In the modern media age we are rarely surprised by what we see. Whether it's on television or film or in the theatre, everything is so advertised, so trailed, that most entertainment is merely what you thought it was going to be like.

Theatre
Rowan Atkinson did live on-stage skits – also appearing with members of Monty Python – in The Secret Policeman's Ball (1979) for the British section of Amnesty International. It is a reaction to several recent high-profile arrests which Atkinson sees as a restriction of freedom of expression. The Conservative Party politician Alan Clark himself a devotee of classic motor cars recorded in his publiRowan Atkinsond Diaries a chance meeting with a man he later realised was Atkinson while driving through Oxfordshire in May 1984: "Just after leaving the motorway at Thame I noticed a dark red DBS V8 Aston Martin on the slip road with the bonnet up a man unhappily bending over it.

He has been listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest actors in British comedy and amongst the top 50 comedians ever in a 2005 poll of fellow comedians. Atkinson first came to prominence in the sketch comedy show Not the Nine O'Clock News (1979-82) and via his participation in The Secret Policeman's Balls from 1979.