That's not a figure of speech, my friends. That's exactly what Eddie Izzard is doing. I posted one of Eddie's bits, "Tea and Cake or Death!" as a Sunday Funny a while back. Here's the news from his website, posted on July 31:
About 5 weeks ago, Sport Relief, the Sporty part of Comic Relief asked me (and probably a lot of other people) if I would like to do a sporting challenge.
I had always wanted to do a big physical running challenge, and this seemed a great way to do it and also raise money to help Africa and the poorest countries in the world as well as projects that Sport Relief fund in the UK I was also going to be advised by Olympic experts who have worked with Sport Relief before. They would help me keep running in the right direction.
So I told them I wanted to try to run around the whole of the UK. London to Cardiff to Belfast to Edinburgh and back to London, running through as many parts of the UK that lie in between our 4 capitals.
They said great. You're nuts.
I said yes but that never hurt.
They said how far is this?
I said 1100 miles. I will try to run 30 miles a day for 6 days a week. It will probably take 7 weeks.
They said great. Is there anything else you want to mention.
Yes. I will run through England holding and English flag and then I'll run through Wales holding a Welsh flag and so on through all the UK.
But why not just have a Union Jack?
Because this is the thinking for my mission:
WE ARE DIFFERENT
WE ARE THE SAME
WE ARE UNITED KINGDOM
WE ARE AFRICA
WE ARE HUMANITY
They said - anything else?
Yes, I'm leaving in 5 weeks.
He has now done 9 marathons, dealing with blisters and downpours and goodness knows what else. I finally cracked and sponsored him today. I'd probably sponsor him for ANYTHING, given the effort he's put in, but it happens to be for Comic Relief, which is a mighty fine organization.
I'm just so darned impressed, I had to pass this information along. It's not quite like pushing blocks of stone from Wales to Salisbury Plain, but it's close.
No comments:
Post a Comment