Until the age of 13, I had never taken much interest in school French lessons. I had visited the country a couple of times, on family driving holidays to Brittany and Normandy, but my parents did all the talking and I didn’t see the point of learning le and la, soixante-dix or quatre-vingts. It was just something on the curriculum that I had to do.
Then, one evening at home, in Stirlingshire, Scotland, with everyone else in bed, I sat on the sofa and put on a VHS of Eddie Izzard’s standup show Dress to Kill. My parents were fans and I’d caught a glimpse on TV and thought it looked funny. I was young and some of the material was probably too rude but I enjoyed the surreal and absurd comedy, impressions and mad tangents.
Suddenly, Izzard did a bit about learning French then put together an absurd situation using all these random school French phrases during a trip to France, most memorably trying to bring the words cat (le chat), mouse (la souris) and monkey (le singe) up in conversation. I loved it. It spoke to an experience of the language that I understood. Then, as part of the encore, Izzard redid a whole section of the show in French. I found I could actually understand it. There was one line in particular, “le singe a disparu” (the monkey has disappeared) where a whole verb table suddenly clicked into place. And another sequence about getting out of an awkward conversation by saying “Je dois partir parce que ma grand-mère est flambée” (My grandmother is on fire). Being able to follow had not only let me in on the joke, it made it funnier. All those dry verb tables, conjugations and vocabulary lists finally made sense and I realised languages can be funny – and fun. Unexpectedly, Dress to Kill gave French a purpose.
From that day on I threw myself into French lessons. It became my favourite subject, and my best. I soon started learning German, too; the interest I’d taken in French made it easier to pick up and, I went on to study German and Turkish at university.
Once I’d graduated, I took a job in online marketing in Berlin in order to move there. I fell in love with the city. I loved being immersed in a foreign language and culture and was thrilled to converse with the locals. In early 2014, I saw a flyer for Izzard who was doing a show, in German, at a theatre in the city. I excitedly booked a ticket and, in that small dark room, had the same sort of feeling again: this English comic taking a language I’d spent a long time learning and making it funny.
After three years in Berlin I moved to Amsterdam and added Dutch to my repertoire. Then, in 2016, moved to Brussels to work for the European Commission. I’d let my French slip in the intervening years but now, here I was, in a French- (and Dutch-) speaking city and it was a delight to be reacquainted. My job is in communications, research and innovation and while my day-to-day work is in English, I liaise with people of all nationalities, and use my languages wherever possible.
Sometimes, there are little reminders of Dress to Kill. The first time I took the train to Bruges, walking from the station to the city centre, I passed a hotel called Le Singe d’Or (The Golden Monkey). In the many times I’ve passed since I always smile, imagining Izzard pronouncing it on stage.
When I first watched Izzard all those years earlier I’d rarely left Scotland; I never imagined it would take me so far. I use my languages every day and, when I became a Belgian citizen in 2022, I filled out the application in French. I still sometimes wonder: would I ever have worked for the EU, would I ever have moved to Brussels, would I ever have moved abroad at all, if it hadn’t been for Eddie Izzard asking a confused Frenchman: “Où est le singe?”
