Daily Archive: May 27, 2009

Went to see Eddie Izzard at the Lancaster Grand this evening, which starts of odd anyway, why you ask yourself? Let me tell you.

Lancaster rarely gets any big name acts, this is because it is a small, almost provincial (to use a term), city in the far North of England that has a moderately small population and no huge venues aside from the Great Hall at the University.

So why was he here. Well he is doing a tour in advance of the European elections in a fortnight and he is playing a host of provincial towns, mostly he was here to host and chair an event at the Nuffield Theatre at the University of Lancaster, and so while here he ran an hour-long (actually was about 90 mins) show at the Lancaster Grand, starting late at night – 10:30 p.m..

Now, strangely enough i knew nothing about the tour, very few people did. Last week I was idling in the SC reserved chat room when one of the people there posted that he was on at the Grand as he had saw it on Twitter. I instantly went to the booking site and grabbed as many tickets as I could (7) and almost jumped for joy. The chance to see Eddie Izzard in a small theatre was just awesome.

I made sure I grabbed two tickets for the Parental Units as they are fun-loving theatre folk. In fact, Steph, is the Theatre Technician at the Nuffield Theatre at the University. So when I contacted Steph she said, great, that's interesting as I will be spending a good deal of the day with Eddie as he s at the university first.

Onto the gig. Eddie was excellent. Truly funny. And showing no hint of losing his surreal and yet provocative edge (as the man himself says, and this is a bad misquote/paraphrase:

…it is like that great thing Python does, to make the small a huge deal and to hide the large issues as almost trivial items…

So, after the gig, Steph grabbed us and insisted we race out of the Theatre (losing some of the people we went with) and round to the theatre door where there was a crowd of people already gathered. Steph was on the phone and then announces that she has been talking to the Tour Manager and we "were in", which meant, to some very surprised people who had to be informed we knew the Tour Crew, that we went to the door itself where we were checked in by the tour manager and checked over by the large bouncer who only let us in.

Then we met Milord of Izzard, Master Eddie.

THIS WAS UTTERLY COOL

There were only two other people in the room with us and Eddie, who Steph introduced us to.

Then we had a bit of a chat, and part of that chat was working out how far North was in regard to Leeds (which was the furthest North he had previously played in England). We thought it was slightly below York, but it turns out we may be a little further north, at least that's how it looked on his iPhone.

Steph then discreetly got us out as we were pretty much annoyinmg the poor man who must be shatterred after performing and working all day and we came home.

So I don't usually have the luck to grab tickets to big names who play at small venues, and I have never met anyone that much a celebrity in my life before, so this was a big thing for me…added to that I am a big fan – this was in fact HUGE…

Still buzzing…

I would have been buzzing from the gig alone which was awesome, but this has added an extra dimension that I will have to call stunning.

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