My View

My brother-in-law wanted me to watch 2 DVDs with stand-up comedy. There are worse ways to spend an evening, I thought, so why not? The videos were “Dress to Kill” and “Glorious” by Eddie Izzard, a British stand-up comedian. If you haven’t seen anything of Eddie Izzard before, prepare for a shock. He’s not the conventional type of guy. He describes himself as an executive transvestite, whatever that means.

But he’s funny, extremely so, and in an intelligent type of way. Not below the belt, or insulting people, but bright. I liked him. Something of an intellectual court jester.

My favourite sketch is one where he tries to imagine the Church of England doing a “Spanish Inquisition”. Dress To Kill transcript from auntiemomo.com.

“Cake or death?” That’s a pretty easy question. Anyone could answer that.

— “Cake or death?”
— “Eh, cake please.”
— “Very well! Give him cake!”
— “Oh, thanks very much. It’s very nice.”
— “You! Cake or death?”
— “Uh, cake for me, too, please.”
— “Very well! Give him cake, too! We’re gonna run out of cake at this rate. You! Cake or death?”
— “Uh, death, please. No, cake! Cake! Cake, sorry. Sorry…”
— “You said death first, uh-uh, death first!”
— “Well, I meant cake!”
— “Oh, all right. You’re lucky I’m Church of England!” Cake or death?”
— “Uh, cake please.”
— “Well, we’re out of cake! We only had three bits and we didn’t expect such a rush. So what do you want?”
— “Well, so my choice is ‘or death’? I’ll have the chicken then, please.
— “Taste of human, sir. Would you like a white wine? There you go, thank you very much.”
— “ Thank you for flying Church of England, cake or death?”

Hilarious.

But as always, it got me thinking. Where do these comedians get their stuff from? Eddie Izzard makes fun of the church pretty rough (especially Church of England). But it’s not in a “facing ridicule in the footsteps of Jesus” -kind of way. It’s laughing at the church because it very often IS ridiculous. Totally out of touch with culture, hypocritical, and lame.

I want to change that.