Dave Gorman's Blog, page 13

Goodish News

I'm delighted to announce that I'm making a new series for Dave. That's the channel, Dave, not me-Dave. (I've already had three conversations today where I've had to clarify that I'm not talking about myself in the third person and I don't doubt there will be many more such conversations in the weeks to come.)



The show is called Modern Life Is Goodish because, well... because that's what it's about. Ish.



The starting point for the show is my last tour, Powerpoint Presentation. I guess a lot of the material in that show was gleaned from looking a little closer at the information (and misinformation) that we normally allow to float past our eyes unchallenged. But a lot of the material also comes from reacting to it from playing with it, experimenting and generally being a bit mischievous... and that spirit will definitely inform this series too.



So it's a stand up show. Of sorts. My sort. There are six shows in the series - each one being an hour in length - which means I can really get my teeth into things. And again, the lessons I've learned during the run of Screen Guild gigs are going to come in bloody handy. There's a big store of ideas and material right there. Phew.



We're filming the shows at The Tabernacle in Notting Hill, which is a fantastic space. I knew straight away that with a series like this, I wanted to avoid the anodyne atmosphere of a TV studio and make it somewhere special and atmospheric, somewhere the audience will feel more involved - and The Tabernacle is perfect.



We're taping the shows in pairs. The first recording will be on Tuesday, May 14th, the second will be on Tuesday, May 28th and the third and final recording will be on Tuesday, June 11th. Tickets for the shows are free and you can get them from TVRecordings.com. But then, if you're on my mailing list you already knew that.

Filled Guild. Will Build.

The second season of Screen Guild shows drew to a close last night. If you came to one or more of them - big thanks.



They're hugely enjoyable things for me - but hugely stressful too. It normally takes me around eight hours to build the powerpoint elements for each of them and there are times when I've been tweaking stuff until 10 seconds before we open the doors and let the audience in. But it's always worth it. If I didn't do them, I wouldn't have another way of generating material.



And I'm really proud of the line-ups we pulled together for the shows. We never bill the shows in advance partly because things often change at late notice but also because it's nicer with a show like this for the audience to be surprised.



In this season, we've had: Ed Gamble, Steve Hall, Morgan & West, David O'Doherty, Jay Foreman, James Acaster, Lucy Beaumont, Pete Firman, Simon Munnery, Marcel Lucont, Pat Cahill, Richard Herring, Mark Smith, Gareth Richards, Ali Cook, Sara Pascoe, Phil Wang, Andy Zaltzman, Gráinne Maguire, Tony Law, Holly Walsh, Piff The Magic Dragon, Aisling Bea and Daniel Simonsen. Top notch each and every one of them.



I don't know when I'll return for a third season... but I'm sure I will. And I look forward to it.



But now the task is to see how the various bits of material hang together when it's just me. Which is why I'm doing the Screen Guild, sorry, Screen Build shows in Windsor (May), Fareham (Sold Out) and Tring (June).

New Shows... Windsor, Fareham & Tring

Since September last year I've been doing a monthly show - Dave Gorman's Screen Guild - at Hoxton Hall.



This is the second run of Screen Guild shows I've done there. The idea of the shows is that it gives me a place to try out any new ideas I might have on stage with an audience.



It's turned out to be an invaluable exercise. Knowing there's a show each month forces me to write and be creative. And a lot of what's come out of it has been really useful.



When I first started a run there, back in February 2011 I didn't know what I wanted to do, I just knew I had some ideas I wanted to play with.



But by the end of that run all the component pieces of what was to become Powerpoint Presentation pretty much existed and I was on my way to the Edinburgh Fringe for the first time in 8 years with a show I would end up touring extensively. There simply wouldn't have been another way of building that show up.



I started this second run in a similar place. I didn't know where I was going with it... but a new store of ideas had built up and I needed to get back on stage and play some more. Now, as the run draws to a close (there's actually one more show in the season - next Saturday - but it's sold out) it's time to take stock and work out what to do with all the material I've built up.

So I've got some one man shows lined up in small venues that aren't too far from home. When I'm building up a show of some kind I like to put the material through a sort of bootcamp - trying it one way, one night and then another way the next and so on. That means I spend the day in between hunched over a laptop, changing the powerpoint and that means I can't spend the day travelling across country to a different venue. Which is why the shows are clustered the way they are.

I'll be trying out the first batch of material in shows on May 9th, 10th and 13th. Those shows happen in Windsor, Windsor and Fareham respectively. The next batch of material I'll try out on May 23rd, 24th and 27th. All of those shows are in Windsor. And finally I'll try out a different batch of material on June 5th, 6th and 10th... and all of those shows will be in Tring.

All the details are on the Live Dates page of my site...

Bookaboo

I mentioned last July that I'd met a famous Brit while I was in Montreal...







It was, of course, Bookaboo... the book-playing-dog who needs "a story a day or he just won't play".



SPOILER ALERT: I read him a story. He played.

It's on ITV/CITV on Saturday morning at 7.25 if you're interested. Y'know, if you've got a young child or two and they're not scared of beards...

The Real Thing

I was in my local supermarket last night. It was that or a takeaway. In my basket were the ingredients for a quick meal (veggie stir fry, since you ask).




 


































I thought I'd chosen which till to approach wisely - all of my shopping was on the conveyor belt and ready to go - just as the last item of the people in front of me was beeped through. Perfect.



The people in front of me were twins. Identical twins. Their last item through the till had been a two-litre bottle of coke. As was the item before that. And the one before that, too. Pretty much the whole of their trolley was occupied by two-litre bottles of coke. But not the whole trolley. The little end section of the trolley was full of bread. There were at least twelve bottles of coke, probably more, and five loaves of plain white bread.



All they had to do was pay. They produced a wad of vouchers.

"Really?" said the man behind the till.

"Yeah, this'll work," said the Alpha twin.

"Are you sure?"

"I'm a checkout manager... I'm 100% sure."



Young Master Till started keying things in and scanning vouchers.



"No. Hang on, you've made a mistake," said the Beta twin. "You've done that wrong." He turned to Alpha. "He's made a mistake. He's done that wrong."

"You've made a mistake," repeated Alpha. "You're doing it in the wrong order. I'm a checkout manager. Void that. No, that. I know what I'm talking about. I'm a checkout manager. I'm a checkout manager, man... I know what it's like... I'm a checkout manager, man, I don't eat... I only eat when I'm hungry, man... here... do you want me to do this for you?"



Tilly didn't have a chance to accept or decline the offer of help. Alpha twin was already leaning over the counter, craning his neck so as to see the screen that customers don't normally see, and tapping away at the keys. It was quite an invasion of space.



"This is going to work, man," he said as his fingers tip-tapped away, "I'm gonna get all that coke... it'll work... right, there you go... now scan that voucher... y'see... I told you..."



"That'll be £4.80, please" Tilly looked confused and just a little suspicious.

"I'll have £10 cash back as well"



There was a pause - perhaps Tilly was expecting Alpha to present a magic 'free £10 cash back' voucher as well



"You've got to work the system, man," said Alpha to nobody in particular. "You just gotta know how it works."



And with that, the twins left, jabbering excitedly about how brilliant they were to get all that shopping for less than a fiver. They strode cockily, with swagger. They were bank robbers who'd managed to pull off a heist without even breaking the law. They were proud. They were just a little bit smug. And it was just a little bit impressive.



A little bit.



Because, of course, it was let down by the fact that they now owned twenty four litres of coke and five loaves of white bread. Bread that - I imagine - Alpha won't even eat. Least not until he's hungry.

A Polystyrene Cup

A Polystyrene Cup, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

Have you ever wondered what Laurel & Hardy would look like if they each had the other's nose and mouth?

I have...








It's sort of right. But you know it's wrong...

It's Not What You Say, It's What You Don't Say

On Saturday night I was a guest on the Radio 4 show, Dilemma. As I made my way home that night I was sitting on the tube chatting idly with Mrs Gorman when the man sitting across from us leaned forwards with something of a conspiratorial look in his eye.



"Strip clubs are wrong," he said.

I paused, unsure as to how best to respond. I shrugged my shoulders, "I just don't get them," said I,



And then the train pulled into a station, he stood up and left.



That was it. That was our entire conversation. There wasn't any preamble. There had been no hellos. There were just those two sentences.



"Strip clubs are wrong."

"I just don't get them."



The woman sitting next to his now empty seat had clearly overheard the exchange and was looking more than a little bemused by it. As well she might. We must have looked like spies.




 


Fortunately it wasn't that cryptic to me. Odd, yes. But not cryptic. I knew what he was on about. Or at least I could work it out.



In December I'd been a guest on another Radio 4 show, I've Never Seen Star Wars. (Radio 4 shows are like buses to me, you wait ages for one and then two come along in the space of two months. Oh hang on... that's not buses is it.)



On I've Never Seen Star Wars the idea is that the guest takes on new experiences - things they've never done before that maybe they should have done, or that most people might expect them to have done - and then discuss them with the host, Marcus Brigstocke. For example - and I know this is hard to believe - Les Dennis had never eaten cheese. I know.



For my episode I tried my first water-cooler conversation, went horse riding, read some Dickens  and visited a strip club. While it was recorded in December it was broadcast just last week (it's still on the iPlayer and is available to download for the next 7 days so you can listen to it if you like).



So when the stranger leaned across a tube train and said, "Strip clubs are wrong" I knew that what he meant was, "Hello. I heard you talking about strip clubs on the radio recently and I'm inclined to agree with you. They're weird aren't they?"



But because he didn't say that... I had to fill in the blanks and work it out. It didn't take long - (of course I had to consider the possibility that it was just a coincidence, that he hadn't heard me on I've Never Seen Star Wars and was just that-man-on-the-tube-who-starts-weird-conversations-with-strangers but I checked his shoes and both sets of laces were tied so I figured that was unlikely) - but it was long enough to make our two-sentence conversation appear just that little bit more stilted.







As the doors closed and the train continued on its journey Mrs Gorman said, "That must have sounded very strange to anyone else."

"It did," said the woman sitting opposite. "Yes. It did."



I thought about trying to explain it to her. But leaning over to explain it would involve explaining what I do for a living - or worse still, assuming that a stranger knows what I do for a living - and that would make me sound like one of those don't-you-know-who-I-am? twonks. I mean, what if the person next to her hadn't overheard the weird strip-club conversation but had heard me trying to contextualise the weird strip-club conversation? It doesn't bear thinking about.

So I said nothing. I hope she thinks I was spy.

Mike Ehrmantraut from Breaking Bad

I've been watching a lot of Breaking Bad recently. This has been bugging me.









           Dennis Hopper         x             Gollum                       =     Mike Ehrmantraut

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.