Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Saint Eddie of Izzard and the college of preachers


just got my hands on the Eddie Izzard box set which I've been after for a while. still by far and away my favourite comedian even after being given a good run for his money by people like Demetri Martin and Ross Noble.
Someone I once knew wrote an essay in theological college entitled "The Stand Up comedy of Eddie Izzard as a model for contemporary preaching". The point he was making was that a lot of Eddie Izzard comedy is based on his ability to take something that we are overly familiar with - the fact that bees make honey for instance - and play around with it in such a way that enables us to see again how wonderful (and occasionally bizarre) life is.
This is something that good preaching should do (and sorry, fellow emerging church travellers, but i still believe in preaching...perhaps there are some different ways to do it but still..). Good preaching/speaking/chatting/dialoguing should enable us to look again at something we have perhaps looked at a thousand times before, and enable us to see it again for the first time.

2 comments:

Suzie said...

Argh...Eddie Izzard box set. Gosh I'm envious. I'm trying to judge from the pictures - it's Glorious, Dress to Kill, Unrepeatable and...the Definite Article, right? Even better as a box set, perhaps, for the exclusion of Circle and the more recent stuff. Eddie Izzard's comedy bears endless re-watching, and just grows funnier every time.

Matt said...

yes the box set is made all the better by the omission of 'Circle' which i thought was crap.