...as Bristol festival unveils its 2025 programme

Ben Elton is to receive next year’s ‘comedy legend’ award at the Slapstick comedy festival.

The celebration of classic comedy returns to Bristol from February 12 to 16 for its 20th anniversary.

As well as confirming Elton as winner of its main award – which comes in the form of  a personalised model of the character Morph from local firm and event sponsors Aardman Animation – the festival has today unveiled its 2025 programme. 

Events will include 

• Stephen K Amos, sharing his comedy heroes and introducing Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles as his favourite film 
• Samira Ahmed hosting a 60^th anniversary screening of Dr Strangelove and a debate about the place of satire in today’s world
• Nigel Planer, saluting his late, great, co-star Rik Mayall and in a separate event revealing more about two of his own parody characters, Neil from The Young Ones and luvvie Nicholas Craig, self-styled ‘sage of the stage’
• Robert Lindsay and Sir Michael Palin taking a look back at Alan Bleasdale’s GBH. in which they co-starred 
• Lucy Porter opening a three-film look at 1920s silents poking fun at Soviet Russian politics
• Alasdair Beckett-King providing an intro to The Great Dictator  Chaplin’s masterful take-down of Hitler, tyranny, racism and extremism. 
• Aardman co-founder Peter Lord hosting a family friendly celebration of Aardman’s Wallace and Gromi
• Graeme Garden talking with Samira Ahmed about the women who worked with The Goodies
• Rick Wakeman celebrating his friend Ian Lavender, especially with Dad’s Army
• Clips and chat shows involving Adam Hills, Robin Ince; Mike McCartney of The Scaffold fame and Paul McGann
• Canadian Heyland Brickson Cole Tews hosting a big screen showing + Q&A of One Hundred Beavers, the zany homage to silent comedies in which he stars and co-wrote.

Festival director Chris Daniel said: ‘We’re thrilled Ben Elton is making his Slapstick debut to receive our Legend  award. His deft use of ridicule in a wide array of TV classics, such as Saturday Live, the Young Ones, Filthy Rich and Catflap and Blackadder make him the ideal choice in the year we’re taking an especially close look at satire. Provides the perfect excuse, too, to share some very funny examples of his work.’

'Slapstick has grown in ways I never imagined when the festival began in 2005. Back then, it was all about keeping an interest in silent comedy alive. Of course, Chaplin, Keaton, Laurel & Hardy, Harold Lloyd and their peers are still in the mix, backed by enthusiastic celebrity champions. 

‘But it’s good that the festival now also celebrates  more recent examples of screen comedy and a thrill that so many of their cast members and writers are happy to join us.'

Full details of events and tickets are on the festival’s website: www.slapstick.org.uk. 

Previous recipients of the Aardman Slapstick Comedy Legend Award, and its companion, the Aardman Visual Comedy Award include Michael Crawford, Barry Cryer, French & Saunders, Terry Gilliam,  Barry Humphries, Robert Lindsay, Michael Palin, Reeves & Morimer and June Whitfield.

Published: 8 Oct 2024