Why Eddie Izzard is a God, and Matt Lucas is a fool I am destined to piss on in the gutter

Having discussed the intersection of gender and comedy, it's fair at this point to unleash a little rant I've been wanting to launch for a while, focusing on just how much of a boundary-smashing genius Eddie Izzard is and how the forces of retrogression in gender-based comedy can lick my sweaty bits and tell me that they love it.

The genius of Eddie Izzard isn't that he performs in drag. The genius of Eddie Izzard is that he's a transvestite. There is a massive difference between these two things, and that difference lies at the heart of the way in which Izzard genuinely changed the game for stand-up comedy in ways many lesser comedians are trying to catch up with, and some are actively trying to run away from.

Before Izzard, there was a long tradition of drag in British comedy and, whether it was hateful shit like Dick Emery, the more affectionate Northern social observations of Les Dawson, or the weirdness of Monty Python and Terry Jones' endless appearances as 'generic old woman' (most memorably as Brian's mum in Life of Brian), the joke was always, on one level, 'Hey! Look! It's a bloke dressed up as a woman!' The comedy in all these cases - even with Jones and Python, whose work I otherwise worship - depends, in large part, on the disconnect between the ideas of a certain type of idealised femininity and a certain form of masculinity which the performer is assumed to really have. It turns, in fact, on transmisogyny. 

The brilliance of Eddie Izzard is that his comedy doesn't. Although Izzard finds comedy in his experiences of other peoples' reactions to his transvestism, the punchline in his work isn't hey-look-it's-a-man-in-a-dress. The punchlines in Izzard's work tend to be more thoughtful, odd, and surrealist. Izzard's work is more likely to focus on discrepancies in the Bible than discrepancies between his birth-assigned gender and the clothes and make-up he likes to wear. In a country as sexually unsophisticated as Britain, and in a field as generally immature as British comedy, the idea that a man could wear high heels and make-up on stage without it being the focus of the joke was akin to the impact of glam rock on music. Eddie Izzard is the David Bowie of comedy.

Of course, one of the sadder things about being a rock music fan in Britain is that guys like Bowie are few and far between. We might occassionally strike it lucky with, say, a Brian Moltko or a Jarvis Cocker, but more usually Britain is the country responsible for terrible pub-rock shite like Oasis and the Stereophonics. Rock music straight men can listen to while wearing football shirts and drinking Carling. Unfortunately it's the same with comedy. A lot of men wouldn't be seen dead at an Izzard gig or a Placebo show, because they're terrified of looking gay in front of their mates. The idea that a man might look good in make-up, the idea that there might not be such a hard-and-fast line between acceptable male and female behaviours, and, probably, to paraphrase Hunter S Thompson, the gnawing fear that people somewhere are having fun in ways they'll never know, is a terrifying prospect for these fuckers. So they retreat to comedy which repeats the same old transmisogynistic tropes, which makes them feel comfortable in their tired, old, fossilised notions of gender, which allows them, once again, to grunt ha-ha-it's-a-guy-in-a-dress.

They retreat, in fact, to Little Britain (you'll notice I never include links to Little Britain when I blog about it. This is for the same reason many bloggers choose not to provide links to the Daily Mail in their blogs: I genuinely detest everything about it. I used to laugh at it, it's true, but I used to shit my pants as well. People grow up, and having grown up I despise the fucking show. Besides, the thing is fucking ubiquitous, you probably know what I'm talking about without a link and, if not, Google is your friend). They retreat to David Walliams and Matt Lucas in ridiculous crinoline dresses shouting 'I'm a lay-dee!' (Not that bad drag is all Lucas and Walliams can do. They can do fat suits and blackface too. They're a multi-talented pair.) And Lucas and Walliams make them feel safe and make them feel good and make them feel that, yes, it's okay, you can laugh at a man dressed as a woman (or a black woman. Or a fat woman. Or a lower-class woman. Or a disabled person [because they're all faking]. Or a mentally-ill woman. Or a woman who wets herself. Ha ha ha. Ha. Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha HA. It's astonishing that Lucas and Walliams got away with fooling people that they were 'edgy' for so long, because, really, there isn't a Mars Bars wrappers' difference between the world of their comedy and the world of the Daily Mail).

This is Lucas and Walliam's function: to convince the mass of people following them that they're enjoying something genuinely 'edgy' and exciting when actually their show is deeply retrogressive. All the vomiting, pissing, OAP-kissing, wobbling arses and breast-sucking in their shows serves the same function as the sound of loud electric guitars in the music of Oasis: it creates an impression of excitement and daring, but ultimately serves to distract from the essentially conservative nature of the enterprise (recall that the supposedly edgy, rock 'n' roll mofos in Oasis complained loudly that Jay-Z shouldn't play Glastonbury because rap isn't 'proper music').

It can be depressing, thinking about the popularity of acts like Lucas and Walliams. But you have to think about the long run. Oasis were the biggest band in Britain once, but they're a musical joke now, endlessly retreading the same dull path of lyrics ripped off from the Beatles and guitar riffs ripped off from Slade while newer, exciting bands spring up around them and their contemporaries, like Damon Albarn and Jarvis Cocker, remain creative and musically vital (Bowie, indeed, barring a disastrous stint in the eighties, was a vital musical force for thirty years, while Oasis burned out creatively in about six). And now look at Lucas and Walliams, reduced to slapping on their make-up and reprising their tired old schtick in a series of ads for a building society. Their true colours are revealed: they're a bank manager's idea of what's funny and hip.

Meanwhile, Eddie Izzard continues to perform incredible stand-up, has carved out a decent enough niche as a movie actor (though it's painfully obvious Hollywood doesn't really know how to use him properly), and ran forty-three fucking marathons.

It's fair to say that the idea of a transvestite running forty-three marathons wouldn't occur to Lucas and Walliams, because it doesn't fit in with their transmisogynistic worldview. But it doesn't really matter. In whatever Eddie Izzard does, he'll keep on running, while, creatively and comedically, the little boys from Little Britain remain stalled.

This my conspiracy theory which is mine *

I'm basically house-sitting now. All my CDs are at my parents', ready for when I move out. So are almost all my dvds and a lot of my books. We thought this would be a good idea, because my soon-to-be-ex-wife is in Spain for two weeks, then comes back the day before I leave for Glasgow. So we figured the thing to do was move all my stuff over early, to avoid a hellacious day of shuttling on the one day we're back together.

This, of course, turns out to be a mistake.

Because I've no media, you see. There are DVDs, but they're all hers - action films, musicals, and an extensive range of frat-pack comedies. Nothing wrong with any of these genres, but they're not what I want to watch right now. I'm in more of a Love is the Devil mood at the moment, is what I'm saying.

However, one DVD of mine has survived the migration: my 'Best of Bowie' collection, one of only two good purchases I made on my ill-advised trip to Scarborough so long ago (the other was Love all the People, basically a collection of every goddam thing Bill Hicks ever wrote). I'm watching it now. I'm up to the video for the Pet Shop Boys' remix of Hallo Spaceboy . And, of course, because I practically live on the internet these days (like all the rest of you), I've been googling. And I've found some disturbing stuff:

Bowie had a heart attack on June 25th, 2004. This effectively ended his recording career.

Michael Jackson had a heart attack on June 25th, 2009, which very definitely ended his recording career.

June 25th is George Michael's birthday.

You can see, of course, what it is that I'm getting at here.

Every five years, on his birthday, George Michael treats himself by giving a pop star he envies a heart attack with voodoo.

In 2014, who will feel the wrath of George?

* If anyone can identify the source I'm quoting in this title here, btw, they win a very special prize **.



** Okay, the 'very special prize' is a snog. Look, I'm getting divorced, okay? I'm frakkin' desperate. Cut me some slack. Jeez.

Palin has a drug dealer on speed-dial, apparently.

The Anchorage Daily News reports that Sarah Palin received 'the rock star treatment' at her farewell party.

I know rock is a pretty debased currency these days, but do we have to imply that Sarah frakkin' Palin is on the same plane as Jim Morrison, David Bowie, Slash or whoever else you care to name in the rock canon (I'm going to put Julian Cope in as my wild card)? No, we do not.

'Celebrity treatment' would have been acceptable, especially given that she's more suited to the vacuous realm of celebritainment than she is to the grown-up world of politics. But 'rock star'? No. Not even after that terrible Nickelback song.

Though I'd be tickled pink if La Palin's people could tell me which of these lyrics best represents the wolf-hating Jesus-freak governor. Me, I'm torn between the ten-person hot-tub or the centrefold-dating, either of which would provide a pretty good explanation for her stunning reverse ferret out of office recently...