Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens by Eddie Izzard
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Most of us think that while we are here on Earth if we eat cake and watch television, that's fine. That's what we're supposed to do. But that's not what our bodies are built for. I believe we can all do more than we think we can do."

These lovely words come from Eddie Izzard, an extraordinary British stand-up comedian: one can find zillions (at least a hundred, anyway) of snippets of his performances on YouTube. His autobiography Believe Me (a memoir of love, death, and jazz chickens) (2017) is a better read than I expected, totally enthralling at places.

First of all, the childhood chapters of the autobiography are totally, and I mean it, outstanding. Yes, I have read more stunning accounts of childhood, like Joyce's and Coetzee's, but these are so-called giants of world literature. Not only is Mr. Izzard's narration extremely funny but also it seems to accurately reproduce a child's way of seeing and describing the world. While the autobiography is co-authored by a professional writer, Laura Zigman, it would be hard to believe that Mr. Izzard did not have significant input into the style and mood of the writing.

Several passages are hilarious. Like the one about finding a wad of used chewing gum in a hedge, washing it thoroughly, and then enjoying "chewing the pre-chewed gum" for weeks on end. Mr. Izzard is very fond of footnotes: they adorn majority of pages in the book. For instance, he remembers getting a "very small third of a pint of milk they would give you at break time" at school and then adds a hilarious footnote: "Mrs. Thatcher eventually got rid of those little third-pints of school milk because she hated children." I ROFL'ed having read this; well, I did not like Mrs. Thatcher either...

The passages about the author's evolution as an entertainer and comedy performer are captivating as well. The reader learns about Mr. Izzard's first experience of saying funny lines in his chemistry class at school, his first public show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1981, then street performing in the mid-1980s and, finally, the beginning of stand-up comedy performances in the late 1980s. The accounts of street performing "escapology" routines (getting tied in ropes and chains and then managing to get out) are particularly fascinating.

There is an unexpected richness of wisdom in Believe Me. One will find seemingly off-hand yet deep remarks about human nature and interesting self-observations that do not seem to be pumped-up to impress the reader. Like the fragment where he muses about what his life would have been had not his mother died early, when he was just six years old:

"[...] I do believe I started performing and doing all sorts of big, crazy, ambitious things because on some level, on some childlike, magical-thinking level, I thought doing those things might bring her back. Might make her come back."

I also wonder if I may be biased towards liking Mr. Izzard because of his long-distance running extreme achievements. Not having any practice in his youth he managed to run 43 marathons in 51 days in 2009 and then 27 marathons in 27 days in South Africa in honor of Nelson Mandela and to raise money for a British charity. Although on dramatically smaller scale I am a long-distance runner too and I think both he and I believe that people can do more than they think they can do.

Finally two things I have not enjoyed in the autobiography: the overlong fragments about his coming out as a transgender person: to me Mr. Izzard makes too much of a deal out of a perfectly normal - if not quite common - condition. Well, maybe some readers will be titillated by glimpses into psyche of a man who alternates between "boy and girl moods"; I would rather read more about the stand-up comedy techniques - how he manages to captivate the listeners. The worst thing in the autobiography, though, is the name-dropping: names of celebrities appear in the latter part of the book with increasing frequency.

For the childhood part, for the long-distance running and for the refreshing wisdom it would be an over-four-star autobiography. Even with all the nauseating celebrity stuff it is still a very good book.

Three-and-three-quarter stars.


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