Eddie Izzard Sexie

UK Arena Tour

Co-produced

‘Steal, mug or shoot your way in’

The Observer

Sparklingly original observers of contemporary culture claim that “comedy is the new rock and roll”. (Or the new sex, or the new black).

Bollocks. If comedy was the new rock and roll, it’d be touring the world, playing to 10,000 demented fans in aircraft-hanger arenas every night. There’d be an entourage of 50 straggly-bearded sweaty roadies living on a diet of Mars Bars, Lucozade, pork pies and substandard porn magazines, wearing faded black Iron Maiden Death Fuck World Tour 1992 T-shirts.

There’d be 426-track mixers, pyro effects, 30′ high LED screens, 30 tons of state-of-the-art lighting, cabling and gantries, and six fat 48′ trucks branded with the artist’s name in 12′ tall letters. Tickets would be changing hands at 20 times face value outside the venue, there would be 200 groupies lined up at the stage door every night and super stars of stage, screen and television would be queuing to attend the aftershow party.

Comedy is self-evidently not the new rock and roll. Tragically, all the smug cultural commentators with their facile analogies have been proved right by one smart-arse who had to take it all literally – Eddie Izzard.

All the above facts (bar the Iron Maiden T-shirt bit – the 1992 tour was actually called Fear of the Dark) truly apply to Eddie Izzard’s world tour SEXIE. SEXIE was the first ever arena tour by a stand-up comedian.