ALTITUDE FESTIVAL
It’ s all downhill from here!
At the start of the Clown Hill Race
Shortlisted in two categories at the Access All Areas Awards, Altitude Festival has been taking comedians to new heights for the best part of two decades. We caught up with the festival’ s CEO Brett Vincent to discuss its mounting success. Billed as‘ the world’ s no. 1 alpine comedy festival’, Altitude Festival was created by its comedian founders Marcus Brigstocke and Andrew Maxwell to provide a joyous combination of mountain misadventures, skiing, and live comedy in the Alps.
Since its inception in 2007, Altitude has carved out a unique niche combining comedy with Alpine activities that go far beyond merely skiing and snowboarding. The distractions on offer range from ice climbing, tobogganing and paragliding to schnapps-testing, fondue devouring, inspa treatments and rooftop pool parties.
Set to return to the picturesque resort of Mayrhofen from 30 March to 3 April next year, Altitude’ s spectacular setting, in Austria’ s Zillertal Valley between the striking Penken and Ahorn mountains, is clearly a major draw but the comedic talent on offer is no less impressive. Over the years the event has gained a history of attracting some of the biggest names in the business, from Eddie Izzard and John
The Vincents, Brett, Mhairi, Sonny and Huey
Bishop to Jimmy Carr and Bill Bailey.
Comedy manager, agent and promoter Brett Vincent says comedians have long seen Altitude Festival as a welcome opportunity to escape the pressures of touring, meet up with friends and comedy compatriots, and take a refreshingly different approach to performing. Among those to take to the slopes for the 2026 festival are Al Murray, Paul Smith, Jason Byrne, Felicity Ward, Justin Moorhouse, Deirdre O’ Kane and of course Andrew Maxwell and Marcus Brigstocke.
Altitude Festival was previously staged in Méribel in the French Alps, but unfortunate incidents involving circus tents and huge amounts of snowfall led to its collapse. Why did you get involved, and move it to Mayrhofen?
The costs of that last festival in Méribel just took Marcus and Andrew out of it. As much as I was always meant to go over there to Méribel and help them out to try and get it off the ground there and sell more tickets, I was always busy doing Edinburgh Festival back then.
I ' ve known Andrew and Marcus since the late 1990s, and when it all went down at Méribel, I wanted to try and get the festival back up and running. I knew the guys that ran Snowbombing, and wanted to take that Snowbombing model and make it work with comedy. Gareth Cooper, who runs Snowbombing, was really kind about it, and let us do some comedy gigs at his event. While I was
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