Last summer Eddie Izzard decided to run around England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales To say he did it for Sports Relief is true up to a point. The real reason is harder to fathom. He had to run 1,000 miles – 43 consecutive marathons – followed by a motorised rickshaw (with the camera crew) and an ice-cream van (with Flake 99s). To see him stumbling along in blinding rain, no cheers, no crowds, no pavements, carrying the sodden flag of the appropriate country, made you want to shout: "Excelsior!" He was 47 and far more accustomed to six-inch heels than trainers. The director of the Olympic Medical Institute, Professor Greg Whyte, rallying from the initial shock, said: "Being a competitive athlete is fundamentally miserable. What he needs is people around him." You could, of course, say the same of a comedian. In Thurber's story The Day the Dam Broke, one man starts to run and the whole town joins in. So, along the way, Eddie started to attract what I can only describe as sympathisers. In Devizes a man began involuntarily to run beside him, saying: "Let me shake your hand, because I think there's summat wrong wi' you." Seventy-two-year-old Bruce Tulloch, who once ran across America, joined him for a while, wondering why runners run. A couple of wild Welsh ponies, manes flying, galloped up to watch. On the Brecon Beacons, when the motorised rickshaw ran out of puff, his whole camera crew (fluffy caterpillar and all) got out and ran after him. In Skewen, South Wales, he knocked on a door and said: "My name's Eddie Izzard. I used to live here." His mother, however, died there. "I was six, so I think it's all about that loss of love and my desperation for it. I turned to an audience as a substitute." As a teenager he cycled to Skewen from London. "I keep going back. Probably to recapture the time before my Mum died. It makes you very independent. Very cold and shut off, really. This drive, because of something that disappeared . . . maybe I'm just a big kid still determined to do these adventures I invent in my head." PLEASE SIGN THIS PETITION AND SHOW YOUR SUPPORT TO A TRUE LEGEND INSPIRATION AND A FANTASTIC BLOKE!! HE DESERVES TO BE KNIGHTED