Varsity Issue 810

16 INTERVIEWS
WEDNESDAY 15TH JUNE 2016
Interview:
Eddie Izzard
“Do it for
humanity,
above all”
AOI PHILLIPS YAMASHITA
Elizabeth Howcroft interviews Eddie Izzard on his campaign for Remain in the lead-up to the EU referendum
The 54-year-old stand-up comedian
Eddie Izzard came to
Cambridge as part of his Stand
Up For Europe campaign, which sees
him travelling to 31 cities in 31 days,
attempting to encourage young people
to vote to remain in the European
Union. The media attention his visit
attracts is notable. Three hours before
his talk in the main chamber begins,
the Cambridge Union’s library is
more crammed with journalists than
I’ve ever seen it, with presenters and
their film crews speaking in different
languages as they perform sound and
screen tests in advance of a coveted
interview slot.
After being introduced as a journalist
from Varsity, Izzard asks me,
“What does Varsity actually mean?”
Before I can think about a response,
he answers himself: “Nobody knows.”
I make a feeble attempt to link Varsity
to the last three syllables of ‘university’,
after which he says triumphantly:
“That would be my first question to
Varsity. What do you actually mean?”
Right. An unexpected start.
Dressed in a campaign t-shirt, wearing
a Stand Up For Europe badge and
with nail-varnish bearing the EU and
UK flag designs, there could be no
doubt as to the message Izzard is trying
to get across.
“It’s so important [students] vote
on 23rd June,” he says earnestly. He
speaks quickly, and it is clear that this
is something he has said many times
before.
“They should be empowered; this
one will affect them not like a general
election. A general election is
about mortgages and families and
they think, ‘What’s it got to do to me?’
[whereas] I think this one can really
affect students.”
I ask him why he has become so
interested and involved in the referendum
debate: “I am not sure exactly
why it is that from a very early age I
was interested. I was born in Yemen, I
was born to British parents, I’ve lived
in Northern Ireland, South Wales and
the South of England. I’ve always liked
people, I find people interesting, I
think I could talk to 95 per cent of the
world and sit down and have a chat.”
DESPAIR IS THE FUEL OF
TERRORISM; HOPE IS THE FUEL
OF CIVILISATION
He cites a number of valid arguments
in favour of the EU from a student’s
perspective: money coming into
UK universities, the Erasmus scheme,
low-cost flights to Europe in the summer,
low roaming charges and free
health care. He declares: “You never
hear about them because they’re good
news and no one puts good news out.
So I’m telling everyone, they’re out
there, fight for them.”
Izzard has a humanitarian attitude
towards world politics, and his idealism
is clear as he transitions, perhaps
unintentionally, from describing the
real benefits of EU membership to
his ideal vision of a connected world:
“[…] fantastic things, and just a positive
outlook and open-handed politics
where you reach and you say, ‘Hi,
who are you? You’re French, you’re
German, you’re Italian, and what do
you do? Can I learn from you? Can
you learn from us? Now let’s talk to
each other’; let’s do that rather than
this, poll-backed nationalistic thing
where people are pulling up walls and
separating it out.”
In both his interview and speech,
Izzard’s rhetoric is impressive and
impassioned. He discusses the origins
of the EU: “From Alexander the Great
to World War Two, two and a half
thousand years of murder and then
we stopped, and we said, ‘Let’s make
peace work’, and that’s what we’re built
on.’’
Yet one gets a sense that he falls
back on indisputable, crowd-pleasing
one-liners such as “think of humanity”
and sweeping statements about
the history of the human race, at times
when discussion of the specifics of the
politics and economics involved in
the referendum would have been welcome.
He dabbles in analogy to little
effect, suggesting that civilisation, as
distinct from terrorism, is “like crops:
you have to plant it and feed it and let
it grow.”
For example, at one point he tells
me, “If you look at the history of humanity,
walls are put up when you’re
going backward, hands are reached
out when you’re going forwards, it’s
building bridges and open windows
and trying to get better” – a statement
perhaps true and reasonable, but it is
no great stretch to say it is of more
relevance to human behaviour and
morality in general than to the specific
issues at the crux of the referendum
debate.
At times, Izzard advocates becoming
informed, for example, by reading the
news. Yet he also says, “If you’re getting
confused by the numbers, think
of humanity.”
He is keen to clarify to me that he is
not advocating casting a vote based on
emotional judgements but rather that,
with people too busy or uninterested
to inform themselves, it is inevitable
that many will “do it on a completely
gut and emotional level”.
Izzard’s involvement in the referendum
campaign has attracted its fair
share of criticism in the media. His
recent appearance on BBC’s Question
Time resulted in a pantomime-like
exchange of repeated ‘Yes it is’, ‘No
it isn’t’, with a member of the audience
who suggested that the country’s
economy was safer outsider the EU. In
the Q&A session at the Union, despite
his evident sincerity, it was difficult to
ignore the audible sniggers when, for
example, asked about why members
of the Commonwealth with no economic
interest in Britain should vote
to remain, he replied, “for humanity,
above all”.
This is not to say that these were
necessarily laughs of derision, and
certainly not of disagreement with his
argument, but rather, I suspect, the
natural response to a comedian giving
such a simple and straightforward response
to an issue that is proving to be
anything but.
He constantly links his political
ideology with his own achievements,
reminding us with a somewhat unnecessary
frequency of his ability to perform
in multiple languages and that he
toured Europe to do so: “I don’t think
anyone’s ever done that before.”
It is worth mentioning, at this point,
as he did partway through his speech,
that Izzard intends to become an MP
in 2020. This sheds light on his constant
linking of running 27 marathons
in 27 days and visiting 31 universities
in 31 days. He claims both as justifications
or explanations of his argument
about the Remain campaign, yet, to
me, this link is tenuous in comparison
with the other obvious similarity:
that both are attracting an enormous
amount of good publicity. In one
comment, he sounds almost Boris
Johnson-esque as he says: “I do like
history. Churchill liked history.” At
another point, he remarks: “I don’t believe
in God, but I believe in us. I think
we’re pretty good. You know, I’ve done
some marathons […]”
However, perhaps part of Izzard’s
charm and appeal is that he is not a
fully-trained, smooth-talking politician,
with a supply of facts and statistics
at his fingers. While criticism that
he lapses into platitudes and sweeping
statements about human morality are
certainly true, what’s to say that such
rhetoric isn’t helpful to the debate? In
his own words, he’s “just trying to put
forward sensible, passionate things”
and – in a debate about whether to
unite with or separate ourselves from
a continent – perhaps we shouldn’t
shy away from making moral judgements,
based on gut instinct and our
own sense of the term ‘humanity’.
When he tells us, for perhaps the
third or fourth time, that “despair is
the fuel of terrorism; hope is the fuel
of civilisation”, the worst Eddie Izzard
could be accused of is preaching to the
converted.
For more EU coverage and analysis see
pages 4, 8, 9 and 18.