27 marathons in 27 days

Eddie Izzard is to run 27 marathons in 27 consecutive days, as a tribute to Nelson Mandela.

Each run will represent one year that Mandela spent in prison, and will retrace the 93-year-old's life in South Africa.

Izzard said: ‘Everywhere that resonates with his life, we are going to run.

‘Maybe you'll get this visceral relationship between the struggle of 27 years and the struggle of me trying to run marathons’

He will begin the 700-mile run in the Eastern Cape, where Mandela was born and take in Pretoria, where he was on trial, and Robben Island - where he was imprisoned

His efforts will be filmed for a documentary to go out on Sky.

Izzard told Alan Carr he was going to do the run with ‘barefoot technique’ – in shoes which had just 3mm-thick soles. ‘You basically run like we ran when we were wild,’ he said.

He added that he had been practising around London, in ‘pure barefoot’, insisting that broken glass was not a problem, but that acorns were his worst enemy, saying: ‘They are tough little buggers’.

‘I don’t know if I can do it,’ he added. ‘Last time I had days off in between but this time I’ve got to do 27 in 27 days.’

In 2009, Izzard ran the equivalent of 43 marathons in 51 days around the UK, to raise money for Sport Relief.

Published: 11 May 2012