Dave Gorman
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- For the ice hockey player, see Dave Gorman (ice hockey)
| Dave Gorman | |
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| Born | David James Gorman March 2, 1971 Stafford, England |
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David James Gorman (born March 2, 1971 in Stafford, Staffordshire) is an author, documentary comedian and humorist. He performs comedy shows on stage in which he tells stories of extreme adventures and presents the evidence to the audience in order to prove to them that, unlike in most other stage presentations, they are true stories. He is a former stand-up comedian.
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[edit] Biography
Gorman grew up in Stafford, England and attended Walton High School. Through his work he has revealed that he has a twin brother called Nick and that his father is called Derek. He studied mathematics at Manchester University[1] (but never graduated[1]) and before his solo successes was in demand as a writer, having co-written three series of The Mrs Merton Show as well as writing for many other TV series, including The Fast Show, in the UK. In 2003, he was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.
Dave also regularly appears on the BBC Three show Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive, a comedy show about the making of a celebrity panel show hosted by Rob Brydon. Dave Gorman is one of the show's team captains. In 2006 he became an occasional contributor on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He also hosts his own radio series, Genius, and his documentary feature, America Unchained, was shown on More4 in February 2008. A similarly titled book is due for publication in April 2008.
Gorman is a vegetarian; a fact that he revealed in the documentary film Dave Gorman In America Unchained. He lists his hobbies as photography, cycling and playing poker. Staffordshire University awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2006. He supports Liverpool F.C.
[edit] Early work
Dave Gorman is a former stand-up comedian and comedy writer. As a writer he contributed to two series featuring Jenny Eclair, and to The Mrs Merton Show. His other writing credits include Harry Hill and Steve Coogan.
Gorman's first one man "documentary style" show was entitled Reasons to be Cheerful. Billed as "a ninety minute show based on a four minute pop song", it was based on the song "Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3" by Ian Dury and the Blockheads. The show examined the song's lyrics in detail, with a view to examining whether or not each of the items listed in the song were really reasons to be cheerful. The show was first performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1998, and toured theatres afterwards.
His second full length show Dave Gorman's Better World was first performed in Edinburgh in 1999. For the show he wrote anonymous letters to thousands of local newspapers and asked the public to suggest ways in which one man can make the world a better place. He then attempted to carry out their suggestions in order to determine their efficacy.
[edit] Are You Dave Gorman?
Dave Gorman shot to fame following a drunken bet with his flatmate Danny Wallace. The bet was thus: Dave claimed that he shared the name "Dave Gorman" with the assistant manager of East Fife F.C. and that there must be "loads" of others around. Danny disagreed with him. So the two travelled to Methil (from London — several hundred miles), with a polaroid camera, to meet the assistant manager, whose name was indeed Dave Gorman. The bet soon evolved into a monster: on the way to meet Dave Gormans numbers four and five, Danny decided Dave must meet one for every card in the deck (including the Jokers). His quest to meet this target was described, highlights including 5 people changing their name by deed poll (two of whom were women), and a trip to New York that resulted in failure when he discovered the man he'd gone to meet was not Dave Gorman, but B. David Gorman and therefore was ineligible. The trip to New York also included meeting an actor who had played a character called David Gorman, the validity of which is hotly contested in the book.
[edit] Dave Gorman's Important Astrology Experiment
His second television series, broadcast on BBC Two, was entitled Dave Gorman's Important Astrology Experiment, and was quite a novel and unexpected idea for a comedy show, being based upon the idea of a controlled scientific experiment, although naturally not a serious one. The series had six episodes.
The premise was that it would test whether or not astrology really worked. Over the course of forty days, he would try to follow any instructions given to people with his star sign in a selection of horoscopes, while his "control experiment" (his twin brother, Nick) ignored them. Each would record the events of each day, and how they fared in each of three areas of life: love, health, and wealth. On each episode of the show, Dave would show footage of the amusing situations he got into by trying to follow his horoscope, and then asked a panel of "experts", agony aunt Denise Robertson (love), GMTV's Dr. Hilary Jones (health), and financial expert Alvin Hall (money), in the studio to assess how he had fared in the three areas. Following an audience vote, Dave would display on a "happiness graph" the difference between how he and his twin brother had fared that week, and whether it showed that astrology had produced a positive effect, a negative effect, or no significant effect at all.
The results of the 'experiment' were dramatic indeed. The various charts showed that his overall happiness, love and wealth steadily began to recede over time (especially wealth as he was forced to travel excessively). Throughout the experiment he had numerous adventures, including traveling to New York to meet a long lost friend and then leaving a few hours later because he was ordered to spend as much time at home as possible, standing in Covent Garden on one leg with his foot in a bucket of water, a tangerine in one hand, and some breakfast cereal in the other, in a bowl that cost £85 from Harrods singing the National Anthem backwards (literally taken from one very odd horoscope), and the ethical trauma of reading a pornographic magazine at Sunday lunch in front of his mother.
He showed that his wealth was rapidly declining, as were happiness and love, until, on the last day he invested the last of his money to travel to Dubai to watch a golf tournament (the Dubai Desert Classic) and bet on Ian Woosnam, a golfer that shared his birthday (and would therefore share his luck). He emptied his account to travel there and, using his lucky number of the day from each of the 40 days of his experiment to determine how much he should bet, went ahead with the plan. However, he then found out that not only was gambling illegal in the country, but also that his lucky number indicated he should bet 2903 Dirhim, which at the time was 549 pounds sterling - a feat impossible since he was now out of funds. Ultimately he borrowed the money from his mother and asked her to bet the sum on Ian Woosnam to win the match of the day - as he had been instructed by his horoscope.
With his happiness at an all time low, love scraping the bottom and his finances in an extremely negative position, the experts, his mother, Danny, the crowd and, of course, Dave himself could only hope the bet would pay off - which it ultimately did at odds long enough to place him not only back at level wealth, but supplying him with twice as much cash as he had started off with.
Therefore, he "proved" that astrology works and has made him happier than the control.
[edit] Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure
In 2003, he toured Britain with a show entitled Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure, and published a book of the same name. It is another true story. At 31 Dave decided to give up his stupid ways, grow a beard and write a novel. As a result Dave believes people took him more seriously and a new novel was commissioned. Whilst trying to write a novel for his publisher (Random House) Dave became obsessed with Googlewhacks, when someone notified him that his site had one (Francophile Namesakes), and caused him to travel across the world finding people who had authored them (one of whom turned out to be one of the Dave Gormans he had met in his first adventure). He eventually spent his publisher's advance on the quest, and had to create the Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure show to pay them back.
This show was premiered at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and then went on to sell out for a two week run at the Sydney Opera House (albeit in its smallest venue: Studio Theatre). It also sold out in a major venue at the 2003 Edinburgh Fringe (George Square Theatre) before embarking on a major UK tour of 75 shows in the space of 3 months. It won Dave the award for Best One Person Show at the HBO U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado, an award he had previously won for the show Are You Dave Gorman? He ended up writing a book about his Googlewhack Adventure which went on to be the Sunday Times Number One Best Seller. During his "Googlewhack Adventure", Gorman had a nervous breakdown which he discusses frankly in the show.
In 2004, a DVD of the popular Googlewhack Adventure was released which was filmed at Swansea Grand Theatre.
In 2005, he toured the U.S. and performed his Googlewhack show in several cities including Los Angeles. While in Los Angeles, he appeared on The Tonight Show elaborating on his travels and his quest. This tour, in which he stayed at chain motels and experienced corporate America, led Dave to undertake a road-trip across the USA in which he avoided such hotels and corporate gas stations in favour of family owned businesses. The road trip was documented as the book and film America Unchained.
[edit] Genius
He hosts a BBC Radio 4 show called Genius, in which members of the public submit suggestions to make a better world. Gorman and a guest then assess the idea in order to determine whether it qualifies as "genius". One series of five episodes was broadcast between 27 October and 24 November 2005, with a CD of the first series was released on 27 November 2006. The second series was broadcast between 7 September and 12 October 2006, with a CD released in 7 January 2008 and a third series between 1 October and 5 November 2007. He's made many references to disliking Darren Day in various episodes of the show. A pilot for a television version was recorded on 23rd November 2007[2], and a series was commissioned in the spring of 2008.
The series was created by Ali Crockatt and David Scott, and is produced by Simon Nicholls.
[edit] The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
On April 24, 2006, Gorman made his first appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in which he was credited as the show's Senior New Correspondent. On April 27th, he debuted as the host of the show's satirical statistical analysis piece called "Poll Smoking with Dave Gorman". He was the first Daily Show correspondent to have been born in England, and the third Daily Show correspondent to have been born outside of the United States. His most recent appearance on the show was on October 5th, 2006. He has also appeared co-hosting a segment called "ConTROVersy" with the Daily Show's other English correspondent, John Oliver, in which the pair calmly and genteelly discussed former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair over tea, parodying American stereotypes of Britons.
[edit] Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive
Gorman starred in the BBC Three TV series Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive. In the show Gorman plays a version of himself in the role of a team captain on the deliberately lame mock comedy 'panel game'. The show concerns the making of a comedy panel game show called Annually Retentive, themed around historical events, and hosted by Rob Brydon. The show is deliberately parodic, while the game show blatantly steals ideas from other, similar shows such as Have I Got News For You and Never Mind The Buzzcocks.
[edit] America Unchained
Between October and December 2006, Dave Gorman undertook a coast to coast road trip across the United States of America. A book about the trip, entitled America Unchained: A Freewheeling Roadtrip In Search of Non-Corporate USA, was released on 3 April 2008. The rationale for the trip was to discover whether it is possible to travel across the USA without ever patronising any corporate or chain-style businesses. Thus Dave ate, slept and filled his car in restaurants, hotels and gas stations which were privately owned.
A documentary film of the adventure was also made and was aired on the British TV channel More4 on 5 February 2008 and released on DVD on 11 February. In 2007, it won the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature at the Austin Film Festival.
[edit] Other Appearances
Dave appeared on two episodes of Have I Got News For You, in particular the famous episode where host Angus Deayton was teased about a story that appeared about him in the news that week. He also appeared in one episode of Sport Comedy Quiz They Think It's All Over. Dave also appeared on episode nine on the A Series of QI with Jo Brand and Jeremy Hardy, in which he won.
Dave is currently a regular on Grand Designs Live, in which he showcases eccentric houses in America.
[edit] References
- ^ a b BBC - h2g2 - 'Are You Dave Gorman?' - by Dave Gorman and Danny Wallace - the Book. BBC. Retrieved on 2006-09-18.
- ^ Wolf, Ian (2007-09-19). A Genius TV programme (English). British Sitcom Guide. Retrieved on 2007-09-20.
[edit] External links
- Dave Gorman's website
- Dave Gorman's photos on Flickr
- Interview – from the B3ta website.
- BBC Genius page
- Dave Gorman's Blog
- Poll Smoking With Dave Gorman video
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