EDDIE IZZARD WINSTAR TV

Whenever he describes any aspect of his career or personality – his doggedness, his wilderness years doing street theatre (and that is a proper wilderness we're not talking bit parts in Holby City), running 43 marathons in 51 days, the switch to acting, the gigs in French – he comes back to this: 'Well, come on, I'm a transvestite with a career.' He talks about it as a glass ceiling. The sheer ease of the humour always made it seem as if the transvestism was no big deal: that his charm was so ineffable, not only was he instantly accepted, but he made everything to do with the transgender world acceptable.

EDDIE IZZARD WINSTAR TV

In an interview just after he came out as a transvestite, a student newspaper asked him: 'Are you worried you'll just be pigeonholed as the TV on the TV?' He replied, 'It would be a pretty small pigeonhole, wouldn't it? Just me and the pigeon, going 'go on! Get out of my hole!'.' So that's what we're dealing with, a conversational Midas. And I get there in the end: 'It's like if a German says 'be lucky, mate', that's really funny.' I spend ages trying to decipher what he said, thinking it must be the most uproarious thing. He does an impression of a German person using English slang which is so funny I can't hear his words on the tape under my honking laugh. People are rarely the same in person as they are on stage and sure, Izzard is grumpier and less performative, but the quality that made him famous is innate and not, I don't think, something that he can turn on and off.

Eddie izzard winstar