Izzard: 'Comedy is an affection substitute'

Eddie Izzard has said he started performing to win "substitute affection" after the death of his mother.

He said he wanted to be on stage since the age of seven, a year after his mother died.

Izzard told the Radio Times he thought: "My mother's attention is gone, and now the audience is here."

"I think it's quite healthy," he added. "You do something creative and they laugh.

"It's not that the audience is my mother, but it's appreciation, affection. Never in my head is it linked to my mother. I have made her into some sort of angel, some positive force."

Izzard was speaking to publicise his leading role in 40, a three-part drama about mid-life crises which runs on Channel 4 from Tuesday to Thursday next week.

Published: 1 Apr 2003