Rik Mayall Comedy Festival report

Written by: Jake Godfrey
Published: Monday 9th June 2025

There are few figures in comedy more beloved than Rik Mayall. Mayall and double act partner Adrian Edmondson exploded onto what became known as the alternative comedy scene in the early 1980s with Twentieth Century Coyote. Evolving at the original iteration of the Comedy Store before quickly graduating to The Comic Strip, the act involved Mayall and Edmondson bickering and belittling each other. One of the mainstays of their act was Mayall, as Richard Dangerous, attempting to tell the gooseberry joke - what's green and hairy and goes up and down? A gooseberry in a lift? - which Edmondson's Sir Adrian Dangerous constantly interrupts and, eventually, they get into fisticuffs. These characters would carry them through The Young Ones, The Dangerous Brothers, Mr Jolly Lives Next Door, Filthy Rich & Catflap and, of course, Bottom.

Mayall moved to Droitwich in Worcester when he was three years-old, and the town is now the setting for a comedy festival which aims to celebrate Rik and his legacy of laughter. Rik took his first steps onstage at Norbury Theatre, and the venue is now the hub of the festival, which is being produced with the full blessing and co-operation of Rik's family.

The festival kicked off in spectacular style with a live recording of Talking Bottom, the podcast hosted by Mat Brooks, Angela Pearson and Paul Tanter which aims to celebrate Mayall and Edmondson's Bottom in all its iterations, dissecting everything from the dialogue to the slapstick and interviewing key figures like Lee Cornes, Helen Lederer and Mark Lambert. For this live podcast, they were joined by director Ed Bye, who called the shots not only on Bottom but on a plethora of popular sitcoms including Red Dwarf and The Detectives, as well as feature films Kevin & Perry Go Large and Fat Slags.

All comedy is best enjoyed with a live audience, but there is something especially joyous about being at the Rik Mayall Festival with fellow fans enjoying clips of the apex of his creative career. Whether we're all howling with laughter at Eddie yanking Richie's nose hair out with tweezers or guffawing at Richie falling down the stairs in Carnival - for this writer, one of the finest examples of comic acting and timing ever seen on screen - or glimpsing some rare behind the scenes footage of the infamous title sequence, as Rik and Ade mess about on the bench in Hammersmith, there is something uniquely joyous about celebrating Rik's legacy in the best possible way - Rik's antics making a room full of strangers bond in laughter.

The Talking Bottom team have also written a book of the same name, the first in depth examination of the show, including an episode-by-episode analysis, interviews with members of the cast and crew as well as trivia and tidbits. It will be published on 3rd July, and they will be doing a special live version of Talking Bottom at the Edinburgh Fringe this year; 3:10pm at Underbelly (Ermintrude) on Sunday 24th August.

Next up was Adele Cliff, whose Edinburgh shows are always stuffed full of brilliant puns and one-liners and this show was no exception. If you're heading to the Fringe this year, definitely try and catch it.

There was also the world premiere of Serious About Comedy, a documentary by BAFTA winning filmmakers Andrew Smith and Andy Jackson. It aimed to "question and transgress the boundaries between high and low art". Comedy is, after all, a serious business, and the documentary drills down into the psychology of what makes us laugh, including excerpts from last year's stage adaptation of Bruce Robinson's Withnail & I.

Helen Lederer was among the few female comics on the scene in the early days, alongside the likes of Jenny Lecoat, Jenny Éclair, Kit Hollerbach and French & Saunders. On typically forthright form, Lederer talked the audience through tales of the early comedy circuit, working with French & Saunders and, of course, her memories of working with Rik and Ade when she guest starred in Digger, an episode of Bottom in which Ritchie attempts to join a dating agency in order to finally have sex.

Rob Rouse played to a packed out room. Eschewing much of his material, he was simply having a ball playing the space.

Laura Smyth was on similarly playful form, as she presented a work in progress of her next tour.

For this writer, the highlight of the festival was Greg Davies, who arrived onstage to thunderous applause before regaling us with stories about working with Rik on his sitcom Man Down, like the moment Rik spotted a photographer in a hedge and posed for a fake 'happy' photo. He then proceeded to perform his tour show, cutting it down to, in his own words, "the dirtiest bits", because he thought that was what Rik would have laughed at. We certainly did.

However, it wasn't all about the headliners at the Norbury Theatre. In the true anarchic spirit of Rik, gigs were staged in pubs, working men's clubs and even a boat on the canal. From the magic of Steve Mills to the poetry of Mark Jeffris and Laura Liptrot, the festival was imbued with the spirit of a true Fringe festival, with a dash of the variety that would have been found on the circuit when Rik was starting out. There was also an opportunity for families to gather in Droitwich Library to bathe in the glory of Rik's iconic reading of Roald Dahl's George's Marvellous Medicine on the BBC's Jackanory.

Ultimately, the Rik Mayall Festival is a wonderful celebration not only of the great man himself, but of the act of packing groups of strangers into a room and making them howl with laughter, just as Rik did over his career. This inaugural festival was deservedly a huge success, and it will only get bigger in the years to come.