Stand up for Towel Day 2021

Join us for a raucous evening of fun and merriment to celebrate a day of towel-carrying and all things, ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’.

We’ve teamed up with Stand up for Towel Day to bring you the very best sketches and segments from real events between 2017 and 2020. It will feature the very best sketches and segments from Stand Up for Towel Day’s short but rich history.

Limited edition Towel Day merchandise will be available during the event. Including a towel!

Details

Date: Tuesday 25 May 2021

Time: 1900 BST (GMT +1)

Location: Steller

Stand Up for Towel Day and Save the Rhino International invites you to a raucous evening of fun and merriment to celebrate all things ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’.

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams wrote, ‘A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.’’ On 25 May each year, fans carry a towel in Douglas’ honour.

Since 2017 Stand Up for Towel Day has provided a place to gather after a day of celebratory towel carrying for stand-up comedy, slam poetry, sketches, improv and more in homage to Douglas and his work.

For the second year in a row, we’ve teamed up with Stand up for Towel Day’s curator, Rachel Wheeley, and producer, Nell Thomas, to bring you the 2021 edition of the event.

This year’s programme, a pre-recorded event, will feature live footage recorded at real events from 2017 to 2020. It will feature the very best sketches and segments from Stand Up for Towel Day’s short but rich history. Thanks to Kevin Jon Davies, Douglas Adams documentarian and author ‘42 The Probable Ideas of Douglas Adams’ for making the footage available.

Highlights include:

• Performance on The Meaning of Liff from John Lloyd (QI, Blackadder)
• Panel with Dirk Maggs (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Sandman) and Geoffrey McGivern (Ford Prefect in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
• Panel with Kevin Jon Davies and David Learner (Marvin in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
• Comedy songs from Mitch Benn (The Now Show, Zaphod Beeblebrox in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Live)
• Investigative journalism from Steve Cross (Science Showoff, Chaotic Adequate) who proves he has read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy more closely than you
• The Story Beast (Sky’s Astonishing Tales of Super Unexpectedness, The Ballad of Anne and Mary) celebrates the life and work of the worst poet in the universe, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings
• Comedy from Paul Duncan McGarrity
• Vogon Poetry from Cerys Bradley and Katie Overstall
• Declan Kennedy and Jonathan Hearn team up as Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent in exclusive Stand Up for Towel Day sketches
• New entries from The Guide with Angus Dunican (Chaotic Adequate, Doctor Who for Big Finish)
• Hitchhiker’s inspired poetry from The Underground Clown Club

Warning.

Viewer discretion is advised.

This video contains strong language and subject matter which may be offensive to some viewers and / or in appropriate for children. The content within is intended for a mature audience.

After the initial premiere the footage will remain online for one month to watch on demand via Stellar.

Douglas Adams and rhinos

Adams became interested in conservation in 1985 after the Observer Magazine sent him to investigate Madagascar’s endangered Aye-aye, accompanied by zoologist Mark Carwardine.

The trip resulted in a radio series for the BBC and a book, both entitled Last Chance to See, in which he and Mark visited rare species including the Northern white rhinos of Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Following this passion, in 1994, Douglas became a founder patron of Save the Rhino International. He participated in a climb of Mount Kilimanjaro while wearing a rhino costume and was a dedicated Save the Rhino spokesperson until he died in 2001.