Rik Mayall festival a fantastic success – organisers
Caroline Gall
BBC News, West Midlands
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A comedy festival in memory of Rik Mayall has been proclaimed a huge success with friends of the actor and writer saying he would have loved it.
Mayall died 11 years ago and more than 200 performances have been taking place this week across 30 different venues in his hometown of Droitwich, in Worcestershire as part of a celebration of the comedian.
Greg Davies, Helen Lederer and Shaparak Khorsandi have taken part with Mayall’s friend and collaborator Ben Elton the festival’s patron.
“Of course he would love it what’s not to love?” said friend Lederer. “He would say bring it on.”
“I know he would have loved it, because he got some stinky reviews – he carried on, it’s a very competitive world and he believed in what he was doing and he’s no different to anyone else.”
Earlier this week, Lederer took part in an intimate and no-holds-barred evening at a sold-out Norbury Theatre, where Mayall first performed as a child.
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She said the festival was “eight days of amazing comedy events, a mix and match of free events”.
Speaking afterwards, she described her favourite memories of Mayall, who she said was always encouraging and “accepting of everyone”.
“He loved what he did and he loved what other people did, and apart from being the most charismatic performer ever,” she said.
Organisers have said they would like to make it an annual event and local traders said the town had been extremely busy.
Claire Fellows, landlady of the Old Cock Inn which sits opposite the theatre, has been hosting events.
“It’s been amazing. Absolutely fantastic, ” she said.
“You just couldn’t imagine I don’t think the impact on Droitwich that’s it’s had.”
She said so much had been going on and that she had enjoyed hosting acts.
“We’ve just been rammed all day – Saturday was just a stupidly insane day busy-wise and I think the whole town was just buzzing with it and even for a Monday night we had two nearly sell-out shows here and we’ve got sell out shows all week which is great.
“It’s not just for local people, there’s people down from Scotland, from Dorset staying all week or the weekend.”
