of those in the ends right before i took off so i did three doing sketch and then about four doing street but on the street you have this freedom you know the freedom when things are working a bit and and it's really kind of feral. No one's checking you up. No one knows what you're doing. You're just on the street. Right.

So I was useless at this. And then I developed a confidence, a gut confidence. You know that the stomach's really important. It probably is in fighting as well. There's something that comes out of the – there's a confidence center in the stomach. Really? Yeah. There's something about the stomach. You look into it with fighting.

I think it's neurons, right? It's like there's – Something. Really? Yeah. There's something about the stomach. You look into it with fighting. I think it's neurons, right? It's like there's... Something. Everything joins there. There's something to do with it. Anyway, I felt... I developed this confidence on my own to go and stand on...

If you've ever seen... Heard of the film My Fair Lady or seen the film of Eliza Doolittle, that is set on Covent Garden. It's a massive piazza, massive square. Washington Square Park in New York was another street-falling place. So it's a big open place. And I could stand out there on my own and

talk to no one and build up an audience. I would set out these tea cozies, which are little animal tea cozies, ducks and hamsters, weird things, things that just look like animals, and put them on the floor. And people thought, this guy's crazy. And then I'd start talking, and there'd be literally no one there sometimes. And I'd say, good afternoon. I'm going to do a show. Welcome to the Invisible audience. Very nice to have you here. And I had this confidence.

If I just kept talking, a bit like in your podcast here, you know you can keep talking. And I'd go on. Yeah, we've got some visible people here as well. This is Jack and Kenny. And I would just go on and on until i built up about 20 people then i could start the show and then we get into it and if you're doing an escapology show in the end you're going to get out you've worked out how to get out

and so there will be a definite end and then you can say now don't go and please can you give me some money so that's how i earned my living but that's the ninja training of performing because i learned to perform when people didn't even want to see me. Right. Because normally they've come into a room and at least they go, okay, who is this guy? I don't know, but we're in the room, so let's drink a beer and watch. But if they're on the street, they don't have to watch.

They can just walk off, and they often did. So it was a tough – I lost all my confidence on the street. In fact, there's a thing, Army does this, break you down, build you back up. Marines break you down, build you back up. They also, in drama school, they break you down, build you back up. This kind of idea. I accidentally broke myself down and built myself back up

on the streets of London. Wow. It's kind of beautiful. That's where I was creatively born, this new version that had this thing. Okay, we're going to talk about chickens. How many chickens does it take to change a light bulb? Well, quite a lot, really, because they can't. Unless they had a friend with them, maybe a dog could help them,

or they could rig up something. I just waffle on about stuff. And if it didn't hit a punchline, I didn't care. I just carried on. It just kept going. And then the confidence thing kind of gets you through. He just talks for hours. So if you release a special, and you've released comedy specials before, how do you develop new material once that special's been released?

I will do work-in-progress shows, which I took from Lily Tomlin, who did a lot of work-in-progress shows, and then she did her show on Broadway, I think. And I thought, because I used to do the old tour, and I used to tour, tour, tour until at the end we'd film it. And I'd begin the next tour with the old tour and just keep improvising in the show because I'd only improvise on stage, and I would build up by the end of the next tour would be a different show.

But that didn't sort of work for people because they said, we want a completely new show. So now I do this WIP shows, work-in-progress shows, and I will go on stage and muck about just talking about chickens or banjos or helicopters do you have a structure when you start like say if it's the day after your special is done and now you have to work on a whole new special you're doing a work in progress show first do you how do you develop i would start with my life i did it once i just said okay let's go through my life and so when i was so you may

not know this but i were you know i went to i was living in northern ireland and we were born in yemen i would go through so i've done this where i went trawled through my life i need some sort of structure otherwise i'm i'm stuck i also found that once i'd recorded the show like i last tour force majeure i toured for five years because i just found there were no rules on touring i could just keep going back and i did 45 countries, so I could just keep on going. And I found there were certain things I'd developed after we'd recorded it that were interesting and worth keeping. So I said, okay, well, that's not in the old show. I'm going to pull that and start off the new show with that little bit, which is that little piece of material, which is fun.

And I was training on a marathon, dog dogs were woofing at me you know i ran past the house where a dog was woofing at me and this is in the show now and i suddenly thought for the first time ever because dogs have woofed at people all but yes it's beginning of time i thought what is the dog actually trying to say if the dog had fox p2 injected into him so he could suddenly talk what would he say to me what is that woof woof what does that mean and so it goes into he's basically saying assassins he's shouting assassins are here i know i'm a dog it's my job get a gun because all dogs are very sure you've never heard an unsure dog in your life when they're barking they're sure they are absolutely sure that it's assassins it's not the postman it's not the guy with a hamster outside assassins are here alarm alarm

danger will robinson why have you never written anything down um well i found initially i started to write stand up but i would go and i was trying to type it or write it. So if you go into a supermarket, I'm very slow. I'm dyslexic, so I'm slow. Supermarket. And there, I just thought I couldn't write. I seemed to be faster if I was just ad-libbing it. So you go to the supermarket, there's a guy there. And it's always fruit.

You go in and there's fruit. There's fruit, fruit, fruit, fruit, fruit. And I found that if I just did it by finding it to the supermarket, there's a guy there, and it's always fruit. You go in and there's fruit. There's fruit, fruit, fruit, fruit, fruit. And I found that if I just did it by finding it with the words, and there's fruit and you're supposed to squeeze it, aren't you? And so I just think all the things I could think about fruit. So why is it fruit there? Why not toilet paper? You never go in the supermarket and toilet paper there because they'd say,

well, that's a poo shop. You have to go in. It's a fresh shop. We've got fresh fruit here. So we're a very fresh shop. Okay, that's why the fruit's right up front. And you've got got to squeeze it but how much do you squeeze it and how do you know is that the right pressure to squeeze it and what if it explodes and so i would just keep chatting if it didn't work you just move on and that's how i developed uh this very conversational style that i

have which people say it's supposed to be improvisational it's not it's it's just um i i am i'm always ready to improvise at any point some people if you write a thing you say well that is how that piece goes and it's locked in but if you improvise a thing i've noticed i came up with this thing of molten material when you first create a new idea and it's it's working it's very open and live like quicksilver like mercury and then you could add another bit another bit another bit and you could have a bit, another bit, another bit. And you can add a bit. Once you've got it into a shape, then it becomes locked down.

It becomes like a prayer. And you can lose the joy of it. It becomes a recitation. And I thought, so don't ever have it locked down. Keep it open. Keep it always loose. So that every time you say it, you're saying it a bit differently. And that's the style I've developed and so i can improvise at

any point in the show i can just stop it and go what are walls why have we got walls we've got walls other people don't you know most animals in the world don't have walls but we've got walls and they're that good how's it you know when it's raining they don't have walls but they're okay should we have you know i just waffle about walls okay don't talk about walls ever again so if i don't get anything out of it i get jokes on the way out i get laughs on the way out if i don't get in the way in so that's the technique i've developed now when you say dyslexic so if you read something what do you see i i read i see it but i get word blindness um word blindness i i just see other words long words i i I couldn't. Rhabdomyolysis took me ages to say, let alone to spell. I just find it.

I sub-vocalize. So in my head, I'm going, the man goes down to the sky. Jack, what are you doing here? I will almost say that. And when you're kids, they actually read it out loud. And I'm not reading out loud, but I'm saying it in my head. And other people, they can do a out loud. And I'm not reading out loud, but I'm saying it in my head. And other people, they can do a page.

They do this speed reading, and they just shun, shun, and they can just take in whole pages. It's stunning. I can't. I don't understand that either. That's tricky. So my spelling was cat with a K, ceiling with an S, very logical spelling. My writing is all over the place,ger letters, smaller letters, bigger letters.

And they tested me and they said I'm severely atypically dyslexic. So I have a huge mental map memory. I can hold a lot of things in a memory in my head. So that's just sort of a permanent distinction? Like this is just who you are? There's no way to fix that? It seems so. I haven't heard of anyone coming out of dyslexia and saying, now i can

read much faster now i can do things i just think you're stuck with that but it means you think sideways and i think a lot of creative people are dyslexic i think sideways yeah so you see clouds you see a lion in the clouds you see perhaps there's a train going through the sky you know um it's it's a creative thing uh juxtaposing things on your wall you have to juxtapose thing which is they don't lead from one to the other they can be fighting right against it or completely bonkers or out of it um just looking here in the room you know and and linking things together i think creativity we're trying always trying to throw ourselves by in comedy by something that's weird

and opposite and funny um caesar you should you know i'm going for the salad line when i said that caesar do you ever think it's salad and then people seems to make people off they go oh yeah caesar salad and this guy was he murdered million murdered a million gaulish people you know and he ends up as a salad it's not a cognac napoleon gets a cognac, a brandy, but he's a salad. What's that about? So, yeah, this is my dyslexic traits. But I think you get dealt these cards when you're born, whatever genetic cards they are. And the art of life is to play your cards as well as you can.

And the art of comedy is to relay your life in a humorous way. Very much. And that's your unique fingerprint. As you know, if we all have, because people say, well, I seem like another comedian. Well, talk about your own life and your own perspective. It's got to be different to the next person's because no two people are the same.

Is that what you enjoy the most? The stand-up? Yeah. No, dramatic films I probably enjoy the most because I wanted to do that when I was a kid. I discovered that films existed. I broke into Pinewood Studios, one of our big studios, when I was 15. Broke in? Yeah.

Like illegally? Yeah. Yeah? What did you do? Well, I was watching a film, Battle of Britain, and at the end it says, filmed on location in Spain and England, and at Pinewood Studios, Ivor Heath Bucks. And it was the 70s and if you remember, we didn't have videos. We couldn't freeze things.

You just had to scribble things down. So I was scribbling down stuff off the end of films. And I said, Pinewood Studios, Ivor Heath Bucks. Okay, Ivor Heath, what is that? So Bucks, okay, Bucks is short for Buckinghamshire. That's a place. Ivor Heath must be a town. It's a weird name town.

City? A village? It must be a village or a town. So I got a map of the United Kingdom, which had alphabetically every town and village and city there going, listed alphabetically. And I went all the way down and I found Iverheath. But okay, that's where it is. So I took a

train from the south coast of England up to London, a tube train, underground train, up to a place called Uxbridge and a bus to this roundabout. And I got off. They said, Pinewood Studios, didn't they? They said it's about half a mile down that road. So I marched down the road, and I got to the big gabled entrance

where all the big stars would come in. And I went up, and I hadn't got this bit worked out. So I went up, and I said, I'm going to be in films. Can I come in, please? What? I'm going to make, I want to be an actor. Can I come in? Just piss off, kid.

No, no. And he just told me to piss off. And I thought, no, I've come miles. This is a big. So I thought there must be another way in. So I went up and there was another entrance that was near it but it wasn't the main star entrance it was just the the kind of more lorry entrance the track entrance the bringing stuff in and i saw people going in and out there was a draw

bridge a bit like where eagles dare the film you know anyway someone on the gate and some people was showing them passes and stuff and other people just were just walking in. So I thought, okay, you've got to have the confidence to walk in. So I did the 15-, 16-year-old confidence, and I just marched in. And suddenly I was through, and I was in. I was into Piper Studios. So then Spielberg broke into Universal. I broke into things. He got a career going pretty immediately.

I didn't get nothing going. Well, you're 15. I know. what did you expect was going to happen what was your anticipation well anticipation was as i've said in a piece of standard that i because i i had to walk at a certain speed if you're moving at a certain speed i thought no one's going to stop you so you can't creep around looking what's this because they say what are you doing here you know i just thought fact, it's kind of loose inside studios. No one really knows what everyone else is doing.

So you can actually creep around a bit. But I move around at a certain speed, and I sort of march. So I was marching down streets and up aisles and past studios, and I was hoping someone would go, hey, you, kid, yeah? You're marching around. Yeah, we're doing the film called The Marching Around Kid. Our lead kid has just exploded.

Can you continue? Yeah, I can march around. Can you say words? I can string a few words together. How did you leave? I marched out at the same speed. I marched in. We're done here.

I marched around for two hours, and I marched out. And I have since filmed twice or three times in Pinewood. And every time I go back and I'm actually filming there, I go, I broke in here. And I just walk at very slow speeds down streets, knowing that anyone could stop me. And I go, I'm just filming around the corner. So I love films. And I just finished my first film, Six Minutes to Midnight, that I've co-written and produced in.

What is it? It's set in... Just before the beginning of World War II, I grew up in this little seaside town, like America has seaside towns as well, from the old days when people used to go to seaside towns before they all went to the hot countries. And it's called Bexhill-on-Sea.

It's near Hastings, Brighton, South Coasterfield. And there were 26 schools there. For some reason, 26 schools, it was linked up. There was an Earl Delaware that had set the place up. Anyway, one of these things new. And one of them had young girls, German girls, who were linked to the Nazi high command. And they were over to learn English and

make friends and be ambassadors and because there was obviously fascism in Germany and there were fascists in Britain and they were making friends and and that was the idea there was going to be Hitler had this idea of linking up with British and taking everyone on and which some people were in Britain were forwards and obviously a lot of us were against. And so it sat around this girls' school. And I was shown the badge, the blazer badge. All the girls had a blazer, a blue blazer. And it had a badge, and it had the name of the school, Augusta Victoria College, Bexel on C.

And at the top it has a British flag and then the Nazi swastika next to it. And I thought, holy cow. I've just never seen those two flags right next to each other on the same badge so i thought there's a film in that so we've made a film wow judy datch is in it jim broadbent both oscar winners and myself and when will that be released uh rolling it out from the end of this year from uh fall as you call it autumn fall this year so your love of acting and creating films that's that's your primary even trump stand-up i do love stand-up and i can do stand whenever i want that trump is still a word i know isn't it weird yeah so it's a weird that must he must love that that

word exists that trump actually means to one up and better i'm not even gonna go there it's crazy right yeah it also means making tricks you trump things and you can make tricks oh really yeah i didn't know that we have tricks and cards and you see how many tricks have you got that was tricky dicky nixon so that's a another person who did one or two lies and untruths yeah down his yeah he was also a bad guy so uh anyway yes it's i, I do love stand-up. Well, I was never planning to be a stand-up. I was going to be a sketch comedian comedy.

Well, I was going to be an actor. And then I thought, I can't do. In my teenage years, I had no sexual self-confidence. The transgender thing didn't play a part in it. I was playing football to soccer up until 13. So I was going, hey, I'm a runabout guy. I'm kind of fast, athletics, whatever. Then I go to a

school i'm nothing and there's no girls here and i can't do this and oh well body's changing all that and i just lost all my confidence and i just thought i can't and i was quite small so at school it was all about tall kids you play the romantic lead small kids you're the slave and the servant so i thought okay forget this i'll do comedy i'll do the comedy because i love the comedy right and monty pyth discovered them i thought okay I'll do the comedy because I love the comedy. And Monty Python discovered them. I thought, okay, I'll do the, darling, I love you. You're made out of cheese. I have my knees are on fire.

I just make up rubbish. And I thought, okay, that's easier. So I did that. And it wouldn't take off. My career just wouldn't, you know, left school, dropped out of university, couldn't get it going. And by the time it got going, when I was about 30 about 30 I thought I'm now going to hold on to this comedy and start doing drama at the same time

so I've run these parallel things and I'm going to be on Broadway at the beginning of next year Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf with Laurie Metcalf

oh wow Scott Rudin production so oh interesting that was a great movie yeah great movie as I say

I'm doing Who's Afraid of Elizabeth Taylor and I'm playing Richard Burton. And yeah, so that's an amazing production. I'm performing with Judi Dench in films, in a Stephen Frears film, Victoria and Abdul. So I'm getting great drama roles now. I've pushed a long time to do that.

But normally, if you do comedy, they won't let you do drama. If you do drama, you don't really do comedy. That's sort of breaking down, though, right? Steve Carell's. Steve Carell, he has movies. I'm not sure if he's doing the comedy so much anymore but exactly where steve carell's gone uh john lithgow could also say he was someone who's very much dramatic career but then he did third rock for the sun which is beautiful in and he was nominated every year and won two emmys and nominated six times just fantastic work yeah i was on news

radio at the same time. So we were in the same network. Right. Yeah. Yeah, his stuff was... He's great. Yeah. He's a great actor.

Yeah, he's stunning. You know, he played Churchill in The Crown, Winston Churchill. A darker side of Churchill that people don't know about, which I knew about. Well, he's a guy that really has a love of theater, a love of performing. When he talks about it, you could see his goosebumps raise, and you could see he gets excited.

Yes, I can absolutely feel that. I mean, he's played such a range of characters. If he's playing evil, you just think, this guy is so evil. When he's playing the character in The third rock for the sun it's just so beautiful I watched it you can't really for some reason you can't I couldn't download it in Britain but I found a place I could find it so I'm on the second

I've watched every single episode and now going through the second time so it's just beautiful stuff so when you're you got into stand-up comedy when you first started doing that what is the scene like in England? Was there comedy clubs where you could go to an open mic night? How do you start your career?

We were copying you guys. I think Lenny Bruce set up the more alternative version. But I still think in America, it's always stayed kind of mainstream. But Lenny Bruce was definitely doing alternative. I noticed you got a lot of Lenny. I love that guy. Yeah, and I played him on stage. And that was a wonderful thing to be able to do. What did you play him in?

What was it? Lenny. You know the film was from a stage play? The Dustin Hoffman film? Really? That was a stage play. Dustin Hoffman was fantastic in that movie. He was so close.

And the guy who plays him in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is very good as well. I know. That's very interesting, isn't it? Because I'm watching that, and I'm thinking, okay, now, I've gone through the clubs myself, but I did mine in the 80s and into the 90s, and that's in the 50s. Wow. And I sort of take myself there. And then there's Lenny there, and I'm thinking, I know Lenny.

And I play them. I used to die. Oh, God, that's me. Look at that. But I was doing the stand-up. See, that's the photo. I put that together. Now, that was,

and I call him the Jesus Christ of comedy because as a Jewish guy, he died for us. He died for us to give us the freedom of speech. He died for freedom of speech because in the end, the courts killed him. A little bit of heroin, too. I heroin too i know but the mixture together he shouldn't have conflated the two yeah he getting a mentor that we could say what we wanted to understand yeah the mrs mazel

thing makes it a little it's a little homogenized like him like in even his struggle it's almost like it's no big deal are you are you in the latest season is it yes was it three or two well three hasn't released yet they're filming it right now i've gone through both of them it's almost like it's no big deal are you are you in the latest season is it yes was is it three or two well three hasn't released yet they're filming it right now i've gone through both of them it's really good yeah it's not accurate like historically it's way off the mark there's no woman who was talking like that back then it wasn't there was no mrs mazel like no i i really liked it and uh it's interesting she yeah like norm mcdonald got mad about it he's like there was no woman like that back then i would say that she there's no he doesn't give it the fucking show man the hulk's not real either there's no guy who becomes the hulk now enjoy it i really like norm mcdonald i love him yeah i i didn't have what there was a, she was swearing like a soldier on stage very quickly.

Very quickly. Which that was, I found, I don't know how she ramped into that. And then she'd ramped down out of it. It was, that was something. And then she went to France on one episode and did stand up that someone was translating. That was weird. I have done it in French and I don't think I could have got that i don't know why that that seemed just seemed to be a slightly sharp it's not jumping a shark going up to the shark swimming around it was artistic interpretation they they they

it wasn't realistic but it was still it was as a person who makes a living doing stand-up comedy i was willing to let that suspension of disbelief taste and i like the the sexual relationship is always coming back the husband's almost coming back into the frame yeah and his and his fight there um because yeah but i did watch i binge watched it all that's what i'm doing now i just sit down now and i just watched everything yeah and then i move on um but uh yeah lenny um how do we get into Lenny we were talking about something else but anyway

it was great playing Lenny but oh yes I was doing the stand up and I was just told by director Peter Hall I'll leave the stand up to you

so I had no direction on it so I just did it as close as I could to how Lenny would have done it did you listen to a lot of recordings

I did it's very difficult for British kids or maybe even American kids of today to know because he's doing a lot of recordings. I did. It's very difficult for British kids, or maybe even American kids of today, to know, because he's doing a lot of hipster references, a lot of the Sophie Tucker references, and there's a Lawrence Welch, is it? Welch? Welch, yeah.

We don't know those guys. So when he was doing it, of course, it's Sophie Tucker. And they're going, I've got to look up Sophie Tucker. I've had to look up some of the punchlines or a number of the references, because without the references, you can't get it. is a trick i do in universal humor that i take either huge references or explain my references so that you know uh caesar everyone probably knows about season if they don't well i yeah anyway well as good as lenny was it's really hard for people to listen to that comedy today it doesn't necessarily transfer it doesn't transfer well

he's talking about n, and you go, oh, Nixon, Nixon. No, this is Vice President Nixon. This is Eisenhower's Nixon. Different thing. So, I worked out that all my stuff is non-dateable.

I don't do any topical stuff. I don't do party political stuff. So, it should not date. I do historical stuff because that never dates. You know, Caesar is not going to come back. Now Caesar's changed his whole thing. He's much nicer now. He's come back from the dead and he's cleaned up his act. So I've tried to do that.

And Python did this as well. You do stuff, it just doesn't really date. Most of it doesn't date, which is a handy thing so the stuff can stick on. But much stand-up does. And it's also the culture is so significantly different between the late 50s and 60s where Lenny Bruce was sort of starting out and making his mark versus today.

It's like the things that were naughty back then, the things that he could say that were controversial, they were nothing today. Literally, it's a non-controversy. Well, there was one that they're literally it's a non-controversy well there's one that that still was was when he said how many people using the n word the s word you know he just went to all the how many are in the racial epithets how many of the way and i did this i used to do that on stage every night and that was still a striking tense yeah yeah but the the sentiment behind it was that these words only have power

because they're forbidden. Because we give them power. Yes. And if you could use them again and again and again, you would do it. And for the gay community, they've taken the word queer, they've reclaimed that,

so it doesn't have the force anymore. And that is a truth. He spoke, that was a true analysis that he did. Yeah, it was. We had some, still, there was a,

unfortunately, accidentally, a friend of mine stole one of his jokes and didn't know that he actually just thought of the same premise yeah and he was the the premise was that uh homosexuality in some places is illegal and what do they do if they catch you well they lock you up in jail with a bunch of men who want to have sex with you like and that was lenny bruce's line like dig homosexuality is illegal right so what do they do they put you in jail with a bunch of men want to have sex with you you know like that was his whole like and like that still would work today like if there was a place where homosexuality was illegal today and you did that joke it's a good joke it's like set up punchline it's all right there. Yeah.

Lenny was ahead of us. And you know his early stuff was more mainstream than you could ever believe. Oh, yeah. He was doing way, way mainstream. Same as Carlin. Have you listened to Carlin's early stuff? No, I've heard of it. Oh, my God. It was like a typical Jack Parr Tonight Show set.

It was all like really like down the middle squeaky clean and he wore suits and he was a clean cut you ever seen carl in the early days i i think i've seen once i uh yeah i do know there was wasn't there was a tie and a suit there was a change well lenny had a complete change and that thing in the film where he says you'll never play here and what's the area in uh upstate new york catskills catskills you never play the area in upstate New York? Catskills. Catskills. You'll never play the Catskills again. I want to play the Catskills again. I remember when I watched it first, I thought, oh, that's a terrible thing to have.

But now that I know what that was, it was a certain belt of how you're going to play. Look at that. That's George Carlin. Wow. Look at him play a little bit of this. It's crazy. From the Murph Griffin Show. Big hassle. We never see how the Indians prepare how awful that suit is but it was that sort of style you know he had that i mean that's what you did back then this

is the merv griffin show i mean really didn't have any options that's how you perform yeah yeah otherwise they wouldn't let you on yeah that's what you did did he change on a dime did he got arrested a bunch of times you know and he became a marijuana enthusiast. And, you know, it started, it just, the times changed. Yeah. And I think you can only sit back and observe for so long before you start commenting on things. And then he shifted and he became, and I think he was also experiencing prior. Like prior, of course, was, I think Lenny Bruce was the original. But prior was the one

who made it insanely personal and he was insanely vulnerable on stage and also he had a point to a lot of the things he was doing I mean I think if there's a great I don't think there's a greatest stand-up of all time but if there is it might be prior you know that he just he had this perspective that was just wholly individual like wholly him it's 10 years later that's what he looks like yeah yeah that's crazy the beard really does change it and the hair but yeah i mean he was um look at him he's got a like a fucking steve jobs outfit on now yeah he became he became a you know a hippie. Hair got longer. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I love it. Now, Richard Pryor, I think Richard Pryor is, for me, he was, because I had this base of Monty Python, which is what I was going to do. And then I had Richard Pryor and Billy Connolly, Scottish comedian Billy Connolly. Those two, Billy talks just so relaxed when he's talking to large groups of people and what Richard was doing, it was the acting out of all the characters thing. That was the wonderful thing. That's what I do.

What are you going to do? No. The dog says, the dog says, go on in. Go on in. To burglars. You shall not leave. Yeah. Playing these different voices and characters and what he could do and that was just that was stunning to me yeah he was something special look at him back in the day too that's

that's literally him like on the wall back there the mugshot that's the same era could be that could that mean that night yeah might have been that night there's some fantastic recordings that i don't know where they are now but they used to be able to buy them i bought them at a truck stop and they were from red fox's comedy club and they were cassette tapes and uh i was on i was doing a road gig and i think i found them and i bought a bunch of them and these recordings were they just had set up a tape recorder and he was doing these random sets at red fox's comedy club and it was a lot of experimenting a lot of ad living a lot of i mean he's clearly high on stage i mean he would get go on stage high a lot and he would just ramble about stuff and they would you would see these bits forming and coming out of that and

then some of those bits eventually would be on some of his more famous albums later it was great great stuff just to see this guy who was just so i mean you go if you go from you know your traditional stand-up comedian from 1960 like you were seeing george carlin on stage to what prior was doing in the 70s this is so different so radically radically different and he took it to a different place now we you're talking about the scene in britain we're interesting we don't really have much of a film industry we don't have it as quite a set you know obviously it's huge in in america compared to what we have we have a quite a good TV industry so but we tour like crazy um so there's lots of tours in 100 seats 500 seats 1000 seats 1000 2000 seats that goes on

like endlessly all the time uh way more than it used to before so and there's lots of clubs and they were a lot of them were just room above a pub type clubs. So I believe the clubs in America were much more set up. There was a bar thing, the system. People would come out and do the drinks, and it was quite a cash outlay had to get this club going. And it would be most nights of the week. We'd have it one night a week. It would just be a function room in a pub that existed for maybe hundreds and hundreds of years because all these pubs used to be taverns, drinking.

And it wasn't used, and some guy would would say hey, I'll run a club up here I'll take the door money you take the bar money and that was the deal so a lot of amateurs running it So we had lots of club. We had that 60 70 80 clubs in London. You could you could zip around that many Yeah, it was a ridiculous amount. And so for me what the Beatles had with with Yeah, it was a ridiculous amount. And so for me, what the Beatles had with playing in Germany, I had with London, and we all had with playing in London. You could do four in the night quite easily on the Friday and Saturday.

You just jump in taxis and zip between different gigs. Like they do in New York. Yeah. Yeah. But it was just so many clubs. Oh, wow. So it was beautiful. I think it's less now, but there's lots of open mic nights now. And so many people wanted to get into it.

There's no top to the career now. People are playing in an arena. I started doing arena tours. I'm now doing more theater tours on this one. My audience has got a bit older. But anyway, jumping between the two, like playing Hollywood Bowl here in L.A., that's such a beautiful thing to play and it's the greeks got it right the laughter rolls down the hill yeah i played it

twice now and it's just gorgeous yeah i've never played there but i've been there for a few times for a few different things i saw annie there and i saw the um what is it oh um the nightmare before halloween yeah You saw Annie, the musical? Yeah, they do the musical there. They do a version of it. And they do the Nightmare Before Halloween where they play the movie and then they have a symphony.

Right. And the symphony... I didn't think Annie would be your kind of... I have kids. You needed to say that. I didn't enjoy it. All right. I'm bored out of my fucking mind.

No, I must have. But I was high. I'm just going to leave it there. No, sir. Annie's your kind of bored out of my fucking mind. No, I wasn't. But I was high. I'm just going to leave it there. No, sir. Annie's your kind of gig. It always comes in. Yeah. I like everything.

I like a lot of things that you would think I wouldn't like. You know that for the people of L.A. or people of the world, I believe that Hollywood Bowl is a L.A. park. So you can actually go up there and have your sandwiches anytime you want. Yeah. Which is a beautiful thing. And I do that. I drive up there because it looks like, don't come in here.

There's barriers and stuff. But no, you can park up and go in. It's a park. It's still a park. I love that space. It's just great. And I knew that Monty Python had played there, so I thought, I've got to play there.

Well, it's beautiful, too, because it's all outdoors. And LA has such amazing weather. And you look around. You see the houses in the distance. It's a special little spot. It is beautiful. I know Dave Chappelle's done some gigs there i think chris rock did a gig there yeah it's a it must be a fun place to perform too yeah it's just it works that amphitheater thing i think it was the greeks i came out democracy and amphitheaters and uh yeah do you still go to clubs at all? I don't so much.

I was reading the definitive thing on Robin Williams and, you know, how he would jump into clubs and do stuff and go. And I – that doesn't really work for my stuff. I tend to get a small – I can do a club like for the work in progress shows I was doing. work in progress shows i was doing i was taking i was they they uh they have uh the al murray club in uh in islington no angel in london sort of north north east london and uh they had you know show going on at six one at seven eight you know and i would take an hour of that and just do that again again again so i'll take an hour and i'll go out for an hour and workshop the show. And as opposed to coming on and doing 15 minutes on a, off the top of my head, because I find that if I,

if I'm completely going scattergun, just trying to find funny, that doesn't really help me. I need to keep crafting the stuff because then I can use it in the show. Yeah. And I also don't need, if it's a, if it's just a,

if it's a comedy club, they want it faster. They want it quicker. They want it, you know, and I'm not looking to hit the gags. I'm just looking to find things and have the space to stop and go, what is it about cheese? Right, right.

Why has it got two E's in it? I just want to waffle around until I go, okay, that's a good one. I'll keep that pit. Right. Do you ever feel like when you're doing that, like, Jesus Christ, I've got to get off this fucking subject? Like there's nothing there? Well, yeah, I do that. But then I do this thing. I write on my left hand like it's a note to self and i go

uh if i do pig farming talking about pigs and stuff okay they never talk about pig farming are you guys all pig farmers all right i'm not talking about never talk about cheese again cheese jokes do not work especially in north east london uh you can you just get it try and get laughs on the way out. And career is over. Cheese is taking over my life. Do you do some gigs dressed in your girl mode and some in boy mode? I can. I can.

I can do it whatever mode I want now. It's a complete human torch thing. I can flame on, flame off. So I can wear a dress or I can wear trousers and it doesn't matter and they don't give a monkeys either that's interesting it's now well they're your fans yeah

yeah they're coming to see you yes if they're coming yeah so do they get disappointed if you dress as a man in boy mode okay we came to see girl mode

no they I don't know I don't care I shouldn't care yeah I can't be on stage oh i wonder if right because that's nothing to do with the comedy yeah yes yeah and i do think some people thought it was you know he's going to talk about lipstick for two hours so anyway another lipstick i know is dress it at all do you dress it i do but diagonally i will do it diagonally diagonally. I will do it diagonally. Diagonally? Yeah. So it's never the front part of the thing.

I will just say, I don't know. I just, I don't know. What's a good diagonal? It would not be the front of the subject. I might point it in passing. So the front, I'll talk about ancient king stuff, weird banjos, dogs fighting cats, anything like that. And then I might mention it just in passing as opposed to, let me tell you about being transgender. I just don't do that.

I talk about the fights. I talked about the fight I had, which was in the street, and that this guy was saying this and I said this. And so I built the fight into a huge thing of huge standoff stuff so i just i can make that into into something but um no it's not because it's supposed to be the background of uh of what i'm doing the essential thing if you like surreal comedy off the wall comedy that's what i do and i just happen to be transgender which makes no odds in these these days do you find that more today than ever people are asking you questions about transgender issues because they're they're at the forefront no less actually less yeah less really there was a point early days it was a spokesperson it was on and they

would yes well um if not a spokesperson i was someone who was going to talk about it at least right tell us all about this and i do an interview and if it was an hour interview about 40 minutes would be on that and then and then when they came to write it they thought well i'm just writing all about this transient all right let's let's put that back a bit i'll and then they used to balance it out when they wrote the interview out but um would you rather that they just accept it and just not bring it i'm fine with it now after the marathons it all it changed yeah it changed because they said oh so because i i used to say action transvestite and executive transvestite there was i was in new york i was playing new york and they said um article a guy

was found living in one of the caves in the park in in new york and he found to have a lot of women's shoes in there so he's probably a transvestite. And I went, okay, well, that's weirdo transvestite. I'm not living in a cave. I'm traveling business class on the planes. This is executive transvestite. So I came up with that one. And then the action transvestite was just kind of a fun because I was more kind of boysy about things that I'll give people grief in the streets if they give me grief.

And then after the marathons, it became a different thing. And everyone just went oh i've had some you know i remember a guy this was a very interesting altercation because hardly any words in it so i'm i i live near victoria coach station in london um most of the time when i'm around and i was walking down there and anyway it's a coach station so people are traveling all over Europe from there. And I walked up, and I was in girl mode. This guy looked at me.

He said, hey, Eddie Izzard, you run all those marathons, and you wear all that clobber. Clobber? And then he went, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was just like he was giving me a pass. He was going, well, okay, okay. Yeah, they have yeah. And it was just like he was giving me a pass. He was going, well, okay, okay. Yeah, they have to. Yeah.

Well, that's what my, I mean, I didn't have a negative opinion of you. I had a positive opinion of you. But my positive opinion of you elevated once I saw you did those marathons. Like, that's a person with an iron will. That's a different kind of person. Like, it was so huge what you did that everyone had to respect it. Like they knew they couldn't do it. Or if they could do it, they haven't. You know?

That actually does cover it. Yes, I hadn't thought about it. You accomplished something pretty spectacular. It was beautiful. And it did about five things at once. And it was raising money. Yes. So I think I've raised about four and a half million pounds.

About six million, seven million dollars. So that feels great yeah and that's with their help because the organization is good at raising the money and it gave me this this this confidence this health thing back from when i was a kid it used to be a lot of us were running around how old were you when you did that first one was i was 47 so you're 47 and you just decided yeah i'm off um it was it was training i wanted to do something it's an adventure as well and you know i think you have to live life as an adventure otherwise life is too hard but if you look at this eventually it means the highs and lows built into it um and i i got this this health kick out of it.

It was just a number of things. And then I could meet people. I remember on the first marathon, I met three army sergeants who were, and they said, we've heard you're doing this, this is from the British Army. And I was just having something to eat halfway through my, what was it, my 10th marathon. He said, we heard you're doing this. And they were chatting to me because I know forces i know forces and i of that mentality i'm very happy to chat and suddenly i thought wow this is an interesting respect thing he said and they said

we're trainers we train we work out the training regimes for for the army and so we were very interested in what you're doing what you seem to be able to do so they just found it fascinating and i found that fascinating i could suddenly talk to service people in a certain way sports people in a certain way everything just shifted yeah and and people from death different ethnic uh groups some people have a down on some ethnic groups down on being transgender whatever but if you're doing that then it says okay we put these two together and you're in a different place. So it has completely changed the way a lot of people react to me. Yeah, I can only imagine. They don't necessarily come to the comedy, but that's fine.

But they respect you. Yeah, it's just certain different things happen. And I like to chat to people. I found that chatting is very important. And I like to chat to people. I found that chatting is very important. Because if you see someone and it's a bloke wearing makeup or whatever and you get lipstick on, and you go, people can go, ooh.

But if you say, hi, nice weather today. And they go, oh, yeah, it's quite nice. And then they go on a different footing. They're trying to put you into a place of normalcy. Yeah, well, I'm trying to put myself in there. They will allow me in. They are too about communicating. They will allow me in. it seems normal it is the talking is the most important thing just chatting away and being boring i have a natural boringness i think maybe everyone has natural boringness i think

they're really interesting people probably just blow up in their 20s and stuff and because they just do stuff that's too far out yeah but most of us are pretty boring and then we add layers of interestingness on tops to to to reach that level of okay i think i'm quite interesting now i think i've got enough interesting going on uh but my boringness in in chatting i i am trying to talk about weather or wood or walls or you know trees or so that introduces the normalcy yeah the boring chatter i won chatter. I won't say, I won't say, we've got to do something extreme now. I'll just chat about,

yeah. Normal things. Yeah, where'd you get that jacket? That's quite a good jacket. On your, it will work on me. You know,

just talk about things and be human, be a human being. The biggest controversy in America in terms of transgender people, probably the biggest, or one of the biggest, is competing in sports with biological women. That's the biggest one. Yes.

If you're asking me for answers on that, I haven't really got them. I know. Yeah. I've got a good one for washrooms, as you call them, lavatories, restrooms. What's your take on that? Urinals, as you call them, lavatories, restrooms. What's your take on that? Urinals, as you call them. We call them urinals. Just chuck them all out, and everyone just – it's all cubicles.

And we already do that in restaurants. We already share stuff, the toilets. We do it in airplanes. We have no bother. But if you just remove urinals in theaters and places, they won't be queuing. Often the women are queuing forever, and the men are not queuing. This way everyone shares. Everyone behaves with their own responsibility.

I've heard of it working in a school as well. There was less bullying in the loos. So it's the idea of just regression of technology, I take it. So get the urinal, chuck it out the window. Everyone has a cubicle. Just go to the loo and then use the mirrors and and and then go away it's just everything being for both genders yeah you just make it all even then we get outside a lot of problems some people will have pushback on that and have other reasons why they don't like it

but a lot of women don't want to be in a washroom with men though well they already are going into if they're sharing it and they're losing the airplane if they're sharing it in a yeah but an airplane is one you know it's only one person to go in there i think their their concern is there's you know some men are fucking creeps and some women just want to have a place where they could just be themselves and just check their makeup and go to the bathroom and wash and talk amongst other i understand that it's just've, you know, if you think about anything that's going to change anything, there's usually something that won't. Rebbe, the only reason to do this is to accommodate people who are transgender

in a way that it seems like it doesn't put them in a position where they can be judged because everyone's doing it. Well, if it stops bullying in schools, then there's a number of things in there that it can make easier. It just makes a whole area of things a lot easier. Do you think it would stop? How would it stop bullying, though?

I don't know what it has. I mean, I'm just giving you the figures that have come back. What have they said? Well, they just said that they tried it in a school and the bullying went down. So if there's girls and there's boys together, it's like boys will bully the boys or girls will bully the girls but if you yeah so you have them all together they don't it seems so now i and they just punish the creeps which is

really what you i mean if someone's being a creep in a bathroom the problem is the creep it's not the bathroom right yeah yeah it's um anyway so this is uh you know i haven't uh scientifically proved this with chemicals and and a slide rule or whatever but it's an idea that gets us to a better place. And surely we're all somewhere on the spectrum of something. expressing themselves in a different way that that is a problem you if you take about it just straight if we all went back to how we used to think that there was just men and women and everyone had straight sex uh even that sex no one would talk about that people you know victorian age and right your equivalent victorian age no one would talk about that that was all horrible sex was that procreation was dirty yeah whole idea of everything so if you i'm trying to get out to a practical

place where people just go to the loo and behave like adults even the kids seem to behave more like adults which is interesting that makes that makes sense i see what you're saying yeah and me yeah that is the concern right was that we have a system in place and someone tries to change the system then people get upset the transition and that happens yeah I mean but also women do queue forever and men don't queue at all right much less but this makes it so easy it makes it queuing even evens that out so everyone just behaves like an adult yeah it's just a toilet the Romans used to have it with open plan toilets they have seen that we have made it into a problem. We have made this a whole psychological problem.

The Romans just sit down there and have a poo and have a chat. And once they did make it a problem and categorize people by gender, then it became this thing, and now you don't want to change that. Well, yeah. I don't think they might have had male and female toilets in the Roman times, but just the fact that they were more open about the idea that it's bodily functions. It's just normal. And back before we came in, we were just going out into the woods and the forest and having a poo. It was just having a poo, and now we feel it's a big problem having a poo. We don't like the fact we have a poo.

We don't want to admit that we have the poo. Does the queen ever have a poo? Maybe never. Has the attitude, besides the marathon thing has the attitude culturally shifted in the uk the same way it's shifted in america where people are more i think the more there's more and more people are out and uh positive i mean you've basically got to from every group this is ethnic groups is from women this is from anyone that feels slightly out of the loop if you

can have a positive any positive role models that go out there that do other things you know just something that's nothing to do with sexuality you're very good at cooking you're on television for this it tends to be television helps um you go to sports star you're this you're that you want to those things people say well there's a positive role model and they are of a different color or of a different sexuality or the you know and that just helps everyone adjust their mindset and the younger people come through and they oh that's all they know i know about this person i mean like you know um in baseball do you see the the famous documentary baseball the um ken burns yeah the ken burns one and that black people after the civil war black people were playing baseball, and then there was some guy who was very powerful.

He said there would be no black people in major leagues at all, and it was blocked from about 1890, something like this, all the way through to 1950s. So it was actually happening, and then it went backwards. Yeah. So there was a positive role moment, and then, well, ever that happened, things can go backwards and things go forwards. And I just think, you know, we're trying to get to a world where everyone's living that live. Yeah. That's really what we need, right?

Just live and let live. Live and let live. As long as you're not interfering with other people's lives, as long as you're not doing something that somehow or another fucks with someone else. Yeah. Like, who cares? Why would anyone care i mean i think people care because they're unhappy with themselves i think that's the only time people care and let my my issue with this that i've come across is with athletes it's with transgender athletes competing against women particularly

in my field in fighting right um there's been some, there have been, at least there was one very vocal case, one very public case of a transgender athlete who was male for 30 plus years, transitioned over for a couple years, for two years, and then started fighting women. Didn't tell them that she used to be a man. Right.

And it became a giant issue, and people were outraged and angry. The women who got beat up were angry because they got destroyed. Two of them did. And then she was public about it and then started fighting women that were willing and knew. You've got to say things up front. I came out that long ago because I wanted to be up front about things. So, yeah. And I don't have the great answers. I don't have the answers of everything, but, yeah, I can see that long ago because I wanted to be up front about things. So, yeah. And I don't have the great answers.

I don't have the answers of everything. But, yeah, I can see that. I think one of the interesting things about it is that there are no real answers. That it's one of those things where you just got to go, huh, what do we do here? And this is what I think one of the more unique things about being a person is that we have this opportunity to look at this unusual circumstance and communicate about it and try to figure it out communication yeah the whole thing i just knew on my personal thing if i came out if we started talking about it we'd get in a better place than not talking about it and just saying it's a negative when you came out to give

you a feeling of relief unbelievable i mean you know it's good you know because you've got the secret and the secret is is i did self-analysis i lay on a bed and said why am i thinking this way what is going on why do i get what are the thoughts like what what because i just wanted to express women yeah so i okay here's the clearest way i can um show it uh there was a woman on television she said my daughter she was 12 and she was upstairs she was wearing my makeup she's wearing my heels and i told her to get that stuff off what are you doing she said to her daughter it was 12 and that was from an age point of view right and i just thought well that's what i'd be doing at 12 that's what i was doing

my stepmother's clothes and stuff so i thought well hang on i'm having exactly the same desire to express myself in that way so i just wanted to express myself in that way and i was told like by society you're not allowed to and i just thought well you know some people are allowed to and i'm not i've decided i gave myself permission i said i'm allowed to and it's not hurting anyone else and i I was stealing the makeup. And after that, I started buying the makeup because the police got me. You got caught stealing makeup? Yeah. And I go back into the shop in Bexhill. And I say, I used to steal it.

And they're like, I'll buy this lipstick. Thank you very much. And I always make a point. They say, yeah, it's him again with the bloody lipstick. So, yeah. So you just had this desire to express yourself in a way. Yeah, yeah. Just like some women do.

And some women don't. Some say, I'm not going to wear any makeup. I'm not going to paint my nails. I'm not going to do that. Yeah, yeah. And if I had a – if I looked very female, then I would – I might wear different things or express myself in a different way. But I look kind of more boyish, more male-ish. So I have to – I choose certain clothes, certain look.

And I do it that way. And quite a lot of people are sort of going, okay, fair play. That seems okay. And you're looking fairly well put together. That's what I get to. So when you finally came out, the relief, though. Yeah. You could just be yourself.

Yeah. And you don't tend to look terrible when you first come out. You go, well, that doesn't work with that. finally came out the relief though yeah um just you could just be yourself yeah just uh and you didn't and you don't tend to look terribly when you first go out you go well that doesn't work with that why was i wearing that that's great but you've never had that teenage girl chance to be able to try things out and have your peer group say you're not wearing that are you because that's rubbish okay so then i gradually learned okay how does makeup work okay that's how it works so you gradually get better at things don't buy buy that. That color doesn't work. Oh, it can work, but if you, you know. So, but the relief is huge

because you've no longer got this hellish secret. Yeah. And then you can begin the dialogue. I didn't really have a dialogue with anyone at that point, but on stage, I could talk about it. I have friends that are in the closet, and they don't know what to do, and even comedian friends,

they don't talk about it they hide it and and i'm like god if you just let it go yeah i mean people in this day and age the people that will accept you that's the people you want anyway the people that don't accept you you don't want them like that's their own problem it's this live and let live thing the people that don't want you to be who you actually are to fit their own narrative in their own head like that's those people the crazy ones it's not you yeah it's really obvious there are gay people it's really obvious there are transgender people it's really obvious they're not no one's just making this up down back through history as well that's forever and also i think i try i say quite often you know this is a genetic thing because I don't – I didn't feel I got up – you know, when I was 23 and a half and I said, I think I've all become all transgender now.

No, I was four or five when I first knew and it has not moved those thoughts. That's interesting. So I think it is for most gay lesbian people I've talked to. I just think it's locked and it's built in. It's something you get given these cards, as I say, and we're trying to be upfront and be positive and express ourselves. Well, it only makes sense when you look at the other variabilities. The other variables when it comes to people's personality, their body shape, their mentality, their drive, their ambition, all these different variables. It only makes sense that there's feminine and masculine variables and that these shift back and forth with certain people.

And that certain people are just like they're somewhere in like where you are. Well, you have boy mode and girl mode. And I would imagine that you're talking about it so openly and that you're just so free with it that there's probably people out there that are listening to this. They're like, God damn it, that's me. They're like, God damn it, that's me. And the youngest young people around the world, I have met people who are talking about it in school. Actually, when I came back from South Africa, my co-writer, Kellen Jones, he said, can you go in? My daughter's in class and they've been talking about your runs in South Africa.

So I went in and they could talk about racism because I was running a salute to Mandela, 27 years he had to spend in prison. So they could talk about racism, but they could also talk about being trans, transgender or self-identifying and LGBT stuff because there was some kid in the class who was already identifying, wanted to identify as a girl. And so they were being positive. And these kids were eight, I think. So it's way different to our childhood. Our childhood, it was just do not talk about it, do not mention it. And if you mention it, you're going to get your head kicked in by your peer group. And that's why I never mentioned it at school, especially I fancy girls so I could just go in that route.

Did you run into girls that had an issue with it? Did you run into girls that had an issue with it? People that I know less of, but if you talk about relationships, it gets really tricky because it reflects upon people's relationships with yourself. But it's cool, and I've never been great at relationships. That's always tricky. Well, you know, I got this career thing thing and i worked out how i could work that and i can just keep staying four steps ahead of the game and i'm playing on all these countries though i'm doing the four languages and doing it so i've got all that going but then then how do you you're never really in one place to be able to continue a

relationship and then there's the being transsexual and that goes on so that all gets complicated you can't be can't get everything working. But I'm okay with that, and it's all good, and I enjoy things. On stage, I try and make myself laugh. This isn't comedy. This is my trick. I actually just try, and I go, oh, that's funny.

So I'm going off on this weird trip. I'm going to tell you this, but this is in a later show in Vunderbar. But I talk about J.R.R. Tolkien. I talk about the imagination. We have written all these stories and the animals haven't done that.

All the wild animals don't seem to have written any stories. I haven't heard of any good ones. But we've written that. J.R.R. Tolkien. And I say J.R.R. Tolkien. A.R.R.R. Tolkien was born. J.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R talking a r r r tolkien was born j r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r this is going to sound like this and then i said when he's five he turns to his mother because he realizes he's called jrrr talking and he says it is burm it is south african birmingham twang and he goes what else what i do this strangulated accent that is trying to fight between south

african and birmingham and it's such a stupid line to go on you know there's no logic to where i'm going and his mother's going what are you saying jrrr i can't understand it and because she's still between South Africa and Birmingham. And it's such a stupid line to go on. You know, there's no logic to where I'm going. And his mother's going, what are you saying, J-R-R-R? I can't understand it. And because she's still in South Africa. And he says, so I'm spending time going into the sidebar, which is making me laugh. And I think a lot of the audience are going,

what is he on about? What is he wittering about? And you can't really even hear what I'm saying. But I just do this strangulated accent. And in the end, he has to talk in a Yorkshire accent to get his mother to understand if he could cut down the number of R's in his name. And he becomes J.R.R. Tolkien. So that's typical of my stand-up, where I just go off on a tangent. To make yourself laugh.

Yeah, and I think it's sort of funny, a little bit funny, but it's probably more funny for me. Well, if it's funny for you, though, it's funny for people that are listening because comedy is contagious yeah and and if i'm you know the person on stage is having a good time then the audience should probably have a better time and this thing of it's not being locked down that it's living and breathing in front of them they do love that and uh and and you put more energy into the next bit when you go yeah and then this and then that and the other thing yeah so i do love stellar because it's you know you can just do it and do it and you know there's no one well i was a double act i was a four-person act and whenever you if you're even just a double act if you go off on a tangent then you have to look across to your partner and your partner's going where are you

going right you might want to go with it you might not want to go with it right keep to the script but on your own you could just go off. And Lenny Bruce, you know, the gigs he did in front of the band, you know that thing in the film, that part of the film? Yes. And he's trying to make the band laugh. And there's the people, the raincoats in the front and the strippers coming on.

And because when we did the play Lenny, we had a live actual jazz band on the stage, a real good jazz musician. So I was trying to make them laugh in just the way that Lenny, we had a live actual jazz band on the stage, a real good jazz musician. So I was trying to make them laugh in just the way that Lenny had. I would try to crack them up because I would go off script and I could do this. And that was just beautiful. And they said, you're riffing, aren't you? You're just riffing like we're

riffing. And I thought, whoa, this is weird. It was really nice to cruise down his life and do stand-up as close to him as I could. Even the mainstream. I did the more mainstream stuff and then the really edgy stuff

and the weird stuff and then where Jesus comes at the back and you've got St. Pat's Cathedral, that whole sequence where he's got, call the Pope, call the Pope, because Jesus is here. And yeah, that was fun. Yeah. I got very ill doing it how well yeah you started off dead naked and then you got you put your clothes on and you're talking you start going backwards

oh so the place starts off dead yeah you start off dead by so when he killed himself in the bathroom yeah yeah and then as you start and you're talking to either god or i think i'm talking to a judge who is a bit like a God at the beginning of it and explaining things as I'm putting my clothes on. So you start off naked. Then you have simulated sex with my wife about a quarter of the way through the film. So that was interesting doing that. And then you end up dying at the end of the film. So it just, it took a lot out of me. Wow.

Three months of that. Yeah, it took a lot out of me. So emotionally of that. Yeah, it took a lot out of me. So emotionally. Yeah, emotionally. It drained you and then you physically got ill. And I've never been ill out of a show, but it just took me down. I just was not well enough.

So you think it was just contemplating his existence, his life and what he went through? I think it was, yeah, I think part of his journey and also it was physically very grueling. It's mentally and physically quite grueling and mentally really grueling. And together that it made, I was knackered and I probably just wasn't drinking enough water. I should have, you know, I tend to think, I don't know, this is a me trait definitely that I will just carry on until I get ill. I won't necessarily think, okay, you're going into a stress period now,

so let's get some good water on, let's eat some healthy food so that nothing comes in and takes you out. You just bulldoze your way through things. Yeah, I tend to bulldoze. We just bulldoze through three hours. Do we? Yeah. It's three o'clock already.

Oh, it's o'clock there. Yeah. I was thinking, I had no idea how long. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. It's three o'clock. Oh, it's o'clock there. Yeah. I was thinking, I had no idea how long. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. It's like a time warp in here. Well, then, you're good at it.

You're used to it. I once did a street show for about two hours without starting, which was quite a beautiful, because on the street, if you imagine it, there's no nothing.

Edinburgh Festival, so you know the Edinburgh Festival, and there's this place called The Mound, so there's people milling around, so I was almost starting a show and i was just mucking about for two hours i was just there kind of not starting kind of starting kind of chatting kind of playing around beautiful it's i've done the most fun things on the street because no one's

in charge of anything there's just no rules yeah i've seen dave chapelle do that uh dave chapelle did that in montreal we were doing this uh soda, and then he came downstairs after we did it. I think he was like 18 or 19 and just took his hat off and started doing stand-up and had people put money in the hat. He was doing stand-up on the street. I was pretty with that. It was pretty wild. Pretty free.

As you see in Washington Square Party, you see that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Charlie Burnett was famous for that. Charlie Burnett was a guy who was one of the original street stand-up comics in New York, and he would do that in Washington Square Park and gather everyone around. There's video of it that people could watch online.

I think he might have come over to England at one point. Did he? I think he might have. He was brilliant. Brilliant performer, really good at grabbing people and grabbing their attention, and Dave learned a lot from him. Eddie, thank you very much, man. Thank you.

This was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it. I really appreciate you coming here. Wonderful that we got a chance to sit down. Absolutely. And tell people about your tour, where they can find where you're going to be, tickets, all that jazz. EddieIzzard.com, that's where it's happening. And I am next two and a half months, all the way up to mid-July

I'm around so 40 cities 40 cities beautiful all in America yeah I've already played all 50 states

which is kind of beautiful you played Montana I've played everywhere where'd you go in Montana I'm not sure what's the capital city Billings I think yeah I think we played

Billings if not it was near Billings Helena Helena is that it yeah what about Wyoming you did Wyoming yeah all of them Alaska yeah I made a point I've played Alaska twice I think we played Billings. If not, it was near Billings. Billings, Bozeman, Helena. Helena? Is that it? Yeah. What about Wyoming? You did Wyoming? Yeah, all of them.

Alaska? Yeah, I made a point. I played Alaska twice. Wow. We ended up in Hawaii, but played every single one, including Mississippi and Alabama as well. That's awesome. So everywhere. But it's nice.

I just love playing, you know, I just love playing around the world. Onward. Yeah, onward upward. Good luck to you. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate you. Thank you. Appreciate you. Thank you.

Thank you.