Australian comedian Adam Hills MBE - host of the award-winning Channel 4 series THE LAST LEG, disability champion and novelist - will make his Slapstick festival debut at Bristol Old Vic on Sunday 18 February as the star of a newly added Desert Island Comedy Flicks event.
In what is a rare live appearance for Hills, the show will see him nominating the comedy films he’d most want to have with him if he was ever marooned on a desert island. The new show replaces one that was going to focus on Alan Bleasdale’s political dark comedy GBH.
Festival director Chris Daniels says: “A scheduling clash regrettably means we’re having to delay the GBH show until later on but we’re delighted we can now bring Adam Hills on board. He is famous for his quick wit, mastery of slapstick-inspired pranks and his knowledge and love of many styles of comedy. So we’re expecting much hilarity and some very interesting film choices.”
GBH event ticket holders are being asked if they want their bookings held over until the new date, transferred to the Adam Hills event, refunded or switched to the final event of Slapstick’s five-day celebration of silent and classic screen comedy - an In Conversation and awards presentation, also at Bristol Old Vic on February 18th, to one of the stars of G.B.H.: Robert Lindsay.
In another change to the advertised programme Adam Hills will now join Mike McCartney at Bristol Beacon’s Lantern Hall on Saturday 17 February as Mike reminisces about the silents he watched as a child with his brother, Sir Paul, and his own adventures with the band The Scaffold, peppered with him and Hills introducing their favourite Buster Keaton clips and shorts.
For information about the rest of Slapstick’s February 14 to 18 line-up, and visits by Samira Ahmed, Alasdair Beckett-King, Hugh Bonneville, Marcus Brigstocke, Graeme Garden, Harry Hill, Robin Ince, Sylvester McCoy, Christina Newland, Lucy Porter and Tim Vine (to name just some), please see: www.slapstick.org.uk . Slapstick news can also be found via the festival’s Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts.
Slapstick is a not-for-profit organisation. The festival’s principal funders are Aardman Animations (www.aardman.com) and BFI (www.bfi.org.uk) awarding funds from the National Lottery.
