Charlie Chaplin: 100 years of the Tramp In his 1964 autobiography, Chaplin described how he stumbled upon a "look" intended to make people laugh on the sets at Keystone Studios in California, where he was taken on in the autumn of 1913. In the process he transformed his fortunes. Mack Sennett, Keystone's formidable founder, was standing with the actress Mabel Normand looking at the hotel lobby set of a short film, Mabel's Strange Predicament, "biting the end of a cigar. 'We need some gags here,' he said, then turned to me. Put on a comedy make-up. Anything will do.' "I had no idea what make-up to put on," Chaplin continued. However, on the way to the wardrobe I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane and a derby hat. I wanted everything a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large. I was undecided whether to look old or young, but remembering Sennett had expected me to be a much older man, I added a small moustache, which, I reasoned, would add age without hiding my expression. I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked on to the stage he was fully born. Here was one of a kind, yet also an everyman, an archetype of the little guy taking on the world: "This fellow is many-sided, a tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure. He would have you believe he is a scientist, a musician, a duke, a polo-player. However, he is not above picking up cigarette-butts or robbing a baby of its candy. Released on February 9, 1914, the flickery "one-reeler" can be easily viewed on YouTube, with Chaplin an instant delight in the guise of a drunken, shabbily dressed interloper, clowning about the lobby - feet splayed, cane a-twirl, hat tipped in ceremonious apology for the chaos he causes as he toddler-waddles around, gradually becoming embroiled in Mabel's bedroom mishaps upstairs. The actor, who was then only in his mid-twenties, noted in his memoir: "That evening I went home on the street-car with one of the small-bit players. Said he: 'Boy, you've started something; nobody ever got those kind of laughs on the set before....' And though it took a while for the studio to realise just what it had on its hands, the rest is cinematic history. Chris Daniels is emphatic: "1914 is a really important year. Chaplin comes along and changes everything. Those who arrive after him, like Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton, start standing on each other's shoulders - the creativity blossoms. It's hard to say but I imagine that without Chaplin that wouldn't have been possible. Certainly not on the same scale. "It was amazingly fast," says David Robinson, a film critic who has written a definitive biography of Chaplin (His Life and Art) and is giving an already sold-out talk titled "100 Years of the Tramp" at the festival. By mid-1914 he was already popular. By 1915 he was international. The speed with which it happened, without the modern media, is astonishing. As well as looking at pictures and clips he will preside over a screening of Kid Auto Races at Venice which, although shot after Mabel's Strange Predicament was the first to be released - on February 7. It's just 11 minutes of Chaplin acting the buffoon, trying to get into camera-shot, while boys on soap-box carts race around a track at the seaside resort of Venice; a guerrilla stunt at a real-life public event. "He had been wearing the costume that week but no film had been released with him in it and it's fascinating watching the people around him," Robinson says. At first they're not terribly impressed. Even when he gets knocked down they don't take much notice. He was a nobody at this point - so it's a documentary of the first audience ever to see Charlie Chaplin. It's the kids who start to laugh first. If children could be more regularly exposed to the films of Chaplin, especially as they were first intended to be seen, Daniels maintains, this might help kick-start a renewed national appreciation for the man and his art. "The young people who come are the ones who laugh the loudest," he explains. We once did a screening of Easy Street and a five-year-old laughed so hard he fell off his chair. We live in a more cynical age, and Chaplin's comedy is a bit harder to access because it was born of a different time but I think it still has a universal appeal. To London's credit, at Rich Mix arts centre on Bethnal Green Road, as part of LOCO, the London Comedy Film Festival, there's going to be a Saturday morning workshop in the art of slapstick for children aged six-12 teaching silent comedy techniques. They will then be able to watch a screening of Chaplin's Oscar-winning 1928 classic The Circus. Plenty more where that came from would be nice if we're to do our Charlie justice, though. "100 years from now," Daniels asserts with total confidence, "these films are still going to be funny." It's time we doffed our caps. The Slapstick Festival runs in venues across Bristol from Friday to Sunday; slapstick.org.uk The London Comedy Film Festival runs Jan 23-26: locofilmfestival.com