Dave Gorman interview

We talk to Dave Gorman about his radio show, new book, forthcoming Edinburgh show, and find out why he has trouble getting a travel visa...

Hi Dave. You've been presenting your Absolute Radio show for nearly two years now. We guess you're enjoying it?

Yeah, loving it! Genuinely more than I thought I would. Many years ago I used to do cover for 6 Music - someone would be away for a week and I'd fill in - and I really liked it. The BBC kept trying to persuade me to do a weekly show, but I kept saying 'no' because I didn't think I'd like doing it on a regular basis. It was nice as a novelty thing, but I wanted to be able to continue touring and doing the other things I do...

Then I did three weeks of covering for Frank Skinner on Absolute Radio. I loved it. Absolute then asked me if I'd like to do a regular show, and I found myself saying 'yes, I really would' - I surprised myself with that answer!

On Sunday of all days though! That must be a pain...

There's not been one morning where I've got up and thought 'oh, here we go'. It was tough the last time I was on tour - I think I only missed one show and that was because the night before I was in Belfast - I was doing things like doing a gig in Manchester and coming home overnight, going to bed at 3am and having to get up at 7am. So that was hard, but it was always fine. And, actually, my show is late morning. Frank on Saturdays does 8am to 10am, but I do 10am to 12 on Sundays which is a much more civilised time...

It's a really nice part of the day. There is a certain type of personality that's needed for breakfast radio, which I'm not. You won't hear me saying 'Heyyyy, Gooood Morning'. I couldn't do that. Breakfast radio has to be slightly upbeat. However Sunday morning can be a bit more, 'That's ok, you're still in bed. Relax'. You can be a bit more 'normal' and a bit less caffeinated.

What do you think of the 'Faces For Radio' poster that Absolute have been running...

It's been a little bit weird because the posters have been on the side of busses and there's been two occasions where I've been getting on a bus that has my own face on it. That's a time to bury your head in the paper and wear a hat. In your own mind you somehow imagine everyone else on the bus has taken in the poster on the side of it, but obviously the reality is that if someone came up to me on a bus and said 'what advert is on the side of this bus?', I wouldn't know most of the time. But in your own head you feel very self-conscious boarding!

There was an initial idea when they were putting the campaign together that we were not so keen on. Radio is a slightly backslapping medium - DJs reading out the 'love your show' type emails they get - we try and avoid all that. The initial campaign had a bit of a 'these are our morning DJs and they're fabulous' message. That wasn't the exact words but that was the tone of it.

It was about us being suave and sophisticated and witty - it wasn't taking the piss, but straight up: 'these guys are better than you'. I couldn't put my name to that. I can't be on a poster going 'look at me, I'm brilliant'. It's the antithesis of the way we conduct ourselves on the show. We don't read out those 'love the show' emails. We receive them gratefully, and we're happy people like the show, but we don't reflect that on air.

So I think we were all a bit uncomfortable with this 'boosting' campaign idea, so the reaction to that was the one that was one that was the exact opposite...

You have a section on your show called 'Found Poetry', where you read out some of the nutty things people write on the internet. Is there any particular sites you visit to obtain those quotes?

I can't reveal too much of my working but there's more than one website I go to where nutjobs hang out. But the key to it is finding more than one website; often if it is about a celebrity it's normally a fansite where people will have a particular passion. They're already lacking the common sense that is in the rest of us because they've gone to a place that says, for example, 'Jeremy Clarkson is our god' - in the rules of the world in which he is the god, their comment about him already then appears more important. Self-importance and arrogance and over-confidence are the key parts that make that Found Poetry work.

We do love some of those comments you find. Moving on, you've written a new book about playing weird games. Can you tell us more about that...

You can put 'weird' in brackets because I've been playing every kind of game. Some of them are weird, some of them aren't. This wasn't something I did on purpose to write a book, so it doesn't have that kind of self-conscious contrived feel.

All the books I've written are not really about the thing they're about, they're actually talking about the places and people, and what's going on in your own life at the time. So this particular slice of my life involved me going and playing games with people... but it was often with people I didn't know. Almost all of them were strangers.

But your Edinburgh show isn't about playing games? We'd have thought you'd have linked the two...

You're right, it's not. You try and do things which you think are right for the medium. With those kind of storytelling shows I've done in the past the reason they've worked is the honesty and evidence on display. I don't have the same degree of evidence for the games, but also it's a different kind of story, and it has a different kind of arc.

I decided to write a book about the games because a particular thing happened at the end that had an emotional impact on me and so I thought, 'I can see how that is a story so I'll write a book about that'. However, I don't think there's an hour long stage show that could tell that story as well as the book can.

Fair enough. So what is your Edinburgh show about?

I haven't written it all yet, so I don't know - but it will involve a projector. When I did my last tour the initial intention was that it would be one man and a mic, but towards the end of the process when I was putting the show together I ended up writing this bit which couldn't be done without PowerPoint and stuff, so that ended up being the last half hour of the show. I used to treat it like it was a surprise, so the show was basically two hours, and half way through the second half a curtain would fall - or open or something - and you'd suddenly see there was a screen. The audience would always cheer because it was like having pudding after a really good meal. It was just extra energy and difference, and it's always good to change the pace.

After that tour, every time I was thinking about new material it would be stuff that suited a projector... but you can't go into a club with a projector. The way you normally build up stand-up material is you go into a club and do five minutes and ten minutes of new stuff to try it out. But you can't go to a club and say 'can I put up a nine foot by twelve foot screen, oh and I'm only going to do five minutes?'. Even if you've got the space to put it up, it doesn't make sense to go to all that effort for only for five minutes... it also would feel odd to the audience - so much effort for so little time.

So what I've ended up doing is setting up a night in London which I host and put four people on. I make sure the acts are really fucking high quality. We have a protector permanently on in situ, so when I put a guest on their name is projected onto the screen so it all becomes integrated. Throughout the night I can then do all my new stuff.

So I end up doing between forty minutes and fifty minutes of new stuff once a month and I've got the security of knowing I've put on really good guests so the audience are getting value for money. I've done four of them now and I've got one more to do in July... and so the Edinburgh show, which I will also then tour, will be the best bits of that. I haven't worked out what shape it will take yet, so there isn't an overall theme. There isn't a narrative, but there is getting on for three hours of material there for me to dip into. But I've only done most routines once so far, so I have also got previews gigs lined up to help work out the best shape for an hour-long Edinburgh show and to get that material banged back into my head.

Just to be clear, the show won't be a parody of a PowerPoint presentation. It isn't me going 'and the profits in the third quarter are...', it just happens to be that PowerPoint is the medium I use to put things on a screen. I guess it could be labelled 'illustrated stand-up'.

Talking of 'illustrated stand-up', your 2000 show Are You Dave Gorman? - in which you tracked down other people who shared your name - was a huge success. Are you still in touch with any of the other Dave Gormans?

I'm still in touch with a couple of them, but it's very hard to be actively in touch with all of them on a regular basis as it makes your address book look silly!

One of them is responsible for trouble in my life. When I need to get a visa to travel to Australia I can't get it online like most people, I always get a message popping up saying I have to visit the embassy. It's a pain in the arse. So I go to the embassy and they say 'there you go, it's all fine'. The first time that happened, I asked why I had to go all that way for a bit of paper and why I couldn't do it online like everyone else... and they explained that someone with my name and a very similar birth date is flagged up on a list so every time you put those details into a computer it's going to send a little alarm signal.

I was talking to one of the other Dave Gormans about this and said 'this probably happens to you as well?' - at that point he blushed and admitted that the first time he went to Australia he didn't think you had to get a visa as it is part of the commonwealth... so he flew to Australia, got there, and was put on the first plane back. 48 hours of flying to get back to where you started from... and then he had to go to the embassy and fly back straight back again... so, anyway, he is the reason I now have to go to an embassy at 6am if I want to travel!

Tune in to Dave Gorman's show on Absolute Radio every Sunday morning from 10am. 'Dave Gorman Vs The Rest Of The World' is out now, published by Ebury Press - Order. For details on Dave's live show, 'Dave Gorman's Powerpoint Presentation' which will debut at the Edinburgh Festival and then tour major venues the UK this autumn visit: www.davegorman.com