Death and Jazz Chickens - Believe Me - A Memoir of Love

Arrived on time and in great condition. I'm halfway thru the book now and as an avid Eddie Izzard fan I am delighted and pleased as punch with it thus far. It's sentimental and sweet and funny and touching. Highly enjoyable!

OMG how can someone so entertaining be so boring in a book? I'm so sad that he lost his Mom at a young age, but the way he blathers on about the most mundane details of his childhood and life - it's like he never heard of editing a story. This book is a huge disappointment.

I have read a lot of celeb autobiographies over the years and I was pleasantly surprised to find this wasn't the typical fluff piece. The book definitely has humorous stories throughout but for me the real strengths of the book are when Eddie writes about the death of his mother and deciding to live life openly as a transgender person. I couldn't help but tear up when he wrote about learning that his mother used to call him Edward. Given his strong work ethic, it is obvious that he put a lot of time and effort to be as openly candid as possible in the hopes of inspiring others. I knew very little about Eddie prior to reading this book but I walked away with genuine respect for him as an entertainer and as a human being.

I received a free advanced digital copy of this book from the First to Read program but was under no obligation to post a positive review. All views expressed are my honest opinion.

The first 20% is quite good, but it goes downhill from there. By the second half, it's basically lists of addresses, percentages, dates and various other numbers, punctuated with Izzard patting his own back. It's madly repetitive, and rarely intimate or even personal. His editor and proofreader (if there were any) should look for other work (and Izzard shouldn't quit his night job). His comedy is great--his writing is awful.

As a British person living in Columbus,Ohio - I was "one of those people" - the British person who comes to see a British comedian in America fortunate to see Eddie live a couple of years ago after seeing a couple of clips on YouTube and of course hearing about his charity efforts in running an insane number of marathons in a few days.

Reading the book is just like seeing some of Eddie's shows. The numerous footnotes throughout the book briefly sidetrack you down a couple of rabbit holes before being dumped back to the main storyline. This was interesting and entertaining but did make it slightly harder to read the flow of the book as you have to keep jumping around on the page to follow the thought process.

There are several mentions of his previous works in the book so I now have a nice list of follow up books and videos to read and watch - some humour shows, a documentary and a couple of films. Incidentally a new film Whisky Galore is coming out soon (not to be confused with the previous Whisky Galore film in 1946 based on the same circumstance of a ship having it's 50,000 cases of whisky "rescued"
Anyway, back to the review - (as Eddie would do), I really enjoyed the book and got a very detailed glimpse into his upbringing and the perseverance that he applied to get to where he is nowadays. The last few chapters are a challenge to treat each other as we would like to be treated ourselves - something that seems to be more and more important in this day and age.
The book isn't all seriousness though - there were a lot of funny anecdotes and moments where I just had to read the last paragraph out to my wife.

If you've not seen any of Eddie's shows, I would recommend seeing a couple of them on video before reading the book, as readers of the book who do not know who Eddie is would probably not get as much from the book as a person familiar with Eddie's work.

Thanks to Penguin's First To Read program for an ARC of this book.

Anyone knowing little or nothing about Eddie Izzard who chances upon his autobiography ‘Believe Me’, might well be put off by his self-deprecating introduction, in which tells the reader, “I think I’m a really boring person. I think I am naturally boring ... my life is lots of boring bits with occasional spikes of interestingness” and “I consider myself to be fantastically boring”.

If one persists, of course, one finds that the very opposite is the case. Eddie Izzard’s life story is very interesting indeed, and about two-thirds of the way through the book one discovers that he is not being falsely modest, as Jo, his first serious partner, told him that he was most interesting when producing and performing a show, and this led him to conclude that he was uninteresting - rather than merely less interesting - when not doing these things.

There are, however, other respects in which the book can be off-putting. The most important of these relate to the style in which it’s written.

Eddie Izzard has a brilliantly inventive mind but the rambling, discursive style characteristic of his brilliant surrealistic stand-up comedy does not always sit happily on the written page.

There are wonderful comic riffs on subjects such as stinging nettles; judo; monsters under the bed; search engines and pornography; and the game of Venezuelans and Martians (“I don’t quite know how you play Venezuelans and Martians, but I think you spend most of your time arguing about socialism and the lack of oxygen”).

Unfortunately, there are also digressions terminating in dead ends (“Forget this. Forget this whole train of thought”) and some repetition (for example, telling us twice that Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Minor is used in the film ‘Out of Africa” or telling us twice that his father retired at the age of fifty-six, the first time “on a really decent pension”, the second time “with a great pension”).

However, the biggest stylistic problem relates to the use of footnotes which can really interrupt the flow of ideas, especially in the earlier part of the book.

I suspect the book may have been dictated to Laura Zigman, as it is credited to ‘Eddie Izzard with Laura Zigman’. It certainly carries the authentic ‘voice’ of Eddie Izzard but at times the reader would value a little more structure.

One other way in which the book is rather frustrating is that no photographs complement the text despite the fact that that text refers to specific photographs on at least a couple of occasions.

Notwithstanding all the above, the book’s many merits far outweigh its drawbacks. As well as being an often very funny account this is always a very honest self-portrait, not least because the author is acutely conscious of the way in which the memory can play tricks.

A fair number of celebrities are mentioned (including Joanna Lumley, Judi Dench, Paul McCartney, David Bowie, Al Pacino, Tracey Ullman and Robin Williams) but there is never the sense that Izzard is engaged in name-dropping (a charge from which it is difficult to exonerate Stephen Fry in relation to the most recent instalment of his autobiography).

For those Britons of roughly the same age as Izzard there is the additional appeal of the book as an exercise in nostalgia - reminding us of a time of free space toys in cereals, post office savings accounts, UCCA, red phone boxes and TVs warming up.

And whilst not every one will agree with Eddie’s views on subjects such as boarding schools (the fear that most of those who attend may “become emotionally dead”) or the (non-)existence of God, everyone should appreciate both the passion with which he makes his case and the very good sense he displays on topics as diverse as coming out as an LGBT person and eating cake mix.

Above all, the book provides a fascinating insight into a driven individual who has pushed himself to accomplish extraordinary things in a wide variety of fields including winning two Emmys (Outstanding Writing and Outstanding Individual Performance for ‘Dress to Kill’); performing stand-up in four languages in thirty-five countries; running over seventy marathons for charity, including forty-three marathons in fifty-one days (which raised £1.8m) and helping raise £2.6m and honour Nelson Mandela by running twenty-seven marathons in twenty-seven days (including two marathons on the last day).

Izzard’s belief that “If you shoot for the stars, you could reach the moon” seems absurdly simplistic – easy to state but extraordinarily difficult to achieve - but whether or not you buy into his philosophy of the power of positive thought it is impossible not to be moved by his life story and particularly by his accounts of how he dealt with grief (over his mother’s death when he was aged six) and what he terms his “alternative sexuality” (coming out as an openly trans person).

In short, despite its not inconsiderable flaws, this is a book well worth reading.

I love Eddie Izzard a great deal. However, I love Eddie Izzard's comedy. I'm absolutely certain I would love him as a human being were we to be friends*, and if I were to watch his movies**, I'm sure I'd love him as an actor. But I haven't. I've watched his comedy specials, and I saw him perform Stripped live in New Orleans in 2008, I believe it was.***

But his comedy is all I know about him. So, this book is absolutely a new experience for me, and I went in with wide arms and furrowed brow. Because autobiographies are a slippery slope for me. The origin story isn't always the most interesting for me, I'm easily bored by places I don't know and people I haven't met. Just get me to the meat, the break through, the behind the scenes.

Except in this case, the origin story was absolutely FASCINATING. I adored reading about his boarding school days, his time with his stepmother, his failed flirting and teddy bear showcases. Hell, once we got to the stage where he started gaining steam performing, my attention started wandering. I didn't see that coming at all.

This book is very obviously written by the comedian himself. The entire thing goes off course, and runs for spans of time in a stream-of-conscious manner, much like his comedy routines. He even manages to slip some historical knowledge in when you least expect it. What more can you ask?

Towards the end, he talks about the massive marathons, which was something I discovered by accident when I found his Twitter in the middle of them. The health scares were just that, very alarming, but absolutely fascinating.

Love. A fantastic peek into the life of a fantastic character.

* Call me, Eddie.
** Across the Universe. That's it.
*** Horrible seats, and the guy I was with refused to hang out by the tour buses afterwards so I could fangirl. A**.

Believe Me by Eddie Izzard is a free NetGalley ebook that I read in early June. The irony of learning that he becomes nauseous when reading an iPad in the back of a car is that I read his book on a Kindle in the back of a car while driving through the peaks and curves of Yellowstone National Park without so much as a burp.

Oh, I really love Eddie Izzard, so, when he prefaces that this book is a sort of loudmouth, expressionary cousin to his Believe documentary's comparitive quietness, I was a little left-out in not having seen it yet. However, it was quite easy to begin reading the book in his voice, intonations, and pacing, so this left-out-ness leveled-out quite quickly. His story begins with his childhood, the death of his mom at age 6, going to boarding school and tightening a grip on his emotions, playing football, scouting, enticing the ladies in games of kiss-chase (you absolutely lucky tarts, you), self-analyzing him being trans, fond of working retail (good on you), playing the clarinet (me, too!), performing at the Edinburgh Fringe and gradually larger audiences with his standup, cutting sugar from his diet, speaking of his former relationships apologetically (rather than regret or spite), facing assault and insult with politeness, paring down his comedic sketches with test audiences, winning Emmys, learning to fly, running marathons globally on a tight schedule, and holding a universal belief of going away to come back again, as well as humans being the creators and pivot points in their own world, rather than relying exclusively on that of a creator/divine fate.

This is a review of the audiobook, which gives more detail than the written text by way of "footnotes"...which is the only negative thing I have to say about it > hearing the word footnote till I thought my ears would bleed; BUT in the second half he stops doing that so much (maybe someone tipped him off). Otherwise, I loved hearing about his life from his perspective. He brilliantly points out that our own memories can be wrong, with details forgotten and not quite the way we think we experienced our own life (which is kinda trippy). This audio is a very good companion to the "Believe" Bio-documentary which I had not seen before listening to the book; so I rented the film on Prime & I watched that twice (I rated that 5 stars). Izzard's story is pretty interesting. Many people with his experiences end up doing unhealthy things to themselves, but he had a good father who supported him emotionally and financially to help him with his ambition and bravery. In my psychological readings, this makes all the difference in the world for kids who have great loss early in life, with a learning dysfunction as well. I wish Alice Miller were alive to study Eddie; I think she'd be pleased with what he made of himself. If I got to pick one person out of all of time, to talk with and ask some questions, I do believe I'd pick Eddie Izzard.

I was initially wavering between giving this a full four or full five stars, but having thought about it overnight, I think I’m going to go with a four, maybe even rounded up from a 3.5. Not that important. Anyway.

I want to start off by saying that I really like Eddie Izzard and his book didn’t change the fact that I like him and I very much enjoy his humor. Eddie Izzard is very funny. He often had me literally laughing out loud. I loved that he wrote in a stream-of-consciousness style, like we were in his mind as the words hit the pages.

He is also very smart. I think he tries to play himself down like he isn’t smart, but he doesn’t do a great job of that. I sort of mean that he came off a bit cocky, but not overly so. I think he tried to be humble, but to me, it didn’t seem genuine. I’ll explain.

Eddie took a very long and winding road on the path to stardom and comedy legend. He worked incredibly hard to get where he is, and he deserves every accolade he gets. He had a very rough childhood, of which you find out right away. No child should outlive a parent at such an innocent and young age. There is no question that Eddie suffered greatly in a most cruel and unfair way.

It is this tragic loss of his mother and the consequent loss of his youth that I believe sets him up for writing in a way that, as I mentioned before, doesn’t seem humble. There was a lot of “that is a very hard thing to do” and “that is not an easy thing to do” said throughout about the tasks he undertook. And it wasn’t necessarily that he was blaming anybody or anything for trekking the arduous route to Hollywood and beyond, but a lot of the time when he was explaining why he went down a certain path, he would make sure the reader knew that what he did wasn’t easy. It was a hard thing to do. Very hard. It was like a fallback plan in case he didn’t achieve what he wanted to do. If he didn’t make it, it’s okay, it was a very hard thing to do. But be it stand-up comedy, surviving through boarding school and the loss of a parent, acting, flying, running…Eddie succeeds at it all. So by telling me over and over that what he did was hard (he literally just uses the word ‘hard’ and very few other variants), feels like one inch away from saying “Look how wonderful I am,” “Look what I’ve achieved and look how hard I worked for it. You probably couldn't do it because it was so hard but I DID. I am bloody wonderful.” And he is wonderful! But I know it was hard. I don’t have to keep being told your journey and your tasks in life were hard. Show me, don’t keep telling me.

So, that bothered me, but it doesn’t alter my view on Eddie, which I believe is a great thing.

There were some quite dull parts for me, those mainly being the ins and outs of the comedy circuit and the ins and outs of learning to be a pilot. Very detailed and very uninteresting, but that’s purely a personal thing. If you like those two topics, you will probably really enjoy those parts.

I’d like to reiterate that Eddie is very funny and very smart, and that I enjoyed reading about his life, from childhood to adulthood. I’d recommend this if you’re a fan of comedy and/or a fan of Eddie’s. Definitely worth the time.

I accidentally discovered Eddie Izzard as a comedian years ago and have since watched everything he was in. This book is a wonderful peek behind the curtain, so to speak, about a fabulous comedian and actor, and it's worth every second spent reading it.

In "Believe Me," Izzard is every bit his witty, funny, thought-provoking self while also delving deep into his life and his experiences. He talks about losing his mom at six, going to boarding school, coming out as transvestite/transgender, and the long, sometimes twisty, path that led to his career in comedy and onward to acting and other avenues. With his signature train-of-thought style, Izzard delivers a story that is both heartwarming and inspiring.

Despite the unfortunate lack of jazz chickens, "Believe Me" is a look into the life of an inspiring man and should be on everyone's to-read list.

I love Eddie Izzard! I wish Eddie Izzard could be my best friend! But listening to his autobiography
narrated by him may just be the next best thing. You laugh out loud, chuckle, and marvel at his life (27 marathons in 27 days!). In this book (I listened to it from Audible), you will find the best explanation of what it is to be born Transgender (or Transvestite). And, yes, I meant to use the word "born" because, like Eddie, I believe one is born this way. Everyone should read or listen to this book for that reason alone! You come away really understanding this human condition and marveling at the courage one must have to live this life. It was a wonderful audible book!

A stand-up comic, actor, writer, and political activist, Edward John “Eddie” Izzard reviews his personal experiences, professional life, and evolving sexuality. Through his writings, we learn about the self-discipline his has to train and run marathons to create awareness on issues dear to his heart and raise funds for charity. His use of comedy to deal with tragic incidents, consequences, and biases he faced as a transgender role model is clearly illustrated. There are footnotes scattered throughout. The collection of mostly colored pictures highlights key people and events in his life. It is a well-written memoir.

Goodreads Giveaway randomly chose me to receive this book. Although encouraged, I was under no obligation to write a review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

I happily listened to the audio version of this book through Audible. I absolutely adore Eddie Izzard and I just knew that the audio version would be like going to one of his shows which I have been lucky enough to do. Eddie takes you through his childhood to present day and the many, many footnotes in this version were delightful! I couldn’t get enough of them. I think my favorite part of this book was listening to Eddie laugh at his own thoughts during the footnotes. He so real and I dare anyone to not laugh along with him. If you are an Eddie Izzard fan, you’ll absolutely love this book. It helped me in more personal ways than I would’ve imagined. For a self-exploration memoir, I give it an A+

Eddie Izzard is a fascinating individual who has led an interesting life. For fans, this book is definitely worth reading, as you learn about not only how he came to be the comedian and actor he is today, but also his transgender journey. And the voice behind the words in unmistakable - you know you're reading Eddie's take on life. It's sometimes sad, often amusing (especially with all the asides in footnotes) and generally an enjoyable memoir.

I was pleasantly surprised in the beginning because I randomly picked this book for something to read, but as I got further into it, it started to feel repetitive. The writing was better than I expected though. I've never really been a fan of his.

Genuine, heartfelt, humorous telling of Eddie's life, with a healthy dose of his personal philosophy, including his theory of the universe. I was sorry to see it end. I definitely would recommend this book. Eddie's views on friendship, religion, and personal goals are clearly drawn and they ring true for me.

If Eddie Izzard's performing skills are anything like his writing prowess, heaven help his audiences. The best thing about this book is the dust jacket picture.The book itself is pointless, boring, repetitive, juvenile and unamusing. There are no real insights or revelations. It's sheer tedium, and, after skipping large portions, I gave up in disgust.

I was disappointed by the book. Huge Eddie Izzard fan, so I had high expectations. The first 3/4 of the book could have been excellent had it been edited better. The last 1/4 was just fine. Loved learning more about his background, family life, coming out, and philosophy.

Eddie Izzard is a terrific performer and a highly motivational individual. However, this book belies his genius. His publisher should have completely ghost written it from his tapes. I tried listening to it as an audio book but the constant footnotes, and ramblings made it impossible to listen to. God knows what it would have been like to read. I read that Bill Gates loved this book. Bill Gates can you explain why? Sorry Eddie, your publishers let you down.

Thank you, Eddie, for reading your book for me to listen to! I enjoyed reading your book too. I never tire of listening to your voice - you are the jazzy best!! ???????????????? - Cat

Just couldn’t spend any more effort trying to read this rambling so-called memoir. Made it 4 chapters in and gave up. Endless inane footnotes and constant administrative ssiins that the memories probably aren’t accurate. His style may work in performance, but not in written form.

I purchased this book before, it was on my Kindle and it disappeared. Not to happy about this and it's impossible to deal with the store so I guess I have to buy it again. I'd love it if I could just get it back!

Eddie Izzard has to be one of the smartest comedians out there. I also find his overall stage presentation to be fascinating because he is such a great speaker, especially when doing all his silly routines. It's no surprise then that when I learned he has a book coming out, I pre-ordered it right away,

For those reading this book hoping for explanations or deep thoughts on the origins of "Cake or Death", or my absolute favorite "Deathstar Canteen", you will not find that here. What you will find,however, is a very personal story about a man who worked very hard to make it to the stage, hone his craft, and deal with some deep personal issues and experiences that had a sincere effect on his life all along the way. His first-hand account of coming out as a transvestite was quite interesting and explains all of the hopes, fears, and prejudice that went along with that process. I also found it interesting that, despite his comedy routines, there was literally almost no swear words in the book, but there were what had to be the most amount of foot notes usage I have ever seen. Yes - Eddie's rambling verbal style is in full swing here, and we love him for it.

This book makes a great companion to his documentary about his life, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in his career.

Well done Eddie, and keep polishing those nails. I wouldn't want you to be any other way.

Arrived on time and in great condition. I'm halfway thru the book now and as an avid Eddie Izzard fan I am delighted and pleased as punch with it thus far. It's sentimental and sweet and funny and touching. Highly enjoyable!