Eddie Izzard says he was subjected to anti-gay abuse at football match by fellow fan
Eddie Izzard has said he was the victim of homophobic “abuse” at the FA Cup final last week.
The trans comedian and associate director of Crystal Palace spoke to students on his pro-EU tour to say that he was abused at the team’s game against Manchester United.
Despite being trans, Izzard said he suffered “homophobic abuse”, reports BuzzFeed.
Speaking in Birmingham on Monday, the 54-year-old said: “I went to the Palace game against Manchester United and someone [verbally] attacked me and was exceedingly horrible, he said I’m a disgrace to the Crystal Palace team. I was wearing a Crystal Palace shirt, he said ‘You’re a fucking disgrace’ and I went… ‘Hey what the bloody hell are you saying’ and all the other Palace fans came out and said ‘Hey back off man’.
“And I just thought it was actually rather positive because only one guy was screaming homophobic abuse at me rather than 20 or an entire section of an audience.”
Going on, he said he came out as trans in 1985, but that people shouted at hime “what the fuck is that”, and that a man had been arrested for shouting homophobic abuse near his house.
“In fact they just arrested a homophobic guy for screaming abuse at me near where I live just the other day so it’s still going on, I’m still living with this abuse,” he said.
Izzard earlier this year spoken passionately about his gender identity – while attempting to run 27 marathons.
While in more relaxed circumstances he dons make-up and female clothing, the marathons leave little room for Izzard’s gender expression – outside of painting his nails red.
He said of the nails: “I use it as a badge of identity – I am a transgender guy who came out 31 years ago.
“I’ve got boy genetics and girl genetics. We get obsessed by it in humanity. We’ve been obsessed for 5,000 years of civilisation and people are still being murdered – in Uganda they were trying to sentence people to death.
“If you look at a tiger, you go ‘ooh, tiger!’, we don’t go ‘girl tiger’ or ‘boy tiger’. We are obsessed by the genders because we grow up in one gender or another. No other animal is obsessed by our gender – they don’t give a monkeys about our gender.
“No matter what sex or sexuality, how you self-identity, or who you fancy, matters not one whit – what do you do in life? What do you make? What do you add to the human existence? That’s what’s matters.
He added: “It all comes back to Nelson Mandela: Try and put something into the world, and leave something positive.
“The confidence that it has given me, coming out 31 years ago in 1985, is immense – but it was a very hard journey. Very hard.
The comedian continued: “I identify somewhat boyish and somewhat girlish. I identify both, but I fancy women.
