You've been doing stand-up for years now. How much do you need to prepare for a gig?

I use a Bruce Lee technique: "The way of no way". He had the idea that he would learn everything, so that whoever he had to fight, he could improvise anything. The best way of starting a gig is just to not think of anything - to clear your mind, not in an empty Zen state, but more just to go on and see where you go.

To what extent are you playing yourself on stage?

When I started out, I found it very difficult to write the stuff. I was a sketch actor. I used to write sketches, then I did street performing and specifically tried to play myself, to find my own voice as opposed to strange characters with weird voices. I realised that I needed to play at "me". The stand-up developed into me narrating my own persona. I'd be standing on stage saying "I think this about this ..." and then I'd go into little characters to illustrate what I was talking about.

In stand-up it really helps to play yourself and talk about your own feelings. You cannot fail to be original if you're just talking about what you think about X, Y and Z. Unless you've got a twin brother who's also a stand-up.

How much of your material is actually scripted?

Sometimes I write down notes about what I want to talk about and start trying to flesh them out with the toing and froing of the chitchat, but it's still tricky. It's so much easier to find that on stage. Most of it is adlibbed at some point. Ross Noble does a hell of a lot of adlibbing, but the most I do in each show is about 30 minutes. Actually I've never taken figures. Maybe it's 45 minutes. But any show has adlibs that I might have done a week ago or a month ago.

You do stand-up around the world. Do you tailor your material for different countries?

I try specifically not to. Bands don't change a note when they go on world tour - why should we have to change? I try to just talk about human stories and what I think about religion or teapots or whatever... I do universal humour like "Moses was talking to a burning bush. Is that the best thing to talk to when you're trying to get out of Egypt?" I'd say that line in Reykjavik, in Auckland, in Sydney or Los Angeles.

How do American audiences differ to the UK?

They're exactly the same. New York and London are very similar. Los Angeles will let me get away with slightly more. As you go out into smaller cities, you could do something that's not so good and they might say, "Well, we haven't seen many stand-ups here for a while, so we're going to laugh at that anyway." London and New York just sit there going: "Make me laugh, motherfucker 'cos we've seen everything." They are the toughest.

What got you into performing as a child? You've linked it to your mother's death.

Yeah. I played a raven. She made a raven outfit for me - it was the last thing before she died ... So I played this raven and I got a laugh because I said a word wrong or something. And I remember thinking it was kind of tiresome ... And that was when I was six and then my mum died. Then when I was seven I saw another play and a kid was getting cheering applause. I think it must have been funny and I thought, I've got to do this. I assume it's the desperation for the affection of an audience. It became a substitute for my mum disappearing. That's what I've analysed ... It's quite a healthy relationship, because the audience won't give it to you for free, like a parent would.

Have you always felt comfortable on stage?

With the sketch comedy, I was absolutely relaxed. Never a problem. Loved it. Maybe it's because I was hiding behind the costumes and the glasses and whatever. When I started doing street performing, it was the first time I was earning money so I thought this had better work. I thought I've gambled everything - I chucked in accounting for this! Accounting gets you a company car! I got real stage fright and really didn't like that. I kind of lost all my confidence on the street, and I gradually rebuilt myself by continually doing gigs.

And you don't get stage fright now?

What if you go out there and you're not funny after five minutes and you're supposed to be on for an hour and a half, two hours? You just can't think about it. My analogy for not thinking about it is car driving: when you get in a car, you never think - what if I kill a kid after two minutes? You just don't even think about it. You just make that pact with yourself.

You've sported flamboyant outfits in the past. How important is what you're wearing on stage?

There's nothing really flamboyant about it, to be honest. Straight transvestites are very challenged design-wise, which is why you see so many frumpy transvestites. You get blokey-looking people who have a girly thing going on, and it's a difficult mix. But, you know, I am a transvestite, so I said fuck it, I'm going to wear a dress. But then I got locked into constantly wearing dresses or skirts or makeup or whatever, and the Americans thought, "Oh that's what it is, is it? That's what you do. You do your comedy and you wear that." But no, I actually just talk comedy and happen to be a transvestite.

Really I'm just a bloke talking crap. A guy in Wales said to me, "I thought your stuff would be really ..." - then he couldn't really find a word for it - "but you just talk crap." I sad yes, that's exactly what it is. He thought it would be all girly stuff like "There was this lipstick that went into a bar" or "Isn't it great wearing makeup?" Instead I'm just like ... "Pigs should not be given tractors." I'm a child of Python: I'm just talking nonsense.

· Eddie Izzard's hit US TV show, The Riches, is available to buy on DVD in the UK from February 18 2008. See an exclusive, full-length episode here.