Dave Gorman

Hello Photo Updates...

2012-05-29T06:25:00.000+01:00

From the last few tour dates...

Hello Andover!

Hello Aldershot!

Hello Stafford!

Hello Durham!

Details for the remaining 27 dates of this tour are here

Absolutely May 27th...

2012-05-28T15:38:00.000+01:00

I think it's fair to say that the lack of sleep did affect me this week... but I'd still rather do the show in a slightly wobbly way than not do it at all.

Of course you can judge for yourself if you get the podcast.

Luckily Danielle and guest presenter, Paul Foot (pictured) were there to help the tired old man through it.

The usual features - Ward's Weekly Word and Found Poetry - were there, Paul explained the royal family in the way that only Paul can and Autofill Your Boots made one of its semi-regular appearances with a listener, Nick, taking on both Paul and Danielle at the same time.

The songs I brought in from home were this absolute treat from Marthas And Arthurs called Sally Started It All:

And You Don't Need To Worry by This Many Boyfriends:
<p>Lovely</p>

... both of which I've been humming randomly for the past week. Lovely stuff.

It should be slightly easier next week as I'm not gigging on Saturday night. Apparently people are more interested in the lubilee jubilee (as I believe Delboy calls it).

The gigs between now and then - one in Colchester and two in Norwich - are all sold out - but there are tickets available for the week after in Hayes, Dartford, Treorci, Dudley, Salford and for many of the 18 gigs that are still to come beyond those as the tour rolls on.

Our next guest presenter...

2012-05-25T10:23:00.000+01:00

... is the brilliant Paul Foot. Brilliant or, as Tim Minchin describes him in the video below, maybe a little bit ill.

I'm a big fan... and can't recommend seeing Paul live highly enough. He's joining the radio show for the next couple of weeks. I'm looking forward to it...

The Longest Weekend

2012-05-22T11:23:00.004+01:00

So the tour is back on and it feels like we never stopped. The first gig (in a tiny venue in Great Torrington, Devon) blew the cobwebs off the show nicely and the second - at The Tivoli in Wimborne - was a blast.

Which reminds me. Traditions need to be upheld!

Hello Great Torrington!

and Hello Wimborne!

(Actually the first picture was taken outside the train station in Umberleigh which is just up the road)

A journey from London to Devon and then to Dorset sounds quite civilised as touring goes but alas it didn't work out like that. Instead it became London to Devon to London to Dorset and back.

I say 'alas'... but it was my choice. I simply didn't want to miss out on my Sunday morning at Absolute Radio. I genuinely missed it when I was in Australia and I've really loved throwing myself back into it since my return so I made the, possibly foolish, decision to do the journey back from Devon after the show. It turned Sunday into a long day on very little sleep... but I think it was worth it.

I think I'm going to be able to get through this tour without missing a single radio show... it's going to mean some long, Saturday night drives... but I reckon this first weekend was the most challenging of the lot. If we can do that one, we can surely do the others.

By the way... the songs I brought in from home were:

If You Got To Know Me by Stephan Altman:

and an old favourite, The Story Of Love by Misty's Big Adventure:

Enjoy!

The next run of shows goes as follows:
Wednesday: Andover
Thursday: Aldershot
Friday: Stafford (Hello Mum!)
and Saturday: Durham

Oh. Durham. So that'll be another interesting Sunday morning.

Of course, there are loads more gigs - the tour runs into July - so you might want to check the Live Dates page to see if we're coming near you.

And if you're a fan of radio shows made by sleep-deprived presenters, you might want to get the podcast and/or tune in next Sunday morning.

If you're looking for a badger glove puppet...

2012-05-18T10:34:00.001+01:00

I'm indebted to @RobDoylecouk for this discovery...

At the time of writing, this is what you see if you search amazon.co.uk for the words badger glove puppet. One of my books - America Unchained - turns up as the fourth search result. I have no idea why.

I know that in the book there is a brief mention of Bodger and Badger (and Badger's profound love of mashed potatoes) but surely amazon isn't returning searches based on every word contained within a book is it?

There must be other more badger-centric books out there. Like, say, just as an example, BADGERS, by Michael Clark.

But presumably that doesn't contain the words glove and puppet and presumably mine does. (I don't recall the exact context but I'm pretty sure every book I write will contain at least some passing reference to a glove puppet. They're bound to all things considered.)

If it is to do with the content of the book then presumably this is to do with the Kindle. I think all of my proper books are now available on the Kindle which means that amazon now has the content to all of them.

But out of all the books they've kindle-ised, is mine really the only one to contain all three of those words? It doesn't work for any two word combination... if you search for Badger and Glove a load of other books show up before mine. And the same is true for Badger and Puppet and, obviously enough, for Glove and Puppet... but when it's all three, mine is the only one. Odd.

I suppose if there is a two word amazon.co.uk search that leads to only one book... well... you could call that, something, like, oo... I dunno... say, a Kindlewhack.

But I'm not going there.

EDIT TO ADD: The immediate response to this has been a mass, "ah ha... you so will go there... go on, write a sequel." The navel-gazing explanation as to why I definitely won't be doing that is here.

May 13th... Absolutely

2012-05-14T10:30:00.000+01:00

On Wednesday night I went out to see a gig - a single launch for Saul Ashby.

Here are a couple of pictures from the night...

I really enjoyed the gig - and I thought the single was great - and so we put it in the show on Sunday as one of my records-from-home. Here it is:

The other song I brought in was by an unsigned Scottish band called The Imagineers. They probably won't be unsigned for long as their song, Imagineer, has been used on a trail for the CBS talk show, The Late Late Show. The host, Craig Ferguson, might have taken US citizenship but he hasn't forgotten his Scottish roots and they recently filmed a week of specials in his homeland. Which goes some way to explaining this video...

It was another really busy show, with Pete's Treat, Found Poetry, Ward's Weekly Word and a new game, Which Bong Is Wrong, that I think we'll return to as an occasional treat in the same way that Autofill Your Boots has become a semi-regular part of the fabric of the show.

If you don't listen to the podcast, but you hear us referring to Pun Street every now and then, you might be forgiven for thinking it's nothing more than a collection of shops with punny names.

But that would be to ignore the rest of the precinct that has grown up around Pun Street - a precinct that contains Charming Alley, Punintention Alley, Vain Parade, Creepy Close, Fail Lane, Punny la Rue and Calamity Close.

Which explains why at some point we ended up discussing this shop.

As you can see, it was originally tweeted by Gavin Seymour but it was brought to the committee's attention by Tim Drury.

It was discussed in the Someday Podcast... which as the name suggests will come out someday this week.

If you've seen a shop that you think belongs in the precinct you can tweet it to @PunStreet or, better still, email it to the show here... which is also the best place to contact the show for Correspodcast, Listener's Lexicon and everything else that we do.

If you use itunes, the best link for the podcast is here... and if you don't, it's here.

May 6th... Absolutely

2012-05-08T22:53:00.000+01:00

The two songs I brought in for Sundays' show were Mondays by Bleech

and Tick Tock by Molotov Jukebox

It was a really busy show with Pete's Treat, Found Poetry, Ward's Weekly Word and Autofill Your Boots all making an appearance. It was the third time we've played the Autofill Quiz... and the score is now 2-1 to the listeners after a man called Phil played a blinder. (By the way, if you want to play Autofill Your Boots in future, feel free to get in touch with the show and add your name to the list. Contrary to the way it looks after three outings, girls can play too!)

Before the show started, I decided that, seeing as we've been joined for a few weeks by magician, Pete Firman, I'd have a go at some magic of my own and show Pete the two tricks that I (sort of) know... they work. Sort of. The podcast, for those who like that sort of thing is here. That's an itunes link... if you don't use itunes... you can get the podcast here instead. By the way... dedicated soul that I am - I think we've managed to make the travel arrangements work in such a way that I won't have to miss any of the radio shows during the next tour. I might well be asleep at the desk on a couple of occasions. But I'll be there, that's the important thing!

That Slim Volume Of Found Poetry...

2012-05-05T09:31:00.000+01:00

When I started doing the Found Poetry on the radio show I didn't really know whether people would take to it or not. It's not always easy to tell if something's going over well on the radio and after a few weeks I quietly phased it out. But then people started asking for it to return and we realised that it had actually become quite popular. So I put it back in.

There was more evidence that people were enjoying them when I started doing my Screen Guild shows in Hoxton: a few people asked if I'd be doing any of the Found Poems at the shows. It had never really occurred to me to do them live and I was far from convinced that they'd work in that environment... but the point of those shows was to experiment so I threw one in. I ended up trying one out at every show. (It helped writing a new show each month knowing that, thanks to the radio show, I already had one thing pre-written and ready to go.)

One went into the Powerpoint Presentation for Edinburgh and a second went into the encore on tour. And then people started asking if they were going to be published.

Which led to this slim volume being printed.
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the booklet - I think that's the best word for it - was only really intended for sale at gigs on the next leg of the tour but then people who'd already been to see the show asked - quite reasonably - if they could get it too. It's taken a wee while to sort out a sensible way of making it available online but yes, yes you can.

It's only twenty pages and it contains these seventeen poems... and a limited number are available here.

April 29th... Absolutely

2012-04-30T08:07:00.000+01:00

The two songs I brought in from home were Oh Jackie by Louise Quinn and Kid Loco. It's a doozy. Louise Quinn & Kid Loco - Oh Jackie by abandcalledquinn

And Tenuousness by Andrew Bird... a song I'd discovered on the soundtrack of a film on my flight home from Oz:

The show was spent discussing those magical moments when cliches come to life. I'm amazed at the number of people who've actually slipped on a banana skin... and am now convinced that swans really can break your arm. But it's the butcher running down the street after a dog with a joint of meat in its mouth that lives longest in my imagination. What would he have done if he'd caught the dog? Retrieve the meat and sell it?

There's all of that, plus Ward's Weekly Word, a man hammering a nail into his own head (video) and a Found Poem on the podcast... plus all the usual podcast extras. If you use itunes, you'll find it here and if you don't... well, we thought about you too, it's here.

Oh... talking of Pun Street - and I was, sort of - at the start of April we added Lord of the Fries to the street and as it's based in Melbourne I promised I'd take photographic evidence on my trip. I did. Here it is:

Back on the wireless

2012-04-28T20:28:00.002+01:00

I think I'm pretty much through the jet lag and back on UK time. Which is a good job because I'm back on Absolute Radio tomorrow from 10am. It feels like I've been away for more than three shows... but I've checked my diary and counted the Sundays and that is definitely how long it's been.

Sadly, Martin won't be joining us tomorrow morning as he and Absolute have parted company. It's been described in oddly salacious terms in some quarters. I've certainly had tweets from people who are convinced they can smell some kind of scandal but I think that says more about the way the internet stirs things up than anything else. I'm pleased to report that there is no scandal, everyone remains friends and there aren't any heroes or villains. It's not a story of good guys and bad guys... more one of bad timing as I suspect it's the absence of shows that has allowed people to stew up odd conspiracy theories. C'est la web.

We'll be taking the opportunity to introduce some new chums to proceedings and we'll be starting with comic and magician, Pete Firman. I know Pete from the live circuit (if you get the chance to see him live, you really should, he's unstoppable) but he's probably best known for BBC1's The Magicians.

Here he is doing some conjuring with everyone's favourite magician's assistant, Arlene Phillips.

Pete's joining the show for the next three weeks... tune in and make him welcome.

Not Too Shabby

2012-04-23T00:30:00.002+01:00

I'm sorry to be leaving this place. Two weeks really isn't enough for a trip down under. But I've had a blast. I'm proud of the run. The shows sold out and I was nominated for an award I didn't think I was eligible for. That makes for a pretty fine holiday. (Congrats to Doctor Brown for winning the Barry by the way - I'm glad it went to someone doing a brand new show rather than an Edinburgh import)

I saw some great shows by others - so much overlapped with me that it was impossible to see everything I wanted but I loved Sam Simmons, Celia Pacquola and Sammy J & Randy.

I was last here in 2004. The eight year gap wasn't down to me cocking a snook at Melbourne. It's just that I wasn't doing any live shows for most of it.

I dipped my toe back in the live waters in 2009 with a show that wasn't festival friendly. There was no way of doing it without two long halves, separated by an interval. That would involve taking over a venue for pretty much the whole night... and festivals don't work like that. So really, this show is the first thing I've done that could have come to Melbourne... and I've brought it at the first opportunity.

But I don't think it'll be another eight years before I come back. I stopped doing live stuff because it had stopped being exciting to me. And I started doing it again because I started to feel that excitement again. And I still feel it.

I don't know when I'll come up with a new show - I'm touring this one til July 7 as it is - but I will - and when I do... I really, really hope that Melbourne will have me back.

Byeeee.

Ooooohhhh... so that's not how you do it.

2012-04-20T00:16:00.001+01:00

How Not To Use A Toilet, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

Glad someone's taken the time to clear that up for me.

Barry!

2012-04-15T02:54:00.003+01:00

I'm having a ball in Melbourne. I performed here in 2001, 2003 and 2004 and I knew I had built up a bit of momentum at the time... but that's a relatively long time ago and I had no idea whether people would remember. But every day I meet people who do and the ticket sales - so far every show has sold out - suggest no momentum has been lost. I'm very, very flattered.

And because of the way it's going, we've added in an extra show. It's on Saturday at 5pm. Details are, of course, on the Live Dates page of my site.

To add to my excitement, I've been nominated for The Barry Award. This was especially surprising to me as I genuinely thought I wasn't eligible what with me only being here for half of the festival. Turns out I am eligible. And nominated. So that's nice.

It's an amazingly strong list, full of great shows. The other nominees are Tim Key, Paul Foot, Dr. Brown, Wil Anderson and Felicity Ward.

Up And Running

2012-04-10T23:37:00.002+01:00

The weather hasn't been great yet... and yesterday morning I switched on breakfast TV to see the presenters getting very excited about the royal family and One Direction so it did feel for a moment as if we'd travelled ten thousand miles and yet hadn't travelled at all.

But, this really is an amazing festival and the audiences are fantastic. And my venue - The Forum - has a camp charm that I really like.

We had technical problems on the first night - the microphone, which had been fine all through our tech set-up time suddenly decided to sound as if it had been dropped in a chip fryer so the first five minutes were spent with the audience struggling to hear me. But they made that struggle and stayed with the show. I guess it knocked me out of my rhythm a bit because as well as thinking about how I've rephrased this bit and changed that slide etc etc I was also thinking I-hope-someone's-trying-to-bloody-fix-this. Not the most relaxed start to things but once it was fixed the show soon went through the gears and I had a great time.

I get kind of lost in this show. There are occasions when we're setting up and someone will ask me to do a particular bit of it so that they can see how it's going to work... and I never really know how to do it because there are no words in my head. But an audience changes things and that night, when I get to that bit, all the words are there.

One down. Plenty more to come.

Odd words and crosswords

2012-04-09T03:22:00.005+01:00

I'm in Melbourne. Feeling a bit wobbly with jetlag in the way you'd expect after a 23 hour journey. The show opens tomorrow. That's Tuesday. I think.

My internet connection isn't great and is obviously out of sync with many of the people who are sending me tweets and stuff... but it was impossible to miss two themes in my incoming tweets.

Lots of people have been telling me that the man who stopped the boat race looked like me. I didn't know the boat race was happening let alone that it had been stopped but on reading those tweets I immediately knew what had happened. Obviously, a man with a beard and no other significant likeness to me had stopped the boat race. I was right. His boat race in no way resembles mine.

And secondly, a number of people were telling me that I was an answer in the Observer Cryptic Crossword. As a crossword fan I'm a little bit thrilled to discover this. Big thanks to @JamesFarrier for sending me this:

Enjoying Oz.

There's something a bit Wallace & Gromit about this radiator...

2012-04-05T12:28:00.002+01:00

Face 196, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

it's in the dressing room at the QEH and it seems more worried than it should be.

Loving this run. There are a few individual seats still available for tonight... but none together, I believe.

But that's why we added the extra London date on June 16th.

Getting Ready

2012-04-04T10:58:00.001+01:00

Backstage at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in the Southbank Centre... this is how I empty my head before going on.

Two more shows to go.

A Slim Volume of Found Poetry

2012-04-03T10:08:00.003+01:00

All through the first leg of the tour people were asking me if there was going to be a book of Found Poetry. It seemed foolish not to make one available.

It's only available at the live shows for now.

EDIT
just to add... the initial picture only really shows you that it exists. I've had questions from folks wanting to know how slim it is and which poems are in it. So I thought it was probably worth adding this picture of the contents page:

Click to zoom.
/EDIT

Hello The South Bank

2012-04-03T09:50:00.002+01:00

The 'hello' photo tradition continues...

Not long after taking that I saw this.
Two women taking their old deer out for lunch...

Bloomin' loved doing the show last night. The Queen Elizabeth Hall is a perfect venue for it. I'm very excited about the next three nights. We filled the first one and the others are getting there... come on down!

April 1st... Absolutely

2012-04-02T13:08:00.004+01:00

I think this was probably the most enjoyable show we'd done in a wee while. I definitely remember chuckling through most of it.

Because the preview gigs meant I was busy in Newbury on Thursday and Friday and in Chelmsford on Saturday I prepared my Found Poem a little earlier in the week than normal. I'd pretty much forgotten the content of it by the time I came to read it on the Sunday... which goes some way to explain my corpsing. Maybe I should try and get it done earlier in the week more often. It was nice to surprise myself with it.

The main topic of the show was inspired by the doctor's note I'd had to get that week.

I could have sworn her diagnosis was 071715 MEDIA and was certain there was some secret code at work... something that another doctor would understand. "Oh yeah... he's one of those 071715 media types..." But it's actually Otitis Media. Or an ear infection.

This - and a text message from one of Mrs Gorman's friends saying she was catching up on the killing (as opposed to, say, The Killing) led to a topic about the written word being misunderstood. And you had some doozies.

As you'll hear if you get the podcast. If you use itunes, you'll find it here and if you don't... well, you're not neglected, it's here.

Oh... and here are the two tunes I brought in from home. Top toe-tappy stuff, I hope you agree:
Without You by Ellen and The Escapades

Finding England by Athena

Of course, the Someday podcast will be out later in the week too but we won't be on air for the next three Sunday's because I'm heading to Australia on Friday for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. I'm looking forward to that. Obviously.

It doesn't feel quite as imminent as all that because between now and then I have the small matter of a London run to be dealing with. We start at the Southbank Centre tonight. I'm very, very excited to be playing there. Can't wait!

Hello!

2012-04-01T16:58:00.002+01:00

In keeping with tradition, here are the Hello photos from the recent tour dates:

Hello Newbury!

And Hello Chelmsford!

I was in Newbury for two nights and in Chelmsford for one, warming up for the London run which starts tomorrow. Warm-ups can be odd things for performers. We've had a few months off the tour and I thought a couple of smaller gigs would be needed to get the show back into my head properly... but it turned out I didn't really need them for that as it was all still in place. Which is a good thing because it meant that the shows were more fun and less work.

Very excited for the run at the Southbank Centre now. I'll see you there, yeah? Yeah? Yeah.

EXTRA LONDON DATE

2012-03-29T13:20:00.002+01:00

I start the run at the Southbank Centre on Monday and while tickets are still available for some of the nights they are selling fast so the venue have asked if we can do an extra show.

The natural thing would be to stay an extra night... but as I fly to Australia that day that's not really an option. But we've looked ahead in the diary and found an available night that works for all concerned.

Which means the London run at the Southbank Centre is now April 2nd to April 5th... plus June 16.

The June 16 date goes on general sale from Monday morning but for those in the know - and that includes you because you're reading this - you can get them here from 9am tomorrow. March 30th.

And of course there are loads of other dates all over the country, too. But that one's new, so, y'know...

March 25th... Absolutely...

2012-03-26T13:03:00.002+01:00

We opened the show with the should-be-doing/am-doing feature that is definitely proving that Sunday is a day for not necessarily meeting your obligations.

Danielle provided Ward's Weekly Word, Martin provided his usual end-of-show song and my Found Poetry came with extra Bong! as it was about the "news" that Big Ben might be renamed Elizabeth Tower in the Queen's honour. It's only ever about "news" and never, y'know, news.

The songs I brought in from home were:
Feet Don't Fail Me Now by the awesome Jake Morley.

That's become a real earworm for me this last week. Also, I reckon there's at least a 2% chance I'm one of the people walking by in the background as every one of the streets he walks down feels the soles of my shoes on a very regular basis. Odd.

The other tune comes from a great Australian band called The Grates. Science is Golden:

Enjoy!

Unfortunately yesterday there were gremlins in the works which means that the podcast was, to use the technical term, borked. It was published... then withdrawn and sent back to the factory where it was lovingly restored. The corrected version was uploaded today. It's here (itunes) unless you're one of those non itunesy people... in which case it's here.

If you subscribe - and we love you if you do - then your computer might have already downloaded the borked version. You can get the right one by deleting and then refreshing!

Life's about to get pretty hectic as I gear up for a new burst of live shows. I've got warm up gigs in Newbury (Thursday/Friday), Chelmsford (Saturday) and at The Southbank Centre in London (April 2-5) before flying to Australia on April 6 to head to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. We'll still be on the wireless on Sunday morning... but then we'll have a break til I return from Oz.

You can see all the details for the live shows here.

A Parliament Of Owls

2012-03-20T16:28:00.001Z

A Parliament Of Owls, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

March 18th... Absolutely...

2012-03-18T22:15:00.003Z

I really enjoyed the show this morning. We started with a Should-be-doing/Am-doing feature that I think will become a bit of a regular, William Roache made selecting the topic for Found Poetry easier than normal and both Ward's Weekly Word and Martin's Song were on tip top form.

The songs I brought in from home were:

Play What You Want by Toy Horses

and, because it was Mother's Day, I thought, what the hey, let's have Mother Dear by The Divine Comedy:

Not that I ever need much of an excuse to play The Divine Comedy.

The podcast is here (itunes) unless you're one of those non itunesy people... in which case it's here.