Dave Gorman (I)

Stormin' Gorman

Dave Gorman's show, Genius, is returning to our screens as part of the BBC's autumn comedy season. Scott Matthewman talks to the travelling comedian about touring and a darts obsession.

Dave Gorman interview

The comedy show intent on unearthing genius ideas returns, but as host Dave Gorman reveals, it's all change for series two...

Dave Gorman's Genius - New Series

If rational ideas like "The cat-shaped cat flap", "edible sticky tape" and "A wasp in every car to keep drivers alert" grab you then Genius is the show to watch.

Dave Gorman: Genius. Monday Nights. BBC2

If you came to any of the recordings then you know the show has a very different format to last year.

Things To Do Before I Die: Appear on a TV show

The TV show appearance is included on my 'Bucket List' not because it was something I particularly wanted to do, but because it is exactly the kind of thing I have always shied away from and is therefore, a challenge. I feel uncomfortable about being in the spotlight. Performing in stunt shows for six years never felt like being held under the microscope in the way that having a camera pointed at you does. It's this fear of the limelight that caused me to turn down the opportunity to train Emma Parker-Bowles to drive a car on two wheels for the Sky show 'Vroom Vroom'. That impossible mission was taken up by a friend of mine, veteran stunt driver Graeme Forder.

As it turned out, my inclusion in a TV show happened by accident. I didn't look around for a game show to apply for, and I certainly wasn't going to enter one of Simon Cowell's dubious talent contests! By pure chance, I got selected for Dave Gorman's BBC 2 show 'Genius'.

Dave Gorman: This tour has no gimmicks

After more than a decade of themed innovation, offbeat discovery and daft missions, the smiling comedian has set himself a new challenge - simply being funny.

Dave Gorman: accidental comedian

The Staffordshire funnyman and Genius presenter became a stand-up comedian by accident.

If you prefer your comedy straight up this week's Just a Minute sees panellists Tony Hawks, Josie Lawrence, Justin Moorhouse and Dave Gorman at Derby University this week, talking about mature students, Derby, paying off student loans and Zanzibar (which happens to be the name of the student bar in Derby). The players' verbal dexterity is amusing, but it's their petty squabbling and Nicholas Parsons's exasperation that provide the belly laughs. And if this show doesn't snap you out of the January blues, there's probably no helping you until spring arrives.

And now let's recommend another comedy series that is hardly in the full blush of youth: Chain Reaction (Radio 4, Wednesdays, 6.30pm), which this week will be half-way through its second series. The format is simple: the interviewee in the first programme becomes the interviewer in the next, and so on until the interviewer in the first becomes the interviewee in the sixth. The conversation may range freely, but always starts from the same point - the comedic style of the interviewee. It works best when both are stand-ups - they're good at being automatically funny - and the series reached a peak last week, when Dave Gorman interviewed Frank Skinner.

It's easy to dislike Skinner. There's the football, the laddishness, the swearing, the pornographic stage show. Listening to Chain Reaction, though, it was just as easy to like him. This is one charming guy, as honest when discussing his financial troubles - his life savings took a bit of a hammering when the American bank in which they were residing went under - as he is frank (it's the only word) about his sex life. It takes a very un-laddish lad to admit that the disadvantage to three-in-a-bed sex is the occasional clash of heads and the constant fear, on the part of the man, that the women are whispering about him, and giggling.

He can also tell a story about his straitened upbringing without coming over all Angela's Ashes. Yes, it took some time for the Skinner family's council house to acquire an inside toilet, but when they did his father was not impressed. A toilet inside the house? That sounded unhygienic. And as for the bath, well, the young Skinner bathed only once or twice a year. "Why should I? I didn't have a sex life at the time." Tomorrow's programme is even better - Skinner interviews Eddie Izzard.

Comedy probably divides opinion like nothing else - what one generation finds rib-tickling, another can find unfunny, even distasteful. Having started his stand-up career in Edinburgh back in 1987, some might consider Frank Skinner a somewhat fossilised funster now compared to the new, young names on today's circuit. But, during Radio 4's Chain Reaction, it's clear that fellow, albeit very different, comedian and guest interviewer, Dave Gorman, has a healthy respect for the banjo-playing Brummie as he reflects on his love of live performance, football and even outdoor toilets. Dubbed a comedian of the lad culture age, Skinner admits success could have easily made him complacent now he's hit middle age and got money in the bank, but seems determined to try new avenues of comedy.

Growing up, he reveals, he wanted to be a cowboy, footballer or a pop star. Having recently rediscovered his musical bent, all he needs now is to adapt an old George Formby song and he could be storming the charts again, like when Three Lions hit number one and made him a truly household name. The next Chain Reaction sees Skinner swap chairs and interview Eddie Izzard - comedic chalk and cheese if ever there was, not least in wardrobe and make-up departments.