AFTER running 43 marathons in 51 days, a 150-minute show must seem like a gentle stroll for the perma-breathless Eddie Izzard as he brought his first UK tour for six years to Bournemouth on Sunday.

In an effort to disprove the existence of God, Stripped finds Eddie taking a characteristic ramble through, well, everything that has happened since the dawn of time.

There’s a raptor in a porkpie hat with a penchant for driving too fast, Nazis with choc ices, the jazz chicken, a dog kneading a dough disguise, beekeepers and astronauts with tortoise-slow pulses, God with an alphabet of sons (including G-sus, obviously, but also the playful T-sus and P-sus who delivers to your door). It’s a wiki-world in which frog is an anagram of toad, the news is in hieroglyphics, Romans transport ducks, badgers can be choosers, Darwin and Dickens live a few doors apart on Dictionary Lane and Moses is making it up as he goes along.

Izzard’s random thoughts seem to appear almost as dyslexic ad-libs to the fine thread that runs through the show – some work, some don’t, but he’s the absolute master of his particular craft and even the silliest wordplay adds to the experience.

Hollywood stardom, a hit TV drama, good deeds and ceaseless support of the Labour Party would have left an indelible mark on any other comedian returning to their day job, but Stripped is vintage Eddie Izzard – gleefully teaming with life in all its absurd detail.