He triggered open-mouthed horror at one Strasbourg dinner, at which MEPs were discussing the wickedness of British opt-outs from the European Working Time Directive, a meddlesome tool for limiting overtime.
Perhaps the reason why he needed water during the rebuttal is because he got cotton-mouthed listening to his party's resounding approval when Obama mentioned the Senate passing the bill during the State of the Union address.
The one-joke-for-all-people theory is the reason why Mr Izzard, who came to the fore as a motor-mouthed transvestite, thought he could play Bruce, the fast-talking, short-lived, stand-up comedian who became famous in the early 1960s for saying the unsayable.