Edward John Izzard (born February 7, 1962) is a British stand-up comedian a… Read Full Bio ↴Edward John Izzard (born February 7, 1962) is a British stand-up comedian and actor. Izzard has a very individual style of rambling, surreal monologue. Izzard has turned their attention to acting as well as maintaining their demanding touring schedule.
Izzard was born in Aden, Yemen, as the youngest child of John and Ella Izzard. In 1963, shortly before Britain abandoned the capital of Aden, the Izzards moved to Northern Ireland. Izzard lived in Bangor, County Down until 1967, when troubles started brewing there as well, and the family moved to Skewen, Wales, and Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, England. Izzard's mother died in March, 1968, of cancer.
Izzard has said that they knew they were a transgender person at the age of four, after watching a boy being forced to wear a dress by his sisters, and knew they wanted to be an actor at the age of seven.
Izzard began to toy with comedy at the University of Sheffield with student friend Rob Ballard. After leaving accountancy, Izzard and Ballard took their act to the streets, often in Covent Garden. After splitting with Ballard, Izzard spent a great deal of the early 1980s working as a street performer in Europe and the United States. Izzard says that they developed their comedic voice by talking to the audience while doing solo escape acts. Izzard then moved their act to the stand-up comedy venues of Britain, the first gig being at the Banana Cabaret in Balham, London.
In 1987, Izzard made their first stage appearance at the Comedy Store in London. Izzard refined their comedy material throughout the 1980s, and in the early 1990s began earning recognition through improvisation, in part at their own club, "Raging Bull" in Soho.
Izzard's big break came in 1991 after performing their "Raised by Wolves" sketch on the televised "Hysteria 3" AIDS benefit.
Izzard's stand-up work brought them British Comedy Awards in 1993 (for Live at the Ambassadors) and 1996 (for Definite Article). After the British leg of the tour, Izzard took 'Definite Article' to major cities outside the UK including a successful stint in New York City. However, their US breakthrough did not really come until 1998, when 'Dress to Kill', which was shown on American television channel HBO, went on to earn Izzard two Emmy Awards in 2000.
Izzard has appeared in numerous films, starting with 1996's The Secret Agent, and has appeared as several real-life individuals, including Charlie Chaplin in The Cat's Meow, actor Gustav von Wangenheim in Shadow of the Vampire, and General Erich Fellgiebel in Valkyrie. Other roles have included Mr Kite in Across the Universe, Lussurioso in Revengers Tragedy and criminal expert Roman Nagel in Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen. Izzard's voice work has included the titular "It" in Five Children and It, Nigel in The Wild and the mouse warrior Reepicheep in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.
Izzard appeared in the 2009 BBC science fiction miniseries The Day of the Triffids, based on the 1951 novel, alongside Jason Priestley, Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson, Dougray Scott and Brian Cox.
Izzard presented the medals to the athletes who had won the 800m T54 race at the London 2012 Paralympic Games, including gold medalist David Weir. Izzard played Dr. Hatteras, a skeptical psychology professor, in the Showtime series United States of Tara and appeared in six episodes of the 2013–15 American psychological horror television series Hannibal as Dr. Abel Gideon.
In 2014, Izzard played the part of Robert Watson-Watt, in the BBC drama film Castles in the Sky, who invented aircraft-detecting radar equipment in time for the Battle of Britain.
In June 2017, Izzard read excerpts from their autobiography Believe Me for BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week. Izzard appeared as a guest on The Daily Show in May 2019 and discussed their current activities as a comic, their political aspirations, and their ongoing efforts as an avid marathon runner.
Comic style
Izzard uses a stream-of-consciousness delivery that jumps among topics, saying in a 2004 interview with The Guardian, "It's the oral tradition. Human beings have been doing it for thousands of years". Izzard's bent towards the surreal went so far as to produce a sitcom called Cows in 1997 for Channel 4, a live action comedy with actors dressed in cow suits. Izzard has cited Monty Python as their biggest influence, and Python's John Cleese once referred to Izzard as "the lost Python".
Frequent comedic themes:
An impression of James Mason, often representing a hapless, dithering God or authority figure
An impression of Sean Connery, whose character - which has ranged from Noah to Henry VIII - usually interacts with the Mason character
The name 'Jeff' (for instance as in "Jeff Jeffty-Jeff. Born on the first of Jeff Nineteen-Jeffty-Jeff", whose computer password is 'JEFF', Jeff the God of Biscuits, or Jeff Broccoli)
jam
bees
pigs
banjos
badgers
'mmmmmrmmmmmm' - the sound of an E-type Jaguar
Adolf Hitler (often referred to as a vegetarian)
Toasters
Engelbert Humperdinck (singer) the british pop star
Taps
Star Wars references (example - The Death Star Canteen)
Azerbaijan
Belgium
the British monarchy
the National Rifle Association, aka the NRA (he often pronounces it 'Riffle').
Eddie has a number of mannerisms, such as:
Saying "So... yeah..." when thinking what to say next (a fact subtly noted on the back of the 'Glorious' video box)
Saying "and, uh..." as the audience pictures Izzard's bizarre imagery and starts laughing
When Eddie's stream of consciousness appears to lose the audience, holding up an imaginary pad and pen and writing "Lost them there".
Connecting two totally irrelevant topics and pausing as the audience picks up on it "...a Blue Horse on the outside, a Blue Horse from Mars! And then we could tell couldn't we ... Now, so anyway, sometimes, though, you want to buy a teatowel..."
Making fun of their own pantomimes. (describing a hotel room in France) "Avec un vue de la mer.. a view of the sea [pantomimes looking at the ocean], un grand lit... a large bed [pantomimes smoothing the sheets]. Et, avec un douche [pantomimes a shower spraying on their head]... with a spider." Similarly, a character in Izzard's sketch may comment on the joke ("no, that's the wrong punchline, you can't use that") or the audience ("they groaned at that one, do you realise that?").
Often randomly brings back or reworks material the audience initially found funny in their acts, such as their Scottish clarinet teacher Mrs. Badcrumble, and monkeys with guns in several of their stand ups, to name a few.
Personal life
Izzard resides in Victoria, London.
Izzard is genderfluid and calls herself "somewhat boy-ish and somewhat girl-ish". When asked in 2019 what pronouns they preferred, Izzard said, "either 'he' or 'she'", explaining, "If I am in boy mode, then 'he' or girl mode 'she'". In 2020, Izzard requested she/her pronouns for an appearance on the TV show Portrait Artist of the Year.
Izzard was born in Aden, Yemen, as the youngest child of John and Ella Izzard. In 1963, shortly before Britain abandoned the capital of Aden, the Izzards moved to Northern Ireland. Izzard lived in Bangor, County Down until 1967, when troubles started brewing there as well, and the family moved to Skewen, Wales, and Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, England. Izzard's mother died in March, 1968, of cancer.
Izzard has said that they knew they were a transgender person at the age of four, after watching a boy being forced to wear a dress by his sisters, and knew they wanted to be an actor at the age of seven.
Izzard began to toy with comedy at the University of Sheffield with student friend Rob Ballard. After leaving accountancy, Izzard and Ballard took their act to the streets, often in Covent Garden. After splitting with Ballard, Izzard spent a great deal of the early 1980s working as a street performer in Europe and the United States. Izzard says that they developed their comedic voice by talking to the audience while doing solo escape acts. Izzard then moved their act to the stand-up comedy venues of Britain, the first gig being at the Banana Cabaret in Balham, London.
In 1987, Izzard made their first stage appearance at the Comedy Store in London. Izzard refined their comedy material throughout the 1980s, and in the early 1990s began earning recognition through improvisation, in part at their own club, "Raging Bull" in Soho.
Izzard's big break came in 1991 after performing their "Raised by Wolves" sketch on the televised "Hysteria 3" AIDS benefit.
Izzard's stand-up work brought them British Comedy Awards in 1993 (for Live at the Ambassadors) and 1996 (for Definite Article). After the British leg of the tour, Izzard took 'Definite Article' to major cities outside the UK including a successful stint in New York City. However, their US breakthrough did not really come until 1998, when 'Dress to Kill', which was shown on American television channel HBO, went on to earn Izzard two Emmy Awards in 2000.
Izzard has appeared in numerous films, starting with 1996's The Secret Agent, and has appeared as several real-life individuals, including Charlie Chaplin in The Cat's Meow, actor Gustav von Wangenheim in Shadow of the Vampire, and General Erich Fellgiebel in Valkyrie. Other roles have included Mr Kite in Across the Universe, Lussurioso in Revengers Tragedy and criminal expert Roman Nagel in Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen. Izzard's voice work has included the titular "It" in Five Children and It, Nigel in The Wild and the mouse warrior Reepicheep in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.
Izzard appeared in the 2009 BBC science fiction miniseries The Day of the Triffids, based on the 1951 novel, alongside Jason Priestley, Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson, Dougray Scott and Brian Cox.
Izzard presented the medals to the athletes who had won the 800m T54 race at the London 2012 Paralympic Games, including gold medalist David Weir. Izzard played Dr. Hatteras, a skeptical psychology professor, in the Showtime series United States of Tara and appeared in six episodes of the 2013–15 American psychological horror television series Hannibal as Dr. Abel Gideon.
In 2014, Izzard played the part of Robert Watson-Watt, in the BBC drama film Castles in the Sky, who invented aircraft-detecting radar equipment in time for the Battle of Britain.
In June 2017, Izzard read excerpts from their autobiography Believe Me for BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week. Izzard appeared as a guest on The Daily Show in May 2019 and discussed their current activities as a comic, their political aspirations, and their ongoing efforts as an avid marathon runner.
Comic style
Izzard uses a stream-of-consciousness delivery that jumps among topics, saying in a 2004 interview with The Guardian, "It's the oral tradition. Human beings have been doing it for thousands of years". Izzard's bent towards the surreal went so far as to produce a sitcom called Cows in 1997 for Channel 4, a live action comedy with actors dressed in cow suits. Izzard has cited Monty Python as their biggest influence, and Python's John Cleese once referred to Izzard as "the lost Python".
Frequent comedic themes:
An impression of James Mason, often representing a hapless, dithering God or authority figure
An impression of Sean Connery, whose character - which has ranged from Noah to Henry VIII - usually interacts with the Mason character
The name 'Jeff' (for instance as in "Jeff Jeffty-Jeff. Born on the first of Jeff Nineteen-Jeffty-Jeff", whose computer password is 'JEFF', Jeff the God of Biscuits, or Jeff Broccoli)
jam
bees
pigs
banjos
badgers
'mmmmmrmmmmmm' - the sound of an E-type Jaguar
Adolf Hitler (often referred to as a vegetarian)
Toasters
Engelbert Humperdinck (singer) the british pop star
Taps
Star Wars references (example - The Death Star Canteen)
Azerbaijan
Belgium
the British monarchy
the National Rifle Association, aka the NRA (he often pronounces it 'Riffle').
Eddie has a number of mannerisms, such as:
Saying "So... yeah..." when thinking what to say next (a fact subtly noted on the back of the 'Glorious' video box)
Saying "and, uh..." as the audience pictures Izzard's bizarre imagery and starts laughing
When Eddie's stream of consciousness appears to lose the audience, holding up an imaginary pad and pen and writing "Lost them there".
Connecting two totally irrelevant topics and pausing as the audience picks up on it "...a Blue Horse on the outside, a Blue Horse from Mars! And then we could tell couldn't we ... Now, so anyway, sometimes, though, you want to buy a teatowel..."
Making fun of their own pantomimes. (describing a hotel room in France) "Avec un vue de la mer.. a view of the sea [pantomimes looking at the ocean], un grand lit... a large bed [pantomimes smoothing the sheets]. Et, avec un douche [pantomimes a shower spraying on their head]... with a spider." Similarly, a character in Izzard's sketch may comment on the joke ("no, that's the wrong punchline, you can't use that") or the audience ("they groaned at that one, do you realise that?").
Often randomly brings back or reworks material the audience initially found funny in their acts, such as their Scottish clarinet teacher Mrs. Badcrumble, and monkeys with guns in several of their stand ups, to name a few.
Personal life
Izzard resides in Victoria, London.
Izzard is genderfluid and calls herself "somewhat boy-ish and somewhat girl-ish". When asked in 2019 what pronouns they preferred, Izzard said, "either 'he' or 'she'", explaining, "If I am in boy mode, then 'he' or girl mode 'she'". In 2020, Izzard requested she/her pronouns for an appearance on the TV show Portrait Artist of the Year.
The Romans
Eddie Izzard Lyrics
We have lyrics for 'The Romans' by these artists:
2 Sweet Watch your step, kid though i've love to see you…
We have lyrics for these tracks by Eddie Izzard:
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite For the benefit of Mr. Kite There will be a show…
Do You Think I'm Sexy She sits alone, waiting for suggestions. He's so nervous, av…
I She sits alone, waiting for suggestions. He's so nervous, a…
Logic and Human Sacrifice / Goat Slaughter / Conspiracies / The Prodigal Son Стой! Пока ещё не выключен свет Я хочу услышать ответ Скажи,…
The lyrics are frequently found in the comments by searching or by filtering for lyric videos
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HalfLife(Ger)
@Lancer525
Are you some sort of troll or just a delusional idiot? This is goddamn hilarious.
The idea that most Romans in Italy and the West in general spoke Greek before the time of Cicero, yes before the Romans even conquered large Greek-speaking territories for… reasons is so on its face ridiculous it‘s laughable.
You can look at the wealth of inscriptions, coins and other surviving epigraphic sources we have from those times to see that this is patently untrue. Surprise surprise, they are in Latin, as that was the language of Rome since its founding and most of Italy since at least the late 3rd/early 2nd century B.C., as well as most of the West (Africa, Hispania, Dacia etc.) by Cicero’s time. What actually changed during and after Cicero‘s time is the emergence of Classical Latin as we know it, a literary language which replaced ancient Greek in LITERATURE and SCIENCE, NOT as the people‘s language, because they had always largely been Latin-speaking in Rome and the Latin parts of Italy. The only part of the West where Greek was actually vernacular was Southern Italy, and that part too was largely Latinized after it was subsumed into the Roman Empire in the 3rd century B.C.
Latin was always administrative (and military) language everywhere in the Empire, and in the Eastern/“Byzantine“ Empire it remained such until the 6th century even when the Western Empire had collapsed. Senate sessions too were conducted in Latin since the very beginning. Greek was merely the language of the educated elite, of art, literature and science.
This is on par with claiming Alexander the Great wasn‘t Greek but a modern Slavic Macedonian.
Now how about you cite some of those sources before getting all high and mighty up here? And I‘d like a link to that supposed Doctoral dissertation and those alleged papers as well.
Ah wait, they don‘t exist.
Haki7Hikari
@Edgar Manuel Juarez
Actually I do agree with Hannah that he also uses German, of course with a mix of other languages (Most of it is English and I thinks there's also French in it) with a latin accent and probably some real latin.
Your example at 2:44. (german in capital letters)
I'm pretty sure he doesn't say 'Im messengarium...' but 'ICH BIN messangarium, ICH careere NACH heree, from long way away, portare ... ( then a word I can't really make out what it is, but it's probably 'news' like you said, and then I think he ends in French) très mauvais. (very ugly/very bad, so he probably sais that the news is very bad)
I also think he says a few times 'MEIN HERR' (My lord in German) e.g. 3:16, 3:27
Also at 3:33 : MIT soldatus (mit is German for 'with'), WIE VIEL soldatus (wie viel is German for how many)
4:40 'UND, UND MEIN HERR' (German for: and, and, my Lord)
5:03 the gibberish was 'portari pink pajamas', portari looks similar to the French word 'Porter' (to wear', so he asked, '(does he) wear pink pajamas?'.
5:07 UND, ER KOMMT MIT elefantein (German: And he comes with elephants).
5:19: Elefantein très dangereus. (French for The elephants very dangerous, well the elephant part was not in French)
It's basically a huge soup of languages that he mixed together with some strange latin endings (or latin sounding endings, I never had latin so I have no clue how exactly the end of words sound like)
Anyway I think it was really funny, I like languages very much and I love him for playing around with it.
Daniel Schneider
It's such a refreshing change that Eddie just assumes his audience is smart enough and quick enough to pick up on the word plays and little jokes he puts into everything and doesn't feel the need to explain them.
Zira Prod
Like most comedians? How is it refreshing?
Jaron Talotta
Elephants that can ski is definitely too complex for the average simpleton.
Bradavon
@Patrick William reminds me of my Spanish lessons 😅. We're not taught Latin in school.
Uros Marjanovic
@Janis Thompson Romanes eunt domus
Janis Thompson
Remember 'Biggus Dickus'!
Brian Ford
The amount of German in his "gibberish" is hysterical
Donna Barr
@V8 (let's go brandon) Except our spelling is insane.
SeeWoelfin
@V8 (let's go brandon) I'd say not giving a fuck is not true. You can't seem to let go of this discussion. Must be a Yankee.
SeeWoelfin
@Bradavon not only. 'Latin based' = Romance languages, like French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian have a Masculine/Feminine classification. Romanian has masculine, feminine and neuter. But Germanic languages have Gender m/f/n (except English) So do Slavic languages. Semitic languages (Arabic, Hebrew...) use m/f. Bengali, Persian, Japanese, Turkish and English are Genderless.