Rik Mayall Archive to Surface at Droitwich Festival Friday
Previously unreleased rik mayall material will surface on Friday at the second annual Rik Mayall Comedy Festival in Droitwich Spa. The archive presentation turns the festival into more than a tribute: it gives audiences a first look at work from a relationship that stretched over 30 years.
Droitwich Spa and Grim Tales
Bob Baldwin, a close friend of Mayall and a director on several projects, will present unseen excerpts from their collaborations in a Q&A with producer Elene Hadjidaniel. Baldwin and Mayall first worked together in 1989 on the children's television show Grim Tales, and the archive being shown draws on material from their time together as creatives, as director and performer, and as friends.
Bob Baldwin on the archive
“But where do you start with a relationship that was over 30 years long?” Baldwin said. He added, “She has done a brilliant job editing together all sorts of bits and pieces from the different things I did with him,” and described the presentation as “a collection of stuff from our time together as creatives, as director and performer, and as our friendship developed.”
That framing makes the festival's archive slot the most useful entry point for anyone trying to understand Mayall beyond the familiar credits in The Young Ones, Blackadder, Filthy Rich & Catflap, and The New Statesman. The material is not a greatest-hits replay; it is assembled from a working relationship that began long before his death in 2014 at 56.
One audience to five million
Baldwin also recalled Mayall's appetite for performance detail, saying, “He was a multi-dimensional performer,” and noting that in Grim Tales, “he was sometimes playing five characters in each story.” He said, “So the kids just warmed to it, I think, because they felt he was one of them.”
He pointed to a Jackanory stint as another example of Mayall's range: “On the Monday, it started with one million as an audience,” Baldwin said. “And on the Friday, it had gone up to five million.” He added, “He may have been exaggerating slightly there, but he was terribly happy with himself.”
For anyone heading to Droitwich Spa, the draw is specific: previously unseen archive material, presented by someone who made it with him. That is the part worth the trip, because it shifts the festival from commemoration to access.
