Ben Elton to receive Slapstick Comedy Legend Award
Slapstick Festival will be paying special attention to satire, spoofs and parody when it returns to Bristol in February 2025 for a "celebrity rich" 20th birthday edition.
Ben Elton will become the latest recipient of the Aardman Slapstick Comedy Legend Award as part of the celebrations. He'll be handed a personalised model of the Aardman character Morph as the finale of the 35-event programme that is due to be staged at various city centre venues from Wednesday 12th to Sunday 16th February 2025.
Unveiling the full programme online today to coincide with the launch of ticket sales, festival director Chris Daniel says: "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 & 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."
Other famous names taking part in the festival include:
Stephen K Amos, sharing his comedy heroes and introducing Mel Brooks' creation Blazing Saddles as his favourite film.
Samira Ahmed hosting a 60th anniversary screening of Dr Strangelove and a debate about the place of satire in today's mad 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 G.B.H. in which they co-starred.
Lucy Porter opening a three-film look at 1920s silents poking fun at Soviet Russian.
Alasdair Beckett-King providing an intro to The Great Dictator, Chaplin's "masterful take-down of Hitler, tyranny, racism and extremism".
In addition, Aardman co-founder Peter Lord will host a family friendly celebration of Wallace & Gromit; Graeme Garden will be talking with Samira Ahmed about the women who worked with The Goodies; Rick Wakeman will celebrate his friend Ian Lavender and Ian's work as a cast member of Dad's Army and there will be clips and chat shows involving Adam Hills, Robin Ince; Mike McCartney of The Scaffold fame and Paul McGann; and - coming over from Canada - Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, for a big screen showing and Q&A of Hundreds Of Beavers, the zany homage to silent comedies in which he stars and co-wrote and which is already heading for cult status.
Chris Daniels adds: "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 the Slapstick 2025 programme can be found via www.slapstick.org.uk