Article by Eddie Izzard taken from Vox.

Eddie's Big Day Out

The Phoenix Festival: al fresco hot dog action and rock 'n' roll in Stratford-Upon Avon. What is the average stand-up deity to do but slap on the Factor 56 and hit the dodgem cars?

"To blag your way into he Phoenix Festival you need to be an avid reader of Bunty For Girls. The free bracelets they often give away seem to be the entry passes for this festival. At the performers' ticket-check-in-kind-of-cabin I get given the pinkest, most glittery bracelet that Bunty readers have ever seen in return for my ticket. This apparently is my pass to get me beyond the big guys on the doors, but it is a wildly girlie, Christmas cracker kind of pass. But what the hell - I like pink.

This bracelet is stapled to my wrist and as I walked away from the cabin I, like everyone else who has got them, tug at it and pull it around to see if I can get it off my wrist, 'cos then I can cheat and give it to someone else - but then I won't have one and then I'll get thrown on a spike by the big guys, so bad idea.

Anyway, once I work through the flawed logic of trying to remove my bracelet, I go through the the main ligging area. The sun is now really, really hot. According to figures it is the hottest day in Stratford since before dinosaurs, and since it is burning my neck in a big way I realise I am going to become one of the cast from the film Deliverance unless I do something quick.

I slap on some factor 56 - I need it, I don't get brown, I go lobster - and think, Hey relax, it's the festival. But no. I am doing this Phoenix diary for Select, so instead of relaxing - this is my day off, as I am acting in David Mamet's The Cryptogram in the West End, six days a week - I have to go around and have my photo taken all over the place and then write up my diary as I am doing now.

Last year at Reading they gave me a camera and said take photos for us. This year it's write a diary. I think I work for Select once a year.

I catch one of the Buzzocks gig on the main stage and then wander around until I come across the fun fair. It isn't being utilised in a big way but I see the bumper cars and have to drive them. I cruise around the circuit at speeds of up to eight mph and driving so dangerously that I almost crash a couple of times.

Then the ice cream calls me. They have no Orange Fruities, which are good for slurping, so I have a Strawberry Split which costs £1!! A wild profit mark-up for Mr Whippy. 'A quid!' I says to Mr Whippy. Mr Whippy just grunts and puts his head under the ice cream spout and proceeds to release a big Whippy hat on to his head. I shove a small twig in and say 'Voici le 99'. He just grunts again and counts his money as his hat melts.

Wandering through the Phoenix site, I check out the Trance Europe Express tent where Ben Wilmott is DJing the ambient sounds. But I can't stay for long as I have to do an interview for Manchester's Signal radio at the comedy tent. Around the back of the comedy tent I walked through the resplendent glamour of a big backstage tent with one table and a broken chair in it. I think the logic is we're Stand-ups and we don't like chairs - ever...

I do the recorded chat, but because people I know keep walking past the interview sounds like, 'Well yeah I'm into surreal comedy because - hello Simon, how are you? - because Steve Martin's a big infuence - alright Rich, how's your leg?' I didn't realise I was doing this until the end of the interview so I hope they're good at editing.

Now I have to go off and do a signing autographs session being held in a tent belonging to a rival music paper. The Inspirals have just done an hour signing and the queue seems continuous, so when I take over I keep thinking people are going to say, 'He doesn't look like the Inspiral Carpets'. After an hour of signing there still seems to be a queue of people. So I take them over to one corner and sign anything they've got: T-shirts, plastic mugs, skin, lard packets, bits of earth.

Hey then it's food time. The bracelets from Bunty are not good enough to get you into the eating tent, so I show Mr Large Guy a Barbie doll (with retractable hair) and he lets me and my friends in. The eating tent is very 'wedding marquee', and the only bizarre thing is that there are no forks because a mass fork crimewave has happened. If it wasn't such a wedding marquee you'd just use your hands to eat the food, but because of the refinements of the tent I insist on waiting for a fork to appear - and then when I get it I don't seem to use it.

Therapy? are on the main stage playing a big gig as only they can - in a relaxed and laidback fashion as they blow people's ears off. Bass player Michael McKeegan is showing off some nifty footwork in mid-pogo and Andy Cairns sings "halfway up the stairs there's a stair where I sit". He obviously has a thing about Kermit's nephew - or staircases.

Elsewhere A House are having technical problems. As a guitar goes out of tune a joke is used to stall for time: "How do you make a duck into a blues singer? You put him in a microwave until his bill withers."

After that I have to go off to the comedy area where Richard Morton is blowing the roof of the tent - he is also doing a very good set. He looks very 'festival' in a field in his suit and tie, I have to follow him. I did think when I came on for my set that everyone would be sitting in the grass except the people at the back. Instead everyone is standing, right up to the stage. People are so close I am spitting on them - sorry about that, I think I need a spit zone at the front, because you know saliva.

I finish my gig and catch the end if the Inspiral Carpets (actually from where I am at the back I catch the side of the Inspiral Carpets) and then I go around to catch the end of Iggy Pop and he's gone! I don't even see him get his kecks off.

The festival is over bar the penalty shoot out and dead burgers, so I make my way out and realise I don't know where my car is. So I walk around blessing all the campers sleeping in their tents with the words, 'It's over here - no this is a fence. Oh shit. Look out for that tent peg. Where's the bloody road?' I can't find my car, so in the end I drive somebody's tent home instead..."