TORONTO - Brace yourselves, Eddie Izzard fans.

The British cross-dressing comedian and actor is packing a rambling range of subjects in his fertile mind for the Canadian leg of his "Stripped" tour that launches April 30 in Toronto.

"Sex, death, helicopters, caterpillars, golden retrievers, fishing rods, monkeys, Xanax, Krakatoa, pygmies, baseball, chimpanzees, frogs, dialectics, surgical spirit," Izzard quipped when asked what he'll discuss in the show.

"No, none of those -- but I could talk about those things," continued the ad-libbing master, fully displaying his stream-of-consciousness behaviour that's made him a star of the stage.

"I don't know, (the show) is about God and death and Krakatoa and vegetables ... Everything that's ever happened in the world, I'm going to talk about, but with gaps. Quite big gaps."

Religion is often discussed on stage by Izzard, who won two Emmy Awards for his HBO cult-hit special "Dress to Kill" and has been hailed by the New York Times as "the most brilliant stand-up comedian of his generation."

He's quick to point out that he doesn't believe in any faith, though.

"(Some people are) agnostic in case (God) comes out and says, 'I was here all the time and you're not going to heaven!" he mused, sitting at a table in a swank hotel restaurant.

"I've decided I'm going to move over the line and say I'm nontheist ... and if (God) comes up and says, 'I was always here, it was a trick question,' then I'll just take the consequences."

Izzard's first major tour of Canada will also run through Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary, Edmonton, Victoria, B.C., Vancouver, Montreal and Ottawa before returning to Toronto, where it ends May 31.

He said he hopes the tour will help him become as well-known here as he is in the U.S., where he's sold out big venues, including Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall.

"I'm sort of bigger in America than I am in Canada," said Izzard, decked out in a suit jacket and jeans -- a departure from the dresses and makeup he sometimes wears onstage (and off).

The Yemen-born, British-raised comic is in tip-top shape these days after running 43 marathons in seven weeks across the U.K. last September. He did it with no prior experience and little training.

"That was fine," he said. "The legs were a bit achey but it was good. A good adventure."

"I'm quite good at endurance and determination and stuff," he added.

Izzard's determination is outlined in the recently released DVD "Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story," which chronicles his varied career that also includes theatre, TV ("The Riches") and film ("Ocean's Twelve," "Ocean's Thirteen" and "Valkyrie").

As a kid, he explained, he wanted to be an actor but he had to do "a two-level effect of a schizophrenic career move" to get there.

"This whole journey has been trying to get into doing dramatic acting. It wasn't comedy. Comedy was just something I liked doing and then I decided to dump drama because I wasn't getting anywhere there and my sexual self-esteem went down the toilet at puberty.

"I think a lot of kids hit puberty and go: 'My god, what is this?' ... so yeah, I dumped drama and went for comedy."

As he gained footing in the comedy clubs, he also busked in the streets in Convent Garden in London. His routine involved riding a unicycle, getting out of handcuffs and engaging the crowd.

"That's when I started developing my own voice and my ability to ad-lib and to impose scenarios on situations and to use my own imagination and then I took that into standup," he said.

Izzard's next step: a career in politics.

A member of the Labour Party since the mid-1990s, Izzard said he's "90 per cent certain" he'll run for a political position in "about 10 years from this year" to continue his pro-European Union campaigning in the U.K.

"I believe that if there are 6.5 billion people in the world ... everyone in the world will want a future that everyone else has a fair deal in. I think everyone would agree on that and if you don't, you're a Nazi and you may as well leave this planet, thank you very much.

"So if we want a fair deal for everyone, we've got to have it that each continent actually works out some way of working together and has a fair structure and Europe is already the most advanced continent doing this."