A young Eddie Izzard, dwarfed by the older boys, beams proudly from the ranks of the St Bede’s first team in the school photo he shows me.

Perhaps it’s because he’s back in Bexhill – his boyhood home of 11 years – to open a newly-refurbished incarnation of the museum where he served tea as a teenager, but Izzard is happily reminiscing about a youth spent in the town... mostly playing football. The picture of the school side features a chalk board in the centre of the shot that reads: “played 14, won 11, drew one, lost two”.

“We were one hell of a team,” the 47 year old says with no small note of pride in his voice.

“I lived for football. You can see the height difference in the picture, but I was always ducking and weaving. I was a pushy little... (laughs). But I’ve always been like that – relentless.”

His recent epic, self-imposed challenge to complete an astonishing 43 marathons in 50 days for Sport Relief suggests the hidings from the bigger lads on the pitch furnished the comic with drive and deter-mination in spades. He’s talking after completing a 13-mile run from Eastbourne (where he was to perform that night) to Bexhill Museum, via a brief nostalgic detour to his former school in Upper Dicker, and every syllable and tangent is propelled along by the same adrenaline that makes Izzard the super-kinetic stand-up he is.

“I’ll keep up [the running] forever,” he says.

“I made a joke that I want to be at my peak fitness at 90, but now, I don’t think it’s so crazy. I saw Iron Man [the gruelling international series of triathlon races] and a guy of 80 did it. It’s about how young you are in the head.”

He hopes to encourage everyone in the UK to “reclaim” the activities they loved as children – as he has recently with a return to football – in the run-up to the London 2012 Olympics.

“It’s in less than a thousand days and we may never again see it in our lifetimes in this country, so let’s inspire a generation – get on a bicycle, play a bit of tennis, do a bit of running, or whatever it was you liked doing as a child.”

If these sound more like the words of an impassioned orator than the nation’s foremost cross-dressing comedian, then it’s because this transition may soon be a reality; Izzard has hinted in the past at a move into politics, but few could have guessed he has his eyes on fellow entertainer Boris Johnson’s job.

“In ten or 15 years I’d seriously consider running. Maybe as a Member of the European Parliament, an MP, or the mayor of London is there now as well,” he says.

“But maybe it’d be better for me to stay out and be an activist – Bono does a lot of good work. I’d have to shoot the career, or at least put it on a massive hold – you have to be in politics for a good chunk to do something useful.”

Before the campaign trail gets under way, Izzard has a tour to finish – a tour that takes in Brighton tonight, tomorrow and Monday before he becomes the first British comic to perform at New York’s Madison Square Garden in January. He has a raft of camera angles and mammoth screens to fill both spaces.

“I call it big intimacy. When we’re doing very big arenas, we’re trying to make an aircraft hangar feel like a front room. Now that’s not a perfect science, but I’ve got a lot better at doing it.”

This wide-screen ambition, he says, comes in part from his socially aspiring father (raised in Eastbourne and resident in Bexhill) who at 81, was among the cheering congregation when his son dashed up to the steps of the museum on Thursday.

“My mum died when I was six and she and my dad had decided my brother and I would go to boarding school [Izzard was also a pupil at Eastbourne College]. As a way to survive, he was going up the ladder in his career – I don’t think there had really been a career in the family before.

“I really wanted to do [BBC family history show] Who Do You Think You Are? but they wouldn’t let me or [Michael] Parkinson do it because our families were made up of too many agricultural labourers (laughs). They could have been very interesting, but because they were so poor, they didn’t write anything down, so you just get written down as ‘ag labs’.”

With a sold-out arena tour, a new DVD of his “best show so far” on the shelves, his work on acclaimed US series The Riches in the US, and a new-found sporting prowess, it’s hard to question Izzard’s work ethic.

It all began as a teenager in Bexhill, when he was given the chance to staff the Egerton Park cafe alone.

“I thought: ‘This is my first command position!’... and then I realised I had no idea how all this stuff works. The first guy came in and asked for a cup of tea, but I didn’t know how to make it, so I was putting all these spoonfuls of tea in and made him this stuff. He brought it back and said: ‘That’s not tea – I want my money back’. And so I failed.

But I’ve learnt since then.”

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