Tues. Jan. 12 

Listen to British comic Eddie Izzard and you’ll find him riffing Heon Hitler, Stonehenge, the history of the Catholic Church, Pol Pot, attack badgers, as well as a few more current affairs. He’d often start a joke, gleefully veer off course and wander down a side road, ending up, perhaps, at the intended punch line. Truth is, there’s many a punch line, and you never know quite when it’s coming. Izzard, 47, relishes pauses, delays, real or apparent improvisation.
     Izzard – whose “The Big Intimacy Tour: Stripped Too” lands at TD Bank Garden Jan. 12 – has also developed a parallel career as a serious stage, TV and film actor, but remains committed to stand up. And committed to doing in on the grandest scale possible: In arenas. We did an interview with the Boston Phoenix that’s on newstands now or accessible on line at www.thephoenix.com . We thought we’d provide some of the expansive out-takes. A half-hour of Eddie doesn’t 800 words and just about everything he says has entertainment value. Sometimes educational. And, when you get to the end of this, you’ll find, very emotional. There’s also a comprehensive, warts-and-all documentary out called “Believe” which should be available at your finest video stores and is well worth a rental. The TD Banknorth Garden show is 8. Tickets: $75-$45.
 
Your tour is subtitled “Stripped Too,” meaning I gather there’s a lot of material from the first “Stripped” tour. You caught flak from a TV program in England for doing a show that used, gasp, familiar material. 

Yes, that was a curious thing. The program normally dealt with crooked insurance companies and bad vacuum cleaners and I was on it. And the weird thing is, in America or Britain, the variety thing was you got your show together and you did the same show. This was the same in standup. Alternative standup began in 1979, so by 1990 it was still the same. You had 20 minutes and you stand on that 20 minutes. I was one of frontrunners who said “Let’s turn it over more quickly.” So I started doing new shows and now you’ve got to do a new show every time you go out. I just revolve material. It shows in the documentary. At the beginning of the show and the end of the show it’d be different, but I’d start the next tour with what I had at the end of the show. Unfortunately, the venue said it’s brand new material – erroneously. People got pissed off, people who had seen the DVD. I was very pissed off. I was sort of hoisted by one’s own petard. Since then, I’ve changed it, so I do massive amounts of work in progress before I officially start the tour. That’s the way I get around it.

So “Stripped Too” will have a lot of “Stripped” in it?
Yes, there will. It is “Stripped Too” like U2 did this played the arena tour and came back and did the stadium tour of the same show. That’s and what I’m doing. This is Stripped” - as well. If they’ve seen it, it will have moved around a bit and changed, but it is essentially still “Stripped” from before. It’s very well oiled and in very good shape, and I’ll have played 35 arenas before I get to America.

You’re doing standup comedy in huge arenas.
 Chris Rock has done them, but he’s decided he wasn’t wild about playing them. But I’m eager for us stand-ups to go in there because otherwise we just limit it to the rock ‘n’ roll kids.

But in standup you focus on that one person and in an arena that one person is very small for most people. So, you end up looking at the huge video screen.
My logic is this: You take the Beatles at Shea Stadium: Great event but you couldn’t hear anything. You go through Led Zeppelin at Madison Square Garden: You can hear the music by then in the ‘70s, but you still couldn’t see ‘em. You get to U2 and the huge screen. You’ve got to experiment. I have one huge screen, full length, a vertical screen that has a complete version of me and two side screens that sort of have a waist-to-head shot, so people should be able to see it. One thing I noticed watching bands play is that cameras will edit all over the place – it’s a bit like watching television in a massive arena. They zoom to this guy, cut to that guy – and I thought let’s not do any editing. Basically, the camera just follows me as I move around. Everyone in the audience is watching the head to waist-to-head or head-to- toe shot. I just got a five star review in the UK, which is difficult enough to get in a smaller theater.

You seem to pay a fair amount of attention to reviews.
A lot of [artists] say, “Reviewers, stuff ‘em, I don’t talk to ‘em.” I didn’t like that idea. I decided not to do a comedy show or a sketch show, or a sitcom, and I still haven’t. I’ve just been doing the [standup]shows and DVDs, so I wanted reviewers to come and see what they thought. I used to read them in early days and I still can. Sometimes I think, “Well this person’s got it all wrong.” so, I actually review the reviewers. But if I think this person’s got a valid point and they‘ve seen a lot and I trust what they’re saying and they’re saying this didn’t work, and I agree with that - I think, that’s a point. I better start changing that. I won’t sit down and pour over them, but at the same time, sometimes you have to do so after the fact. If you look back to the history of reviews, the famous one is “Rhapsody in Blue.” Someone murdered Gershwin on that. In Britain we used to have theater critics coming in and now we have stand-up comedy critics. They can compare and contrast it as an art form.

When you first came here, they billed what you were doing as a “one man show” instead of stand-up comedy.
Yeah. When I landed in New York to play Theatre 122 in 1996 people said “You’re not doing stand-up, you’re a monologist.” And I didn’t know what that was. I thought it was something that made you do monologues. And I didn’t want to be a monologist, because that sounded theatrical. The problem came from the image of stand-up in. America’s huge and has a great TV and film industry and film and the good stand-ups were pulled into TV and film deals. So there was this huge network of comedy clubs in the ‘80s with people probably not doing great work in there, going, “Hey, where you from?” “Great haircut,” that kind of stuff. And stand-up had such a low image.

George Carlin was this rare animal. His comedy got tougher, more lacerating as he aged. Sort of the anti-Bob Hope.  The older he got, the more he burrowed into these hard, vicious, hilarious truths. Do ever worry about softening over time? You’re a hard worker – writing, performing. Do have the fire and stamina you did when you were younger?

I have got more actual pure physical stamina, I started doing these runs, I actually ran 42 marathons and I’ve kept it up. Energy wise, you think that drains energy from you, it actually gives you more energy. Your capacity for energy. When I really worked on stuff, it would get to a better place. I have tried to do that.  I’m getting it together at arenas now. Barack Obama is a good example. When he was in Chicago and Berlin he had those screens, he was bringing people in to what he was saying. It was really working. He was bringing people in to what he was saying as opposed to shoving energy out. He brought people in and that is the trick, to push the energy out.

One of your friends in “Believe” said the best comedy came when the Tories were in power.
The guy who said that was a street performer I grew up with, I think really the political edgy comedy, the satirical comedy is best when a right-wing government is in. because comedians for some strange reason seam to be more left-wing, in the UK particularly. For me, I was doing surreal stuff, but I distinctly tried to not to do party political humor. It really dates so quickly; it’s sort of a waste of time. I kind of want to keep them separate, so I did historical-political, sexual-political, religious-political. Look at “Dressed to Kill.” It doesn’t seem to date. I’m talking about Hitler and Romans and Stonehenge and people don’t go “Stonehenge.” It was an old chestnut when I talked about it.

How long a show are you doing?

It’s about an hour and three quarters.

There was something in the Daily Telegraph not long ago calling you “entertainment incarnate” with a “muttering posh-street urchin” accent?

I haven’t read that. If it says “posh street urchin,” I did go to 12 years of boarding school, your prep school, but I wasn’t designed for that. My dad worked his way up from filing clerk to become an accountant. We moved up into a middle-class thing. And Mum died and then it was decided we should go to those places. I feel the poshness of my accent was something I didn’t like initially, and I tried to tone it down, but it’s still there. But then I was a street performer four-and-half years and worked my way through all sorts of club doing staud-up comedy, and I have run around the United Kingdom. I like to be a member of the population, rather than someone on some other plane, who feels they’re entitled to something. Hopefully, I can talk to many people.

When I saw your documentary was called “Believe” I first thought, “My God, they’ve titled it after a schmaltzy Cher song.” Then, I realized what you meant – having that belief in yourself even if you weren’t positive about your ability. It’s an American dream idea,

which I was arguing for when I was doing “The Riches,” it’s actually a world dream. It’s great America had it and I would have been on the boat in 1700s and 18000s, but it is a thing I’ve seen everywhere. If people don’t believe it, they can’t make it. There are people who are determined who don’t have the talent, but they go find the talent, and they go make the talent. I think that’s kind of what I’ve done. I wasn’t born with this ability, but I was born with determination that was huge. I’m quite pleased the way “Believe” turned out. I didn’t control the making of it. “Believe” does show me hammering away, and it’s not a flashy thing. It wasn’t like a rocket. The Beatles did that Hamburg thing and then it was a fucking rocket. I’ve never done the rocket bit. I wouldn’t say London was my Hamburg. It has 80 clubs, New York has 15 and L.A. has 10. There are so many clubs in London.

The most emotional part of “Believe” is when the camera lingered on you when you were talking about giving it all up if somehow your mother could return.

The odd thing is they talked to me for a long time, and that line came out of my mouth. It’s odd because when I said it I didn’t know what I was going to say. I’ve always said the audience is a substitution for her affection, but until I said it, which is why I said it, and then I thought about it. I hadn’t heard me say it before. It just came out of my mouth, and I thought, “I don’t know what I’m saying here.” (pause) I can’t really talk about … It’s really difficult to talk about. But I’d give it all up if she came back. I’d be happy if that was the deal, I’d chuck it all in to go back where we were.

100 Legends Way, 617-624-10-1000 or 866-448-7849

www.ticketmaster.com www.westbethent.com