Eddie Izzard: ‘I once ran 90km in just under 12 hours. That was a tough day’

When you started performing your one-woman Hamlet, how much did you labour over your delivery of the play’s most iconic lines, such as “To be or not to be”?The first thing I found when I was rehearsing Hamlet was that I felt very at home. I thought, “That’s unusual – I should be quaking in my boots!” I just felt very at ease and happy to be there. But the first time I performed “to be or not to be” on stage, there was a sense of – aren’t bells supposed to ring here? Isn’t there supposed to be a klaxon?I come to “to be” in a slightly different way each night so hopefully the audience haven’t seen it done that way before. I was a street performer for years, so I know how to talk to an audience, which is what they were doing in Shakespeare’s time; they were performing to the people, not at them. Actors got into this fourth-wall thing in the 1800s, it wasn’t there in Elizabethan times

My cultural awakening: Losing My Religion by REM helped me escape a doomsday cult

In 1991, I was living in a commune with 200 other people in Japan, as a member of a cult called the Children of God, which preached that the world was going to end in 1993. Everything I did – from where I slept each night, to who I was allowed to sleep with – was decided by the head of my commune. I was encouraged to keep a diary, and then turn it over to the leaders every night, so they could comb through it for signs of dissent. I was only allowed to listen to cult-sanctioned music, and I was only allowed to watch movies with happy endings, because those were the types of films of which the cult’s supreme leader – David Berg – approved. The Sound of Music was one of Berg’s favourite films, so we watched it on repeat

From Hamnet to Bridget Christie: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead

HamnetOut now Bring the tissues for this emotional Oscar hopeful which sees Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley star as none other than William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes, whose son Hamnet died at the age of 11. It is based on the book by Maggie O’Farrell, and Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) directs.David Lynch: The DreamerBFI Southbank & BFI Imax, London, to 31 JanuaryMarking what would have been the director’s 80th birthday, this new season includes screenings of key films such as The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, as well as lesser-seen work, such as six of his short films and all eight episodes of his animated webseries Dumbland. There’s even a David Lynch VJ night and a quiz evening.GiantOut now Up and coming star Amir El-Masry toplines this sports drama depicting the rise of British boxer Prince Naseem Hamed, from untested no-mark all the way to world champion – with a little help from trainer Brendan Ingle (Pierce Brosnan)

​The Guide #225: Everyone loves an origin story: Guardian debuts, from the Beatles to Donkey Kong

From Radiohead playing in backroom pubs as On a Friday to Timothée Chalamet’s early days as an Xbox YouTuber, it’s always fascinating to see the faltering first steps of famous folk. So in this week’s newsletter we’re launching a new regular feature, Origin stories, where we’ll look at how the Guardian first covered some now very familiar pop culture figures or institutions. And you’ll find out who the tyke above is, from a 1973 photoshoot, at the end.To the archives!The BeatlesThe Guardian, regrettably, wasn’t at the Cavern or the clubs of Hamburg for an on-the-ground report of the Fabs’ early years. Instead, the first appearance that we can find is in an article about the rise of “coffee dance clubs”, basement venues in Manchester where a “metropolitan mixture of artist, Continental girls who could be students, but may just be au pair, and young manual workers having a fairly inexpensive night on the town” would dance till they dropped (though apparently not drink much coffee)

Comedy and tragedy, with Spike Milligan | Letter

I too saw Spike Milligan in The Bed-Sitting Room as a 16-year-old (Letters, 30 December), on a trip organised by my church youth club. Due to the double selling of our tickets at the theatre in London, we were put in a box next to the stage. During the performance, Milligan climbed up the outside and peered over. He shouted: “There will come a time when all those in the box will sit at the back of the theatre and all those at the back will have the best seats!” He then added: “You’re not on complimentaries, are you?”On the way home, the coach driver stopped to see why there were scores of people on otherwise empty streets buying the late-night final. The date was 22 November 1963

Warren Lakin obituary

My friend Warren Lakin, who has died of a respiratory tract infection aged 71, for many years promoted live shows and tours by comedians, singers, poets and public speakers, latterly with Lakin McCarthy Productions, the company he ran with Mike McCarthy. Among the performers he worked with were Barry Cryer, Susan Calman, Andy Hamilton, Robin Ince, Ruby Wax, Jon Ronson and – most notably – his partner Linda Smith.Warren met Linda in the early 1980s when they were founder members of the leftwing Sheffield Popular Theatre, which, as well as producing plays, also staged the cabaret nights in which Linda performed her first standup routines.Warren was with Linda throughout her comedy career and her time as a Radio 4 stalwart. After her death in 2006, he curated her legacy with the same kind of energy that made him such a successful promoter