Eddie Izzard

The Other Side Of The Story

as told by Pete’s brother

artwork by Kory Bingaman

I first met Eddie when we were both at prep schools in Eastbourne, him at St. Bede’s and me at Chelmsford Hall. We ended up at the same local public school, Eastbourne College, where our shared sense of the absurd led us to be friends and to write comedy together. I left in 1978 after “O” levels, Eddie stayed on, did his “A” levels and then went off to university in Sheffield. The next time I heard from him was about 1981/82, when I was living in the south of France; he contacted my elder brother Paul to ask if I would be interested in writing some sketches with him and taking them to the Edinburgh Festival — I had to say no, I was barely surviving in France and certainly didn’t have the money to go and have a laugh in Scotland. I returned to England in 1983, but didn’t contact Eddie again until spring 1988. I just got in touch to see what he was up to. We met up, had a drink, and he told me about his street performing and about how he was trying to break into stand-up. At that time my younger brother Pete was about to finish a two year business studies course, and soon after my meeting with Eddie, Pete and he met for the first time. Eddie said he would be performing an unpaid try-out spot at a local club called The Bearcat in Twickenham soon after, so Pete went along to see him — Pete had never been to a comedy club before, but he loved it. He was about to gain his business diploma, and had lots of energy, but nowhere to direct it. He very quickly decided that he would like to run his own comedy club and asked Eddie if he would be resident compère. Eddie agreed and in October 1988 The Screaming Blue Murder Cabaret club opened its doors for the first time in an upstairs room in the Rose and Crown in Hampton Wick, Surrey.

In those days Eddie was doing a routine that started, “My uncle served in Vietnam, he was a waiter” (Jack Dee later told him to personalize it, “I served in Vietnam” was already funnier than “my uncle”). Eddie used this material very successfully on the first night, but one week later, when he tried to do the same routine again, he was met with cries of “you did that last week”, which left him somewhat stumped — the free-form improvisation that came to characterize his act was still a long way off. It got to the point where week in, week out, Eddie would walk onto the stage, say very little, and then introduce the first act. Pete always believed in Eddie, but felt, as he said to me at the time, “I could do what he’s doing at the moment — “Good evening ladies and gentlemen, err.... please welcome Jo Brand”; and so one evening he took Eddie to one side and told him to go away for a couple of weeks and think about it, to write some new stuff, just to get his head together. Eddie did, he went to the Lake District, and when he came back he had already begun to turn a corner. It was during those early days that I had a joke I thought Eddie might be able to use — seeing as we’d written together before the idea wasn’t as absurd then as it might seem now — but Eddie said no, because, and I quote, “one day I’m going to make it, and when I do I want to be able to say I did it all on my own”. Of course that should have set off some alarm bells, but it didn’t, not till much later...

The success of the original Wednesday night at the Rose and Crown led to Pete opening there on Friday nights too. He also opened a club at the Leather Bottle in South Wimbledon on Sundays and at the White Lion in Streatham on Mondays. In other words Eddie had the luxury of doing at least four gigs a week, with the added benefit of knowing that he could try out new stuff as much as he wanted, it didn’t matter if he died on his arse, there was no club promoter in the background he needed to impress to try and get a booking. Pete was behind him all the way, he would be back again next week no matter what. This point is hugely important and cannot be emphasized enough — a promoter who didn’t care if his resident compère was funny or not was. And Pete gave him the time and space he needed to develop regardless of immediate success or failure. (He would later do the same for Dominic Holland.) Pete gave Eddie the most valuable thing he needed at that time, something no one else was giving him — a stage.

It was during this period that Eddie had his first experience of television. He did a show fronted by Arthur Smith called “First Exposure”, recorded in a theatre in Stratford, East London. Eddie died a death, but by the magic of TV the laughs had been miraculously restored by the time of transmission. He was particularly pissed off that night because his brother Mark had come along to watch. However, his second brush with television was to be a different story.

Throughout 1989 and 1990 Eddie carried on doing the clubs, slowly finding his feet and finding the confidence to run with ideas as they came to him. Any comedian will tell you that experience compering a club is invaluable, because it teaches you to think on your feet, and it gets you used to talking to an audience. Jo Brand’s very stiff and stylized delivery in her early days was all but completely wiped away by a period of compering. By the end of 1990 Eddie had started to get a name for himself, and was more often than not no longer compering the Screaming Blue Murder Friday Night shows, because he was getting regular bookings at other clubs, both in London and around the country. On the back of this he had started touring his one man show to small provincial theatres and art centres by early 1991. Eddie asked Pete to be his agent in late 1989, and then agreed that he should be his manager in 1990, although perhaps “manager” is somewhat misleading. Rather than tell Eddie what to do, when something came up they discussed it and decided jointly. So when Eddie first thought about trying to do his act as a transvestite, he spoke to Pete about it. Pete encouraged him to do whatever he felt happiest with, and so Eddie tried it, for the first time, in Leicester. The minute he walked off stage after the gig, Eddie phoned Pete, elated, to say that, although a handful of people had walked out, the vast majority of people just accepted him as he was. (When I used to drive Eddie to some of the out-of-town gigs after the show he would always ask, “How many walked out?” — Invariably some always would, not because of his clothes, this was before he started performing as a transvestite, but simply because they didn’t get it. He was always pleased if people had left because, as he put it, “It means I’m not bland”.)

I think that at the beginning of their partnership both thought that they would be equal partners across the board, but it soon became clear to Pete that Eddie’s business acumen was somewhat lacking, and so as Eddie got a better hold on his act, Pete took more control of the business. Because of this, Screaming Blue Murder were thought of as being Pete’s clubs and not Eddie’s, and it was maybe because of this that Eddie decided to try opening his own club, Raging Bull. Although Pete offered advice, Eddie didn’t want him to be involved. He wanted his club to be just that, “his”. The result was disastrous. Eddie opened at the Boulevard Theatre in Soho, knowing full well that even if he sold every single seat in the place he would still barely break even, and the place was rarely even half full. The move to the Shaw Theatre was even worse, a comedy show at midnight in a 400 seater theatre with no atmosphere on the Euston Road — as Pete now says, “arrogance overcame reason”. This story is, I believe, more important than it might at first seem. As time went on, it appeared that Eddie’s idea of good business was simply to throw money at something until it worked. Or even if it didn’t. At the time Eddie was seeing a woman we shall call Jane (not her real name). Jane was a would-be singer who fronted a band which shall also remain nameless. Although not a bad singer, she had no charisma, no star quality, and no real talent as a songwriter. Rather than go their own way, the band listened to what other indie bands were doing in an attempt to ride that wave with them, but of course as soon as they latched on to a new style or idea, the wave had already gone. Jane wasn’t shy about asking Eddie for help buying equipment, and he bought the band anything and everything they needed, believing that if he threw enough money their way, eventually they, and more importantly Jane, would make it.

In early 1991 Stephen Fry and Channel 4 were putting together the Aids benefit Hysteria 3 for the London Palladium. Comedian Mark Thomas’s future wife, Jenny, was a researcher and a big fan of Eddie, and she recommended him to her producer. Her producer loved him, and he was invited to be a part of the show. This event was televised, and it was this, more than anything else, that was Eddie’s really big break. Sharing the bill with Stephen Fry were Ben Elton, Julian Clary, Jools Holland, Tony Slattery — Eddie did ten minutes and stole the show. Although he had a small cult following on the comedy circuit, he was unknown to the majority of other acts, TV executives, and most of the audience. They all loved him. When the programme was aired on Channel 4 later in the year, Eddie was seen by an enormous audience all over the country, and this time there was no need to dub on the laughter. Afterwards, riding on the back of this success, Pete booked Eddie out across the country. At the Edinburgh Festival he was nominated for the Perrier Award, and at the end of the year he won a Time Out award. His journey on the road to fame had started in earnest.

In 1992 Pete and Eddie formed a company together, called H+I Management (Harris and Izzard). Originally the “offices” of H+I were at the house Pete and I shared in Surbiton, but in early summer they moved to premises in Covent Garden. H+I was formed because both Eddie and Pete wanted to be involved with a management company of real quality. To be with H+I was to be a sign of being someone special. H+I represented Eddie himself, John Hegley, Dominic Holland, Steve Furst (aka Lenny Beige) and, for a short time, the Reduced Shakespeare Company. In Edinburgh at the Festival in 1993 John Hegley sold out and Dominic Holland won the Perrier Award for the Best Newcomer, with Steve Furst and his show “The Gary Glitter Story” breaking even, no mean feat for a play at the Festival. H+I was doing well.

As Eddie had made a conscious decision not to perform stand-up on TV, they decided to make a video. Neither Pete nor Eddie had any experience in negotiating with prospective companies vying for the video rights, but as Eddie said at the time, “we’ll learn together as we go” — which led to them both saying “no” to every offer laid before them, and laughing incredulously as each offer was subsequently increased, until finally they came to an agreement with Polygram. This “learn together as we go” idea is again an important point. This was very much a partnership, both supporting the other as new challenges arose, Eddie as a stand-up, and Pete as a businessman. Pete had booked the Ambassadors Theatre for the month of February 1993, and this was the show they would film. Little did they know, when the doors opened on Monday, February 1st, that the show would be such a huge success that the run would need to be extended twice, finally closing at the end of April. Pete produced the Ambassadors run single-handed, a show that was nominated for a prestigious Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement. (As for the video, it did very well too — Pete can be seen at the very beginning, knocking on Eddie’s dressing room door, giving him “5 minutes”). At the end of the year I went to the LWT British Comedy Awards with Eddie, to watch him pick up his award for Best Stand-Up Comedian, (we had been told in advance he was the winner). All in all, 1993 had been another triumphant year.

At H+I Pete was looking after the business, and he was refusing to let Eddie throw any more company money at Jane and the band, telling him that he could do what he wanted with his own money, but he couldn’t fritter away company profits. Suddenly Jane’s money-well looked like it might be drying up. Also Pete decided that hiring a car for Eddie to drive every time he had an out-of-town gig was a needless extravagance, instead, why not buy Eddie his own car with company money? Eddie agreed, and everything was fine until one day Eddie walked into the office saying he needed to hire a car for that evening’s gig. When Pete asked him why he wasn’t using his own car he replied “Jane needs it”. In the end Eddie used his own car — whether he hired another one for Jane or not I don’t know.

After the success at the Ambassadors they decided to do another West End run. The Albery Theatre was just next door to the office, and free in February 1994. Everything was going fine, the theatre was booked, until one day Eddie took exception to the fact that Pete would be earning twice from the show: first his percentage as Eddie’s agent and second his percentage as the producer. Eddie didn’t like this, because he felt Pete was “earning too much”. Pete pointed out that he was earning twice because he was doing two jobs — somebody else could be brought in to produce the show, but why? — anybody else would need to be paid the same, and having the same person as agent and producer ensured that no deals could be done behind Eddie’s back (i.e. falsifying receipts so that the “star” gets less in his percentage). Eddie’s concerns certainly don’t appear rational, but maybe by now Jane was seeing Pete as a real threat to her ongoing ambition to be famous, and also to the money she thought could help her to achieve that. Perhaps she was poisoning Eddie against Pete. Maybe we’ll never know. On Saturday morning January 29th, 1994, two days before the opening at the Albery Theatre, Pete had a meeting with Eddie at the office in Covent Garden. According to Pete, Eddie seemed to be on a high, very chatty and happy. They discussed this and that, watched a pilot of an idea Eddie was working on, then walked round the corner to look over the frontage of the Albery, and generally had a laugh. Then, with the meeting over, as they left, Eddie said, “Oh, and by the way, I don’t want to work with you anymore”. Pete was completely devastated. They had never had a contract between them, nothing Pete could fall back on, the whole thing had been done on trust. Eddie was to earn a fortune from the Albery show, and yet when he left the H+I offices he took everything with him, including both computers, though he knew he was leaving Pete in the shit. However, two days after Eddie dumped him, Pete still stood in the foyer of the Albery Theatre as the show’s producer, welcoming people to the first night, many of whom he had invited personally. The show was sold out, but there was a row of seats, right at the front, that was empty. The row where Pete’s friends and family would have been.

When Eddie did this I had known him for over 18 years. I still don’t know why he did it. Of course show business is littered with people becoming stars and then moving on from their original managers or agents. It can be difficult for the people involved but, nonetheless, understandable. What I can’t understand is why Eddie seemed to take so much pleasure in it. He could have said, “Sorry, but I need to move on, in a month or two months or six months”. He could have thanked him for his help. He could have softened the blow. But instead he seemed to revel in it. Pete had just signed a six month deal on a flat in Soho, so that he could work late if he needed to instead of having to make the last train back to Surbiton. Now he was stuck up there in a flat he didn’t want and couldn’t afford, and unable to get out. Also at this time he was already looking to put on another West End show that he had taken to the Edinburgh Festival in 1993, “The Gary Glitter Story” — the theatre involved were hassling him to sign for the hire, but he didn’t have the signature for the money from the sponsors, though the sponsors had assured him that they were definitely on board. So, afraid of losing the theatre, he signed for the hire, and then the sponsors pulled out. Pete had to plough all his own savings into the show, and the show flopped. Within a few months of Eddie firing him Pete had lost everything. He could have filed for bankruptcy, but he didn’t. It took time but he paid off every last penny, helped by various comedians such as Jo Brand, Lee Evans, Lee Hurst, Harry Hill, Alan Davies and Kevin Day, who, amongst others, performed a show at the Wimbledon Theatre to help raise the money. You have to decide for yourself who was to blame for his downfall. Personally, I blame Eddie — Pete was distraught about losing the partnership, he lost his confidence and his judgment with it.

I have never spoken to Eddie since, although Pete ran into him in the street in Edinburgh at the Festival in 2001, and they went and had lunch together. When I heard I asked Pete what he’d said. “About what?” “About the way he treated you”. “I didn’t even ask him, he did what he did, he has to live with it”. Which brings me back to the Telegraph article. “There are two lines that will do me on my spirituality” — Izzard says. “Do unto others as you would have done unto you, and what goes around comes around”. Well, we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we? But I’m sure you can understand that knowing what I do this makes for nauseating reading. When I contacted Pete about writing this letter, he told me, “Eddie once said to me, ’Truth doesn’t matter, it’s what people believe to be the truth that matters. Therefore, get what you want people to believe down in print and it will become the truth’. He is playing that game. Good luck to him, you can’t change the real truth and in the end it doesn’t really matter anyway. No one cares.” Well maybe no one does care, but the fact remains that when Pete met Eddie he was a struggling open spot, and when Eddie got rid of him five years later Eddie had the world at his feet. (Pete went on to manage Lee Hurst through his “They Think It’s All Over” days, and the subsequent very successful tours.)

Just after Eddie got rid of Pete he did an interview for Vox magazine — the article started like this, “Eddie Izzard has never had an agent, never had a plugger, he books his own tours and talks his own deals”. I was furious. I wrote to them putting them straight and telling them to ask anyone they liked on the comedy circuit for the truth. Of course I never heard anything from them — “Eddie Izzard is great” sells, “Eddie Izzard once had a manager he shat on” doesn’t. I have had similar experiences across the years when I’ve objected to some of the bullshit Eddie comes out with, but with the same response, or rather lack of it. Reading the same dismissive bollocks about this period in his life in the Wikipedia article just made me decide to put pen to paper and write out the truth once and for all. I just want a copy of this to be out in the open, for people to know the truth, so that one day if someone decides to write a proper biography of Eddie, they will have this to refer to, because the only three people in the world who know the full story from the inside are Pete, Eddie and me, and Eddie seems to have some difficulty remembering it ever happened.

So there you have it, perhaps not the most earth-shattering of stories, but one, for reasons that escape me, Eddie tries to airbrush out of his history. It might be that phrase “one day I’m going to make it, and when I do I want to be able to say I did it all on my own”, or it might just be that he’s ashamed of how he behaved. Either way, how much difference did Pete make to Eddie’s career? Eddie probably would have made it anyway, he always had the talent and the determination, but Pete certainly helped him achieve his goals quicker. But what if Eddie hadn’t had the luxury of doing four gigs a week, completely free to die without any pressure? What if he’d just had to take the route of so many other comics, and do open spot after open spot, struggling to get a booking? Would it have broken his resolve? His style took some time to develop, would he have stuck with it? Who can say, but it is worth remembering this; when Eddie started out, no one other than Pete thought he could ever amount to anything. As Tony Allen, the “Godfather of Alternative Comedy”, said at the time, “Eddie Izzard — great bloke, shit comedian”... it just turns out that he got those two the wrong way round.