Dave Gorman's Blog, page 25

Me, Me, Melbourne

Luna Park, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

It's Australia Day today... so what better day to announce that I'm taking the live show to Melbourne for the International Comedy Festival? There is no better day.

Actually, there are probably plenty of better days. I mean, it's Australians that are hopefully going to buy tickets and they're out celebrating because it's Australia Day. Oh well. It's too late now.

I'll be heading out after the 4 night run in London, for a 2 week run in Melbourne... before returning to the UK for my national tour.

Phew.

Tickets for Melbourne - and for London and the national tour for that matter - can be bought through the links on the Live Dates page of my site.

Perhaps, My Proudest Moment...

"What a legend." (Stacey Solomon)

A Digest...

Most weeks on the radio I bring a couple of songs in from home. We always put the details up on the Absolute Radio website but I still get a few emails and tweets asking me what they were so I thought I'd put some information up here as well:

On yesterday's show I played Run Out Of Morning by The Loose Salute:


And For My Record Machine by The Loud:


I really enjoyed the show yesterday. Inspired by a waiter who denied the existence of mint tea to me, despite serving it to people sitting at tables all around me, we started talking about weird dining experiences. There were cafes that serve All Day Breakfasts - but only before 11am - ants in the antipasti and a tweet from Alex Philip about a waiter in a Cornish restaurant who kept tucking the tablecloth into diner's collars for them, y'know... instead of a napkin.

Of course, as well as the main show, we do a load of extras for the podcast. This week we began our efforts to try and end a 10 year old grudge between a man in Bristol and his favourite pizzeria, discussed the things you can see behind a Dutch cafe toilet door and had a busy session in the Pun Street Planning Committee Council Chamber - where Brooklyn Tomato was put forward for Fail Lane (that makes sense when you know what kind of restaurant it is), two wool shops (Woollabulloo and Un-ewes-u-wool) went head to head for the right to take on the incumbent, World of Woolcraft and the coffee shops based in Glasgow's old Tardis style police boxes - Coppuchino - had a go at deposing Brewed Awakening.

Of course there's also the Someday Podcast out later in the week.

If you've got a suggestion for Pun Street send it to us here.

If you've got a suggestion for Listeners Lexicon - or a guess for any of this week's words (comfort, hairdresser, ARSFLY) you can send them here.

You can get the podcast here (itunes) or here (um... not itunes).

The Southbank Centre: April 2-5

Optimus Prime, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

So... as well as the extra tour dates for Powerpoint Presentation, we've just added a 4 night run in London.

The shows will be in the Queen Elizabeth Hall at the Southbank Centre. April 2 - 5.

You can get tickets here.

The Pub Olympics

Thanks to everyone who came along to the Pub Olympics recording last night.

I keep being asked what the show is. Um. It's a one off for Radio 2. It's not about beer mat flipping or anything like that because, well, because it's a one off for Radio 2. I can't imagine beer mat flipping makes for great radio. I might be wrong.

But it is silly. And it's a panel show of sorts. The sort that we imagined might be called The Pub Olympics in a world where the Pub Olympics is far more important than that other Olympics you might have heard about.

Anyway... in unrelated events, here's an animated gif of me eating a banana.

Radio Silence

I hope you had a good Christmas and that you brought in 2012 in a way that made you happy.

Last year - by which I mean Christmas 2010 - I was very much behind schedule writing a book so I ended up not really doing Christmas at all. Mrs Gorman went off visiting family and I stayed at home and wrote. It was effective. I got the job done. But it wasn't really Christmas.

So this year I decided to do it in style. And with commitment. So I went offline on Christmas Eve and only revisited the world wide web a couple of days ago. And it wasn't just the internet that was forsaken. For New Year we went to a lovely place that didn't have a television. Bliss.

If you've read the book I was toiling away at 13 months ago (hint, it's this one) you'll have read about me visiting Tim Harford to play Agricola while he was staying in the Lake District.

You'll know that Tim told me about the Landmark Trust - an organisation that rescues historically significant buildings, saves them from ruin - or bad development - and helps to pay for it all by letting them out as holiday lets. You might remember that I got quite enthusiastic about the idea and that I promised Mrs Gorman we'd be using the Landmark Trust for some exciting holidays at some point in the future.

And that's what we did for New Year. It was spectacular.



I've now got a big backlog of emails. And more tweets than I can possibly scroll back through. I gather that Googlewhack was shown on the box somewhere. I had no idea. Thanks to everyone who sent a nice message. Sorry I haven't replied. Switching off just seemed like a better idea than staying on. I feel refreshed.

And the radio silence is over. Especially come Sunday. When I'll be being noisy. On the radio.

Happy New Year

2012, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

No Stopping

Saint Nick, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

Santa's might have trouble delivering presents round this way.

Listing. Sinking.

For many years I've run a mailing list on my website. It's on the Contact page.

It's what they call a double opt-in list. That means that when you subscribe to it, you fill in your email address, it sends an email asking you to confirm and you only end up on the list if you do so.

Occasionally someone asks me if I can change their address for them as they've moved jobs etc. I decline because it seems to me to be bad practice to start adding addresses manually. While it's unlikely, they might be giving me their friend's address - or a stranger's address for that matter - and not their own. With the double opt-in mailing list, I know that everyone who's receiving the mail has chosen to do so. Every email comes with a working unsubscribe link - so it's dead easy for people to remove themselves, remove old addresses, add new ones, whatever.

Over the years the list has grown to over 10,000 addresses. I use a company called Bravenet for it - it isn't really possible for me to have that many addresses in my address book - and that way, I can visit a website, type an email out and hit send. Normally when I send an email, I get around 150 mails bouncing back to me. I delete those addresses from the list and try to keep things tidy.

But today when I sent an email to 10,119 subscribers... I had 4,493 bounce back to me as undelivered.

The problem seems to be that Bravenet's servers have been used to send spam... so now lots of other servers are blacklisting them. Including Hotmail and all their related domains. So about 45% of my mailing list won't have seen the latest email. Which is annoying. But I'm not sure what I can do about it.

I pay Bravenet for the service and over the last few years I've had more and more misgivings about the service they provide. Theirs is obviously a service that can be abused by spammers - and they can profit by allowing spammers to do so. Do they really care if a spammer pays them for a list or if I do?

But if their service ends up blacklisted they're no use to anyone. It's certainly no use to me.

If anyone has any expertise in this field and knows a reputable, affordable company, do let me know.

Meanwhile... here's the email I sent out today. It was announcing the 2012 tour extension - and letting people know about the presale link available from today:



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Hello you, seasons greetings and all that.

Firstly, a big thank you to everyone that came to see the show on tour. I had a fabbo time. I genuinely didn't want the tour to end... which is just as well because it hasn't ended. The tour is going to continue in 2012.

There's a one-off at the Doncaster Comedy Festival in February and then we'll be back on the road with the show in May, June & July. We're returning to some venues where the show sold out and also visiting a whole heap of new places.

Most of the venues go on sale officially on Friday. But we wanted to give you first dibs... which is why, from 10am today - Wednesday - you can buy tickets for most of the shows if you're in the know. And you are. Or at least you will be when you read the next line of this email.

http://www.seetickets.com/Tour/DAVE-GORMAN/Default/1/100/?pre=davegorman

There. Now you're in the know. That's the link. You can find all the shows that are on presale available behind that link as of 10am today. Then from Friday they should pretty much all be on general sale - and the links and details will be on the Live Dates page of my site.

The full list of dates is as follows:
February 12: Doncaster.

May:
Great Torrington (Devon), Wimborne (Dorset) Andover, Aldershot, Stafford, Durham, Colchester, Norwich.

June:
Hayes, Dartford, Treorci (Wales), Dudley, Salford/Manchester, Swindon, Harrogate, Ipswich, Belfast, Tunbridge Wells, Bristol, Truro, Reading, Cambridge, St Albans, Kings Lynn, Cheltenham, Coventry, Yeovil, Guildford.

July:
Dorking, The Isle of Wight.

I hope we're coming near you and that you'll want to pop along.

Oh... Belfast is already on sale as it's the re-scheduled gig for the show we had to move due to the industrial action.

Oh... and Norwich, Wimborne and Andover won't be on pre-sale but should be on general sale from Friday.

Oh... and Truro won't be on sale til December 30.

Oh... and... nope... that's all the 'Oh... ands' there are. I hope this email finds you well. If I don't email again between now and Christmas, I wish you the best of the season and of course, a very happy new year.

I look forward to our paths crossing...

Pip pip!

Dave
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Andrea Bocelli's Got Nice Legs Hasn't He!