In the mid-1990s, Eddie Izzard, in the years in which he was rapidly expanding his audience for his long-form stand-up shows, spent several years trying to get a sitcom into production at Britain’s Channel 4. The show was called Cows, and that title expresses everything you need to know about it. It was about a family of cows that lives in Britain like a normal family, except that they’re cows. Because of Izzard’s pedigree as a master of absurdist humor, it’s tempting to see Cows as some kind of an ingeniously brilliant and scathing anti-comedy casting a skeptical glance on Cool Britannia or something, but mostly it’s just really surprisingly stupid. Channel 4 was right to say no. The show went as far as shooting an episode or two, but it never made it to air.

The cast wore enormous cow heads that are quite unsightly and unfunny, considering that they came from Henson Corporation. The show isn’t, honestly, all that different from a lot of “wacky,” fish-out-of-water sitcoms in the manner of, say, Third Rock from the Sun, except that John Lithgow wasn’t obliged to do his emoting from inside what amounts to a massive Phillie Phanatic outfit. But even more fatal, Izzard and co-writer Nick Whitby appear to have thought that the risibility of cows would, in and of itself, carry them a long way.
 

 
The show was apparently in development for a long time—the pilot that was eventually shot is dated 1997, but already in 1995 Izzard was quoted as saying, “It’s now about a group of cows moving into a street, and how they get on with the people there who don’t know many cows. … It’ll either be great or it’ll be a pile of shit.” Well, Izzard seems to have gotten that one right, anyway. Easy as it is to take potshots at the show, who knows what the conception was at the outset and how that initial kernel morphed into this incomprehensible sitcom.

In this appearance at an Apple Store in 2009 with comedian Simon Amstell, Izzard fields an audience question about the failure of Cows. Izzard comments that his original conception was to do something similar to Planet of the Apes, but the bovine/simian differences ended up being a problem:
 

 
Izzard appears to have understood his limitations as a TV writer, commenting that he had a “problem with creativity without adrenalin” and “sometimes despaired of disciplining himself” in that field and that he missed “the lack of instant response.” According to Sunshine on Putty: The Golden Age of British Comedy from Vic Reeves to The Office by Ben Thompson, Izzard’s agent Caroline Chignell later reflected on the experience: “Eddie was absolutely determined to prove that he had the skills and the application to be a writer. I think as it turned out, [the rejection of the series] was probably the best thing that could have happened.” Clearly, he needed to get an experience of that sort out of his system.

It’s funny to think that Izzard’s successful introduction to American audiences was happening right around this time. His standup show Definite Article went to New York City in 1996, and he taped his breakthrough show Dress to Kill in San Francisco in 1998; the latter special, which appeared on HBO in 1999, ended up winning Izzard two Emmys. Izzard has always had boundless energy and is known for biting off more than he can chew, as his running 43 marathons in 51 days in 2009 and recently declaring his intention to be elected mayor of London in 2020 surely attest.

It’s hard to make head or tails of the 49 minutes of the pilot, it doesn’t hang together as a single story, and the episode breaks aren’t clear. Among the first acts the cow family engages in is to light up a spliff roughly the size of a cricket bat. The cow family goes to a casino, they host a posh dinner party, one of them marries a human woman who is “our” surrogate for the “humor,” one of the cows delivers an address at a political convention in which, unaccustomed to speaking in front of an audience, he steals and mangles a bunch of Winston Churchill quotations. And none of it makes a lick of sense.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Eddie Izzard Live at the Hollywood Bowl
Will Eddie Izzard run for Mayor of London?

 
Eddie Izzard has stated his intention to enter politics sometime in the next decade or so many times. In earlier formulations, he said that he was interested in becoming a Member of Parliament, a Member of the European Parliament, or Mayor of London. He has often mentioned 2020 as his target year for assuming office.

Izzard, attending the Labour Party conference in Brighton, yesterday confirmed his desire to be elected Mayor of London in the year 2020. Speaking in such a formal political setting, Izzard for the first time mentioned this goal in a way that couldn’t be written off as a pipe dream. Labour Party leader Ed Miliband indicated that he would look on an Izzard candidacy with approval. His remarks at the party conference were greeted with cheers. The current Mayor of London is a Tory, the colorful Boris Johnson. Johnson is relatively popular for a Tory—his approval rating in June was 44%, as compared to a meager 23% for the Tory Prime Minister, David Cameron.

The prospect of Izzard holding major political office would be a major milestone in the image of cross-dressers—Izzard spent most of the early part of his career working in drag, of course, although he doesn’t emphasize the ladies’ clothing quite as much as he once did. It’s striking that at Brighton yesterday, Izzard was noticeably wearing nail polish, as seen in the picture below.
 

Eddie Izzard and former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescot applaud Labour Party leader Ed Miliband’s keynote speech at the annual Labour Party Conference in Brighton

With a Tory incumbent and a Labour field with no clear front-runner, some have wondered whether 2016 wouldn’t be a better moment to run for Mayor. MP Tessa Jowell, one of the politicians often mentioned as a possible Labour candidate for Mayor in 2016, said, “Eddie is a man of enormous substance, generosity and conviction. His decision to do this is a vote of confidence in Labour.”

A self-described “executive transvestite,” Izzard has been bucking the odds for quite a while now. When he successfully imported his act to the U.S. around 1998, his status as a cross-dresser was more or less the only thing a lot of Americans knew about him, and he has addressed the bigotry and even beatings he put up with when he was establishing his reputation in England, especially in Glorious. To his credit, Izzard’s cross-dressing is no longer at the center of his image, even though he has never disavowed any aspect of his preference for women’s clothing. A relentless self-promoter (check out the documentary Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story if you don’t buy that description), Izzard is also very smart and is by no means a person to be underestimated. In 2009, with very little training as a long-distance runner, Izzard announced his intention to run 43 marathons in eight weeks for charity in the UK—which he then did. If he says he wants to be mayor of London, I would rather expect he might end up achieving that goal. At a minimum it will be a fascinating campaign to observe.

Here’s Izzard on The Jonathan Ross Show earlier this year; halfway through they discuss his political ambitions. About a week before this show was taped, I got to see Eddie Izzard perform at Largo in LA.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Eddie Izzard Live at the Hollywood Bowl
Bill de Blasio will be the next mayor of NYC because he’s the only candidate endorsed by drag queens

 
Not satisfied being probably the only native English-speaking comedian ever to perform in French (as he did recently in Paris), conquering Hollywood, Broadway, the West End and US TV, tonight the wonderfully witty and inventive Eddie Izzard is about to make showbiz history as the first stand-up comic to perform at the Hollywood Bowl in a solo act (Monty Python were a troupe/theatrical experience. The Bowl apparently never books comedy).

Izzard told Gustavo Turner at the LA Weekly that to “play the Hollywood Bowl is like the American dream”:

“I’ve been to the Bowl a couple of times and it’s the Greek amphitheater. Once I play Hollywood Bowl, I’ll feel I’m allowed to play actual Greek amphitheaters here in Europe,” he says. Given his steady progress since his breakthrough in the 1990s — when he first became noticed as an enormously witty improviser after years of hungry obscurity — he’s most likely not kidding. Izzard doing his History Channel–style material about the classical civilizations at the Acropolis? Eddie Izzard Live at the Colosseum (the original one in Rome)? Why not? All Izzard apparently has to do to accomplish something is set his mind to it.

Izzard’s Twitter bio says “I’m a British European, I think like an American and I was born in an Arabic country.” The ambitious, cosmopolitan actor/comedian told the LA Weekly that around 2020, he plans to enter politics, perhaps as a British delegate to the European Union. I’d love to see that happen.

Below, a young Eddie Izzard wows the crowd at the Terrence Higgins Trust benefit show organized in 1991 by Stephen Fry, with his tale of escaping Nazi Germany and being raised by wolves.