Dave Gorman

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

David James Gorman (born March 2, 1971) is a documentary comedian and humourist. 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.

Gorman was born in Stafford, England. He intitially studied mathematics at Manchester University^[1] (but never graduated ^{[citation needed]}), 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.

2006 saw him becoming a regular contributor on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Dave also regularly appeared 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 was one of the team captains.

Staffordshire University awarded Gorman with an honorary doctorate in 2006.

1 Are You Dave Gorman?
2 Dave Gorman's Important Astrology Experiment
3 Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure
4 Current work
5 References and footnotes
6 External links

[edit] Are You Dave Gorman?

Main article: Are You Dave Gorman?

Dave Gorman shot to fame following a drunken bet with his friend 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. More trips followed to meet more Dave Gormans.

Thus far the bet was fairly vague, but on the way to meet Dave Gormans numbers four and five, they debated what "loads" meant. Danny decided on one for every card in the deck. That is, 54 (including jokers).

To aid the search, which by his own admission became scarily serious, Dave created a stage-show about their travels that was also used to appeal for further Dave Gormans to come forward. The show was called Are You Dave Gorman? This acquired something of a cult following and several people helped Dave in his quest, which he did eventually complete. (Five, including two women, even changed their names by deed poll to Dave Gorman).

All this came to the attention of the BBC, who gave Dave a series, co-written and co-produced by Danny, entitled The Dave Gorman Collection, which took the form of televised lectures, in which he explained what he had done. Later a book entitled Are You Dave Gorman? was written by the two of them.

Once the TV show existed Dave stopped touring the show in the UK, instead taking it to several overseas festivals and later running the show for 3 months off-Broadway, a run which saw Dave appearing as a fully-fledged guest on The Late Show With David Letterman.

Two Australian soap operas have named fictional characters Dave Gorman as an in-joke, and the comedian has been bombarded with so many e-mails about it that he has had to publicly appeal to people to stop sending him details of other Dave Gormans. He was, after all, only trying to meet 54. At the time of writing he has met 107.

The title tune for The Dave Gorman Collection is a variation of Accordion Song by Eliza Carthy, which is the first track on her 1998 album, Red.

[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 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" 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 travelling 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, an orange in each hand and singing loudly (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 practically bankrupt. Ultimately he borrowed the money from his mother and ordered his friend, and fellow Documentary-comedian, Danny Wallace (of Join Me fame) to bet the sum on Ian Woosman 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.

The original British paperback of Googlewhack Adventure (availiable in 4 different colours)

[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. He 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 USA 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.

[edit] Current work

He hosts a BBC Radio 4 show called Genius, where the suggestions for ideas that are 'genius' are considered by Gorman and a guest.

On April 24th, 2006, Gorman made his first appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart where he was credited as the show's Senior New Correspondent. On April 27th, he debuted his first appearance 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 September 21st, co-hosting a segment called "ConTROVersy" with the Daily Show's other English correspondent, John Oliver, in which the pair calmly and genteelly discussed UK Prime Minister Tony Blair over tea, parodying American stereotypes of Britons.