Do we like Rowan Atkinson?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Nothing found against LGBTQ+ people, women or migrants, but a fact-checked climate column and a free-speech stance on hate laws leave one asterisk.
Rowan Atkinson was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1955 and studied electrical engineering, at Newcastle and then Oxford. It was at Oxford that he started doing sketches, including revues at the Edinburgh Fringe. That led to Not the Nine O'Clock News in 1979, then Blackadder from 1983 to 1989 and Mr Bean from 1990.
The stoush he's been in most lately is about the climate. In a 2023 Guardian column he said he felt duped by electric cars and urged drivers to hold fire on them. A fact-check by Simon Evans said the IPCC has high confidence that EVs have lower emissions than petrol cars, and called the Volvo study Atkinson drew on widely debunked.
On speech, he's been a front-line campaigner. In 2012 he launched a push to reform Section 5 of the Public Order Act, which banned insulting words and behaviour, arguing too many things can be read as an insult. In 2020 he signed a letter opposing the Scottish Hate Crime Bill, which objected to new stirring-up offences that wouldn't require proof of intent. Where you land depends on whether you read that as defending vague-law-proof free expression or as weakening protection for targeted groups. We found nothing from him on trans people, women or migrants.
He's also been loud on comedy and so-called cancel culture. In a 2022 interview covered by Variety he said every joke has a victim and that you should be allowed to joke about anything in a free society. In a 2021 Radio Times interview he blamed online algorithms for splitting debate into two camps. It's a grumpy-uncle take, but it's about comedy, not about putting down any group.
Rowan Live is the fresh news. It's his first live show in over 40 years, bringing Mr Bean and Blackadder to the stage with Not the Nine O'Clock News sketches and new material from Richard Curtis, Ben Elton and Howard Goodall. Nothing in what we read flags that team as a worry.
The good stuff is thinner than we'd like. In November 2025 he was the final VIP guest speaker at a SSAFA Christmas carol concert in London, which raises money for serving personnel, veterans and their families. The page describes him only as a guest speaker, so we can't say more about how deep his involvement goes.