From Eddie Izzard’s comedy we expect the incongruous. But was anything ever odder in the 61-year-old’s standup than the climax to her 2019 show Wunderbar: “My last tour before politics,” she said then. I remember my mounting alarm as the jokes fell away, and the audience was confronted with a near-messianic oration about the ways Izzard now intended, through politics, to heal the world. It’s a dream that may inch closer to reality this winter, as Izzard runs for the Labour candidacy in the seat of Brighton Pavilion. At the same time, she gets back on stage for a global standup tour, Remix, revisiting routines from the span of her 35 years in comedy.
Coincidence? Or a cunning plan on Izzard’s part, making a soapbox of the standup stage and star-powering her way to Westminster? The latter seems unlikely: until Wunderbar, Izzard’s stage act – all Star Wars canteens and erudite waffle – had stayed strenuously apolitical. But nowadays a career in jokes appears to qualify one for political office: just ask Ukrainian president and ex-comic Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Izzard is merely the latest in a growing line of clowns who would be kings, some of whom have taken their countries by storm – think Beppe Grillo’s Five-Star Movement in Italy – and some of whom – step forward Roseanne Barr, failed US presidential candidate in 2012 (campaign slogan: “Yes we cannabis!”) – have ended up with custard pie on their faces.
