For over a decade Andy Kirkpatrick has been one of the UK's most accomplished mountaineers and big-wall climbers, funding his passion for hard routes by international public speaking about his climbs and his work as a stunt safety adviser for film and TV.

With rave reviews and packed theatres, Andy has helped to redefine the classic 'slideshow' format, with an intoxicating mix of side splitting humour, bum clenching fear and an open and honest insight into the high adrenaline world of mountaineering.

Andy's show is a gripping, hilarious and awe-inspiring experience in which he weaves together stories that include saving Johnny Depp's life on the set of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, stealing cold war secrets from a remote radar station in the middle of the Greenland icecap, and soloing the hardest climb on the planet. Andy describes his show as "a mixture of scary, funny and sometimes thought provoking stories … a bit like Peter Kay meets Touching the Void, basically northern humour mixed with lots of stories about people nearly dying … It's very dark, and very funny!"

The US magazine CLIMBING described Andy as a climber with a "strange penchant for the long, the cold and the difficult". With a reputation for seeking out routes where the danger is real, and the return is questionable, he has pushed himself on some of the hardest walls and faces in the Alps and beyond, sometimes with partners and sometimes alone. Andy has climbed extensively in Patagonia, Alaska and the Americas. In 2002 he soloed Yosemite's mighty El Capitan 'Reticent Wall', one of the hardest routes of its kind anywhere in the world; the following year he made a 15-day winter ascent of the 'Lafaille' route on the Petit Dru, a 1000-metre pillar in the Alps, considered one of the most difficult climbs in Europe, and he has just returned from a record-breaking crossing of the Greenland ice with a paraplegic companion (600km in 29 days).

One of Andy's biggest strengths is his ability to talk about his life and climbs in a style that is totally accessible to the non climber, translating even the most technical of ascent into a form that will have even the non climber's hands sweating.

Andy's boldness, determination, and hearty appetite for both humour and risk have made him a huge hit where-ever he has played and this show is definitely an experience not to be missed.

"Narrates without seeming to breathe; his audience responding with belly laughs and uncontrollable tears." ALPINIST MAGAZINE

"Kirkpatrick is one of the most remarkable storytellers I've met … turning tales of near death into philosophical and comic scenarios worthy of Samuel Beckett, or Monty Python."
BANFF INTERNATIONAL MOUNTAIN FILM FESTIVAL

"Andy is one of the funniest of Britain’s top climbers and represents what is best in modern British climbing: boldness, innovation, sense of humour, irreverence, commitment, and an appetite for risk." SIR CHRIS BONNINGTON