Eddie Izzard - force majuere - 25 years of joy - 5 stars

An hour in my life that I'll never get back and ah never want back. The journey Eddie Izzard takes you on is still the same. It is simply superb surreal comedy. Dali would love the way he melts time. As scholarly as his artistic licence allows him, he juggles time and states-people (well statesmen really, that's the way they write history....), moves seamlessly through the epochs and never forgets to give the Gods a glance. Giving punchlines away would not spoil the show as his delivery is everything. We all know why later copies of the bible suppressed the bit when Adam and Eve discussed cross dressing. We wont dwell on the ego of a performer or even older phrases on the power of deep voices, its the delivery, and Eddie delivers across a diverse eclectic range of topics. The crowd hang on every syllable and when it doesnt arrive the tension just makes the humour better. Has he forgotten?... is it for effect?... what is he thinking? The Danish have laughing clubs and Eddie clearly has his own touring laughing club. There is no tension in the room. He tries to remind us that the right wing are still alive and kicking us, but we know, and we pretend it doesnt hurt. Tonight, of course, it doesnae hurt. We have our saviour, our talismanic, idiosyncratic action transvestite. Go on yersel big man, well in those heels we'd all be big men.

The last time I saw Eddie in a venue this small was in the last months of Thatcher's Britain at the Brighton comedy club. I'd travelled down from Edinburgh and after a game of 5-a-sides stumbled into one of the finest nights of my life. Joint second with my wedding and daughter's birth. All through the 80's we had divided the country in two. Comedy was the same. Alternative comedy grew out of the ashes of our manufacturing industry although the greatest irony was working mens' clubs gave voice to the old right wing fascists, but I digress. As Thatcher's cabinet was nimbly applying pressure to the pillow they had lifted over her whisky stained gob a more sophisticated alternative comedian had appeared. Eddie shone in that Laura Ashley frock back then. He was a more overt transvestite but his mind was as sharp as the tangent at the point of a circle. Yeah, really sharp. 

He looked 25 years older but that could just be the marathons he's run or the fact that he is 25 years older and even action transvestites dont believe a nip and a tuck is a good use of financial reserves. Instead Eddie very kindly let the impoverished public wander in for £15 to an intimate gig which he did in German and French earlier in the evening. The same show performed every hour for 3 hours in 3 languages is his well publicised new gig. Some language teachers need to look at getting the kids along to his shows. The French gig tonight was not sold out, that is simply a scandal. Fanfuckintastico when he adds Spanish to the list. He'll be doing 4 hours a night, even when footballers have to go to extra time and penalties they still dont do that long and they charge more than 4 x £15....

Quite simply Eddie Izzard is a human being in our space, on our planet at the same time as us. Quite simply in the absence of God and the Clash, he is the new religion. Quite when he'll have the resources to do the show in Gaelic is unknown but I'm sure he'd relish the challenge.