Starting And Ending

That was a busy few days. The Porthcawl bootcamp was fantastic. I've had a few people asking me what I thought of Porthcawl as a town and the truth is that I have little or no idea because I didn't have any time for sightseeing. I was there to work and that's pretty much all I did.

We were based in Bridgend (at Hazelwood House - one of the loveliest, most welcoming guesthouses I've ever been to. When I checked out the owner gave me a card wishing me luck for the upcoming tour!)) and each day, I sat with a good friend and picked the last show apart, going through it making changes, cuts and improvements.

It got better each time but the really good news is that it started off being closer to the finished article than I expected it to so I feel slightly ahead of myself on that score. Of course that only means that the physical challenge of the tour now creeps back into my brain and becomes my main concern once more.

The next three previews are in Andover and I was expecting to spend the next couple of days preparing for them with yet more rewrites but as it is I'm going to spend the time finalising some of the cycling details. And instead of travelling to Andover in the passenger seat of a car or on the train with a notebook open on my lap I think I'll cycle there... I might as well find out what it's like trying to do a long show on stage at the end of a long day's ride sooner rather than later.

And while I'm feeling excited to be near the starting line of a new project this last few days also marked the finishing line for another. On Sunday I travelled from Bridgend to Bristol and then to Edinburgh where I was doing a reading as part of the Book Festival. I'm pretty sure it'll be the last reading I do for America Unchained. One ship sails out of port just as another docks. It took a bit of adjustment to get my head out of the stand-up mode and into the right shape for the reading but I really enjoyed it. Things came out in a not-quite-ideal-order but the questions were really interesting and the audience really engaging.

Visiting Edinburgh so briefly during the festival feels strange. I wish I had the time to spend a week or so up there taking in shows... there are so many things I want to see. It definitely wouldn't feel right seeing nothing at all so despite feeling wiped out by the shows, the work, the travel and the reading, I made sure I squeezed at least one show in.

It was Ali McGregor's Late Night Cabaret. I performed at one of Ali's nights back in London a while ago and loved it then and it didn't disappoint last night. She has different guests each night but with the Fringe in full flow there's not exactly a dearth of quality performers around and it's so classily put together that I can't imagine she'll be putting on a duff act any time soon. Camp, funny, silly, smart... I recommend it. It is the best show I saw at the Fringe in 2009 after all.

Now... Andover...

The Lyric, Newcastle & Lincoln

It's been a busy week. On Monday I was doing Frank Skinner's Credit Crunch Cabaret at The Lyric Theatre. I was a little bit concerned to be closing the show. The brilliant Ian Broudie had closed the first half and I was pretty sure we were occupying each other's slots on the bill.

It was also the first time I've ever had to follow a burlesque act (the really quite delightful, Missy Malone) but having dipped my toe back in the stand-up waters late last year and enjoyed myself and now having committed to an autumn tour... well, I guess it was time for a proper test. And a thousand people in a proper old West End Theatre is as good a way as any to find out where you are. I loved it. Those theatres are so much fun to play. I even sorted out a tiny bit of new material too. Hurrah.

(Of course, I do realise that nobody's reading this bit. I've invoked Blogging Rule #28: if you link to a burlesque dancer's site, don't expect anyone to read the rest of what you have to say. Oh well.)

I went out to celebrate after which proved to be a bit of a mistake because I felt the effects on Tuesday when I had to head to Newcastle for the next America Unchained book event.

As well as promoting the book I've been promoting the imminent arrival of Genius on TV and as part of that I've been writing a couple of newspaper articles on the subject. I was under the impression that one of them had to be delivered by the close of play on Friday... but late on Monday I discovered that the deadline had moved to Thursday which threw my plans out of whack somewhat.

Instead of spending Monday afternoon prepping for the gig at The Lyric I devoted it to writing but by the time I had to leave for the theatre the work wasn't done. I had Genius related interviews all Thursday so I knew I wouldn't have a chance to do any of it then and the Friday morning I'd set aside for the task was no longer of any use to me. So I took my laptop with me on the train to Newcastle and tried to get as much of it done as possible then. And a hangover - even though it was only a slight one - wasn't the best accompaniment to that.

I knew there wouldn't be time to finish it on the journey but I was pleased to get a sizeable chunk done. But it left me feeling frazzled and fragile when we got to the shop in Newcastle. The staff there were great though and there was a lovely crowd who were really up for it so I got a bit of an adrenaline kick and the reading ended up being really good fun.

It would have been lovely to spend a bit of time in Newcastle. In an ideal world I'd have brought my "proper" camera with me and set out into the darkness with a tripod to do some late night photography because the city's architecture and liveliness would be great for some night-shooting. Instead I headed straight back to the hotel to watch the football (glorious) and continue the writing (headachey) and contented myself with pointing my point-and-shoot snapper out of the hotel window instead.


The schedule that was laid out for the next day meant that the article simply had to be finished that night or I'd miss the deadline so I worked on, finally finishing it at 3am.

Wednesday was already set to be an especially long and arduous day, but now, with a distinct lack of sleep it was only going to feel harder. I was doing another reading that day - this time in Lincoln - but the book's publicist and the Genius publicist had conspired to ensure I had seven or eight appointments to make before that. I did stock signings - which means I signed books but not as part of any event - in two Gateshead shops and two more in York as well as doing various phone interviews and popping into a local radio station along the way. It was one of those frustratingly bitty days where there was never a significant enough break in the schedule, just the odd twenty minutes here or there so that, apart from the hotel breakfast, there was never time to have an actual meal and we (that's me and Ed Publisher by the way) survived on snacks and sandwiches all day.

The magic recipe of a warm welcome and an engaged and interested crowd meant the dose of adrenaline was administered and the Lincoln event was just as much fun as the one in Newcastle. (The fact that all four recent events have been so different - thanks to the Q&A sessions - is what really makes these events enjoyable to me)

But the moment I came off stage (or rather, off-shop-floor) I felt my energy dying completely. Lincoln must be one of the few British cities I've never visited before and I really didn't know what to expect of it. It looked beautiful. But as with Newcastle there was no chance to really appreciate it... this time because my Thursday schedule of Genius-related interviews meant I had to be back in London for the morning.

Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be a direct rail connection between Lincoln and London and there certainly wasn't a railway route back home at that time of night so instead we had the extravagance of a car home. My head didn't say hello to the pillows til the wee small hours.

Five hours sleep followed by three train journeys, five cars, four stock signings, three interviews, one reading and no meals. That's not good. And at 10 the next morning I was in the centre of town for more interviews.

I think I slept for much of Friday. Instead of spending the day writing the article - as originally planned - I spent it recovering from the lack of sleep endured as a result of writing it on Tuesday night. Which should mean that everything kind of balances out in the end. But three nights without decent sleep followed by one long day of rest never quite does that does it?

Brizzle and Brum

Two lovely America Unchained book readings this last week in Bristol and Birmingham... thanks to everyone who came along.

Especially my Mum who surprised me by sneaking into the Birmingham event unannounced.

I'd been on for less than a minute when I spied her on the third row. She even put her hand up to ask a question in the Q&A. It wasn't a question about the book... she wanted to know when I was going to give her a gimble - something I had once promised and have yet to deliver. Bad boy.

By the way, it's worth pointing out that I do see my Mum from time to time. And we do speak on a regular basis. She doesn't need to go to these kind of extremes in order to communicate with me...

Not sure if these links will all work, but Lucy from the Birmingham store has uploaded some photos from the event to my facebook page. This is me laughing at the way the staff were trying to cajole my Mum into joining in with a group photo and this is the group photo with my Mum standing reluctantly on the end.

I'll Be Right Back After This Commercial Break

This is published today. You can, ahem, buy it, if you, ahem, like.

It's a new edition. Some typos have been fixed but essentially it's the same words (and photos) but with a new cover and a friendlier price.

I've never had my name in shiny foil type stuff before. It's the publishing equivalent of having your name in lights.

I'm on Richard & Judy later today promoting it and I'm doing some readings in Bristol, Birmingham, Newcastle and Lincoln soon. (All of which are in parts of the country I didn't manage to get to for a reading when the first edition came out.) See the live dates page for details.

Mind you... the publication date appears to mean very little these days. I saw the book on display in a shop last week and have received a few e-mails from people who've already bought this edition. One of them (and I'm paraphrasing) said, "Hey Dave... I bought your new book... but felt a bit foolish when I discovered there was a DVD available. Oh well."

I don't know how I'm supposed to react to this. Other than chuckling to myself at the implicit laziness... or the idea that a moving picture is inherently better than some words on a page. It honestly never occurred to me that anyone would think the film and the book were in anyway equivalent. (Which is short sighted of me because they're about the same thing, right?) I guess because I know how different the two are I just didn't stop to think how it might appear from the outside looking in.

I'm proud of them both and if it were a narrative fiction then I'd understand the idea of equivalence because when you make a film of a book, you try to convey the essence of the book on screen. But that's not what was going on here. I was making a journey, not a film. If we were dramatising the book, we'd include the scene where the police ran us out of town and the bit where someone pointed a gun at us and the bit where we... oh, you get the idea and I'm rapidly disappearing up my own fundament.

In other news, I discovered the existence of a Grindcore (?) duo called Sandpaper Condom this morning. Truly. Sadly, not being British, they have probably never heard of Dick Emery.

Cheltenham

I enjoyed the reading at Cheltenham last night although I was slightly annoyed by how rusty I'd become since I last did one.

My performance felt woolly and shapeless at the start and I don't think I pulled it into proper shape until we got into the Q&A part of things.

I always like the Q&A bit, not least because it makes each night different for me and stops the evenings becoming routine. It was certainly interesting last night to find the questions were a bit more writerly than normal. Maybe it's a consequence of being part of a literary festival. Or maybe it's what happens when an audience breathes in Cheltenham's refined air. Or maybe it's simply because the book's now been out for quite a while and so more of the audience have actually read it and so have opinions and questions that relate to the content. I hadn't expected that - most readings happen so soon after publication that you can safely assume nobody there has read it - but I enjoyed it for all that.

Ahoy Fowey

Sometimes things fall into place and it feels like the fates are looking after you.

I really like the Daphne Du Maurier Festival. I've performed there a couple of times before and found it to be charming and eclectic and exactly the kind of thing a festival in a small town like that should be.

They asked me to return to do another book reading this year and it coincided perfectly with a run of existing book readings so it was really easy to say yes and add it on at the end. Lovely.

Then I got asked to do Grand Designs Live. They started looking for someone to present some films about quirky American houses for their Channel 4 show at around the time my film about an American road trip was broadcast on More 4. It rated well. The idea for the film is in part explained with reference to my interest in Googie Architecture... it obviously seemed like a good fit. I'm a fan of Grand Designs in its regular incarnation so after meeting the production team to discuss the films they wanted me to present I was very happy to say yes. Lovely once more.

There was the faint hint that there might be a spanner in the works when I then discovered that as well as making the US films I was going to have to be on the set to introduce them each night. The show was being broadcast each night from May 4th-9th and the reading was already scheduled for the 8th. Oops... I thought I was going to have to decline the GDL offer. But nope... there were only four American houses to visit - and the films would be played in on the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th and then there was another UK based event they wanted me to be involved in which would be filmed on the day of the 6th and shown on the last show - the 9th. As if by magic the one day I wasn't needed was the 8th... the one day when I wasn't available. Perfect.

Well almost. Fowey is a spectacularly beautiful spot but it's also a very long way away from London. The original plan had been to drive or train it down a day early and extend my stay into the weekend and take in a few of the other festival shows hither and thither. (Kate Rusby was appearing there on the Friday night and she's ace so I was definitely looking forward to that.) Doing the return journey in one day seemed less than perfect. That could have meant spending twelve hours in a car just for a 75 minute book reading. But then my publishers came up with a new plan. An early morning flight to Newquay. A cab from there to Fowey. (Conveniently taking me from coast-to-coast. Sort of.) A reading. A few hours in the Cornish sun and then a cab back to Newquay and a late flight home. My trip to Cornwall would still be Rusbyless... but it was still feeling pretty close to perfect.

But then... while the whole of Britain seemed to be sweltering in the sunshine, Fowey was mysteriously beset by rain. Rain that started about ten minutes after I'd finished signing books and ended just as I got in the cab to Newquay. Hmm. Not lovely. Not perfect.

And to make matters worse, Newquay was then consumed by fog... which meant that our flight home was cancelled. I don't understand how these things work. I'm sure when a train is cancelled the operators are under some obligation to make amends. Buses are laid on at least. I've been in the States when an airline has had to cancel a flight and I saw passengers being offered hotel rooms overnight because... well, because you can't just leave people with nowhere to stay just because you've cancelled a flight. But here it seems you can. Ryanair cancelled the flight and we were told we could get a refund or we could rebook for the next day and that was that.

I don't think Ryanair actually have any staff on the ground themselves but the airport staff did a grand job of staying calm while dealing with a plane load of angry, stranded passengers. Myself and my travelling companion, Ed (see last blog) ended up having to stay over in Newquay and when you add the price of a hotel room into the mix those bargain airlines suddenly don't seem quite such a bargain. And because everything else was booked up we ended up staying in a rather bleak Best Western which was seemingly occupied entirely by a coach load of elderly German tourists unperturbed by its 1970s decor.

What a strange poetic injustice that my book tour should end like this. There I am promoting a book about my efforts to drive across the States without using any chains... and then circumstances beyond our control force me into the world's largest hotel chain. It felt oh so wrong. And yet stupidly inevitable at the same time. Ho hum.

Book Readings... and the Tellyboxing of Genius

I fly to Galway tomorrow for the start of another week of book-readings. As well as Galway I'll be visiting Manchester, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee. The details/venues/etc are here. Hopefully I'll see some of you at some of them.

In the meantime... here's some rather jolly news. We made a one-off tellybox episode of Genius last year and it's no longer going to be a one-off. We're going to make a series of the show for BBC2 (as well as making more for Radio 4)

Of course, when we're going to make a new series we always need to have a fresh injection of potentially genius ideas... so get your thinking caps on and send them along. Don't post them here though and don't send them to me - I'm sure I'm the least organised member of Team Genius and I can't be trusted with important things like that. No, e-mail Team Genius at genius@bbc.co.uk (including your name and telephone number) or visit the Genius website.

Book plugging across the universe*... only going forwards 'cos I can't find reverse...

It's been a strange old week of promoting the book. I'm exhausted by the amount of press I've had... and delighted by it also. PR people have a habit of being very apologetic... they grimace and say, "I'm really sorry... but I'm going to have to ask you to do one more..." as if I'm going to be unhappy about promoting my own book.

I think some people think of the writing as the artistic bit and consider selling their wares a bit tawdry... but I'm not shifting souvenirs and merchandise I'm selling books and I can't imagine putting the blood, sweat and tears into writing it and then not encouraging people to buy the thing. That sounds like the masochistic route to me.

As well as readings I've been doing all sorts of interviews including one day where I think I managed 15 back to back. There's always a day like this. You visit the BBC and sit in a tiny studio (John, the studio engineer told me that I'd drawn the short straw and that my studio for the day was nicknamed 'The Wardrobe'.) while they connect you up to various regional stations. So you record an interview with BBC Wales, then BBC Lancashire, then BBC Bristol and so on. Some of them are live, some of them are recorded. I think I did interviews at 9am, 9.30, 10, 10.30, 11, 11.30, 12... then I went upstairs and did something face to face for a Radio 2 show before returning and doing 1, 1.30, 2, 2.30, 3, 3.30 and 4... then at 4.45 I got in a car and was driven to Basingstoke for a reading.

The only city we've stayed in overnight so far has been Leeds (which was lovely because I have a couple of longstanding friends there who I could have a bit of a catch up with.) I would have liked to stay over in Nottingham too because it's such a great city but the demands of breakfast telly meant I had to be back in London.

Exhausting as it is I really am delighted that there's this amount of interest in the book. Much as we like to grumble it would be much worse if nobody wanted to talk about it and I was calling the publishers pr office to check that they had the right phone number for me because I hadn't heard from them.

The hardest part of a day like that is remembering what you've already said to someone. Every now and then someone will ask an open-ended question like, "Tell us about one of the other places you went to?" and your mind goes blank as you can't separate what you've already said to someone else from what you might have already said to them.

The most enjoyable interviews have been the ones conducted by the audiences at the readings. There's always some overlap with the questions but by and large each night is different and it stops proceedings from being boring for me and hopefully means that the crowd go away knowing that they've had an event shaped by them. The Leeds event was huge - apparently the biggest that shop's ever organised and last night's in Hove was a joy too.

The schedule means I haven't had a chance to get online much during the week so I haven't been able to stay on top of things like this... so here's a quick round up of things that would have trickled through in smaller, daily entries if I'd had the chance...

WIN A HUBCAP (SEE PHOTO): There are four main characters in the book: me, Stef, Andy and the car. Only the car and I actually went all the way from coast to coast. I love that car. When anything fell off it I swiped it and brought it home as a trophy of my travels and travails. Most of them are on my kitchen wall. When the journey was over we nabbed the remaining hubcaps. I ended up with two of them. So I can afford to let one of them go. So I've given it up as a competition prize... which Play.com are running. I can't give you a link to the direct page because it seems to be embedded but if you visit their site you have a fifty percent chance of seeing a banner advertising the competition.

SIGNED COPIES AT PLAY.COM: In my last entry I gave this link to the signed copies that you could buy through Play.com. They sold out quite quickly... but this afternoon I'm going to sign another two or three hundred for them so they should be on sale again pretty soon. Every shop I read at always asks me to sign some copies before I leave so there always signed copies available at those stores too.

GUARDIAN ARTICLE AND PODCAST: Even though the event at Foyles was filmed the Guardian website has used a small audio clip from the night and illustrated it with a slide show of my photos. I think the photos works quite well. It's here. There's also an article I wrote about the journey in today's Travel section, here.

TODAY AT BORDERS, OXFORD STREET: There's another reading happening this afternoon (Saturday) at Borders on Oxford Street in Central London. I've had quite a few e-mails from people telling me that the shop hasn't been especially helpful when they've called and asked about it... which doesn't bode well. But I think it's the kind of thing you can just turn up to. It starts at 4pm. Come on down.

CARDIFF, APRIL 29TH: This event has apparently sold out. But yesterday I was told that they're going to move it to a bigger venue so if you've tried to get tickets and been told it's full you might want to try the shop again: Tel: 02920 387 909
(If you have a ticket and are worried about the change of venue I think it's very close to the bookshop so it shouldn't cause too much confusion on the night.)

THE WRIGHT STUFF: I'm appearing on the show every morning this next week. There's a small live audience in the studio so why not come along. You can apply here... or you can call Eric on 0207 985 1927.

I think that's everything. I have Sunday off. And breathe.


*- Not actually across the Universe. Just bits of Britain really.

Travels, Books, Stuff...

This is going to be a slightly unfocused entry... I'm playing catch-up with life at the minute.

My trip to the States was fun - largely because the people I was working with were fun. If they hadn't been it would have been pretty awful because it was all work, flights and long drives. I flew London to LA on Friday, went to work on Saturday morning and then flew from LA to Phoenix, Arizona and then Kansas City. On Sunday morning we drove a couple of hours out of the city and had another long day of work. On Monday we flew from Kansas City to Indianapolis. We worked all Tuesday before making a dash for the airport and flying to Dallas. (Tip, don't let a man called Tom programme your GPS... Toms think they know all about Tom Toms and you can end up driving an hour in the wrong direction and not getting to bed until 1am as a result.) We started early on Wednesday with a five hour drive from Dallas to Lubbock and then spent the rest of the day working. Thursday was one of the longest days of my life. I got up at 5am and left the hotel at 5.30. Another five hour drive saw me in Dallas where I boarded a plane bound for Boston where I scooted across the airport just in time to board another flight... this one to London. We landed at 5.20am on Friday. It feels like I went from 5am one day to 5am the next without experiencing a night time. Odd. And discombobulating. And you can see how liking the company of the people you're with - and the work that you're doing - becomes important in such circumstances.

I'll tell you more about the work another time. And I'll be visiting climatecare.org to carbon neutralise the trip some time this week. (I know, I know... it probably does more good for my conscience than the world but...)

I wasn't in any time zone for long so I never really acclimatised to the situation but I've still been a bit wobbly on the other side of it. I've been getting a bit yawny at around 4pm each day and managed to fall asleep bolt upright at my desk yesterday - albeit for only 10 minutes.

Having had only the weekend to recover I was straight back to work on Monday with the book event at Foyles. I'm really glad we did this event this way. It was done to create some video-podcasts about the America Unchained book for the Guardian website. The original idea was just to film me doing a sit-down interview with someone but I think those things can come across as quite dry and formal. Doing it with an audience - and taking their questions (instead of the questions dreamed up by your own publicist) made it more exciting for me and more fun all round. Given how tired I was during the afternoon it was good to have an audience to kick me out of it and give me the much needed adrenaline rush. The idea had been to assemble an audience of around 70 people. Normally when you do a free event there's a relatively large number of no-shows where people take tickets and don't use them... which almost never happens when they've shelled out actual money for them. With that in mind they oversubscribed it a little and gave away 100 tickets. I think three people didn't make it. Anyway, it was really enjoyable for me and a nice way to warm up for the impending book tour that starts soon. I'll let you know as soon as the videos from the night are put online...

The book isn't published until April 3 (but can be pre-ordered now, natch) and so I took a copy of my last A4 manuscript version with me to read from. But as it goes the publishers had rushed a hot-off-the-presses version to the shop so that the real thing was there. Seeing a printed book for the first time is always an exciting moment. Until then you don't really know how thick it's going to be, how it will feel in people's hands and so on. It's the moment at which all of the hard graft or writing is translated into something real. I'm very happy with it. It feels cared for and the colour photos lend it a richness that isn't common these days. Hurrah.

And then on Tuesday I saw rather more of them. A thousand of them as it goes. I went out to a depot in Essex to sign them for various book shops who've ordered some signed stock. It's events like this that destroy one's signature. Try writing the same thing - anything - over and over a thousand times...

Tonight I'll be recording an episode of Clive Anderson's Chat Room for Radio 4. It's about the week's news... I feel woefully under-prepared. I haven't really engaged with the real world this week - there hasn't been time. I'm sure some stuff happened involving a person and some other people and some stuff. Oh dear.


EDITED: To remove the gobbledygook random code that somehow made it's way in mid-word and also to say that Clive Anderson's Chat Room is actually on Radio 2 not 4 (I wasn't the only person who made this mistake, the audience's tickets all said Radio 4 too.) It goes out tonight (Thursday 20th) at 11pm and is repeated on Saturday also.

Before I go...

Whirligig Entitled America, A Detail., originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

I'm flying to America later today. I'll be back in a week. And at some point I'll tell you what I was up to. It's going to be a hectic schedule that's for sure.

It's not so long ago that I was sat at my desk, spying the end of the book in sight and hankering after a big chunk of time off. It doesn't seem to have materialised.

I finished the book not long before the film was screened so I was thrust straight into promotion for that. And telly being what telly is, the film's broadcast seemed to remind a few people that I exist and the phone started to ring with a few offers of work as a result. Or maybe the offers would have come anyway. It's impossible to know for sure.

But anyway, the upshot is that I'm flying to the States tomorrow.

Before I go, there's another book related event I ought to mention.

The Guardian are going to host a few video-podcasts about it... which is lovely of them. My publishers suggested filming an interview with me and using that but I find those sort of things make me squirm. There's something insincere about an interview when the person asking the questions is really doing a PR job for the person answering them.

I thought the thing would have more energy - and honesty - if the questions were coming from, oo, I dunno... you. Yes. You.

So we're organising a small event for around 70 people so that you can do just that. Assuming you're one of the 70 people who attends it.

It's going to be on March 17th at Foyles Bookshop on Charing Cross Road in central London. People will need to get there for around 6pm.

We'll turn a camera on, I'll chat about the book for a bit and then there will be not just Qs but also As. I'll do the As if that's okay with you.

Then we'll turn the camera off and hang around for a glass of wine and a chat. I might pretend to be hosting a St Patrick's Day Party and you can pretend to be my guests if you like. (Not that we'll go on to the early hours or anything... it is a bookshop after all)

Anyway... as space is limited someone's decided to get organised with it, so the spaces will go to the first 70 people who e-mail dgorman@randomhouse.co.uk with their phone number and a question that they'd like to ask.

(Nobody's going to show me the questions in advance, mind... they just want to make sure that we don't end up with an audience of 70 people who all sit there in silence because they all assumed someone else would ask a question. That would make for an awkward podcast.)

Why not come along and help me cast my first pod?

Book Tour

I used to have a 'news page' on the site... it progressively became more and more bloggy until I eventually conceded that it was a blog after all and moved it all over here instead.

But as it's become more of a blog it means that when I post something more newsy I feel like I'm being remiss... like I should find something else to spice it up.

But there isn't anything really... just some news. But it is good news.

The book - America Unchained - is published at the start of April and so I'll be out and about doing some book readings . Hurrah for things like that. The dates and details have just been finalised and I've just added them to the live dates page of my site so if you want to know the finer details I suggest you skidaddle that way... but the broad brushstrokes are as follows:

• March
• 29th - Cambridge
• 31st - Basingstoke
• April
• 1st - Nottingham
• 2nd - East London
• 3rd - Leeds
• 4th - Hove
• 5th - Central London
  
• 27th - Galway
• 28th - Manchester
• 29th - Cardiff
• 30th - Edinburgh
• May
• 1st - Glasgow
• 2nd - Dundee
• 8th - Fowey (Cornwall)

I hope you can come along...

[Typically... as soon as this was put online, and about five minutes after I'd e-mailed my mailing list, my publishers got in touch to say there was another one they wanted me to do... so I've just edited this list to add the Central London reading on April 5]

Banter

I took part in a recording of Radio 4's Banter last night. It was recorded at The Drill Hall in London which anyone who has been will tell you is every bit as glamorous and exciting as New York's Radio City Music Hall.

I think it was the first thing of its ilk that I'd done in ages. I must have done far less other shows in 2007 than I normally do. I have to if I'm writing a book.

Normally when I'm writing I start each day by re-writing the stuff I wrote the day before. I find it helps to keep the tone consistent, gets me back into the right frame of mind by the time I start writing new words and helps me to pick up a few silly mistakes made through tiredness the day before.

But if I take a day off I have to go further back and instead of spending the morning picking through the last day's work I end up spending a day revising the last couple of days. If I'm forced to take a week off I virtually have to go back to the beginning. I end up getting far more done in five uninterrupted days than I do in ten days spread over, say, a month.

Which is why I said no to almost everything else last year - including lots of things I'd normally say yes to. I reckon with Annually Retentive, the editing of America Unchained, Genius on the wireless and the one-off tellybox episode I had more than enough distractions from the writing as it was.

Once Genius was out of the way in November I basically went into hibernation and committed every day to writing full time. I was amazed by how productive I got. It was strangely manic and exciting to do but also strangely debilitating at the same time. In six weeks I don't think I travelled more than half a mile from my front door which is just odd. So now I feel like a pit-pony blinking as it emerges into sunlight for the first time in ages as I try to remember how the world works when it isn't just me, a computer and the sound of typing.

With the film going out last Tuesday and the DVD being released today I eased my way back in by promoting the film hither and thither but Banter was the first show that I was doing purely for its own sake. It's hosted by Andrew Collins and last night's panellists were Richard Herring, Russel Howard, Dillie Keane and myself. I was feeling rusty beforehand and was slightly regretting saying yes to something where I thought I might be found out as the underprepared fool that I was but when it came to it the show was great fun and far more to do with conversation than with prepared material. Which is as it should be given the name, Banter.

They probably record about 90 minutes worth of material during each show with an hour of it being far too scurrilous (or downright rude) for broadcast. They're recording four more shows and I'd recommend it as a cheap (free) night out if you're down London way. You can get tickets from the inappropriately named tvrecordings.com who should have thought about the fact that it wasn't just TV when they started.


In other news, I saw a finished book cover today. Always an exciting moment and it's a nice way to be reminded that the hard graft involved in writing 120,000 words isn't in vain. It's real and in April it'll be out there... looking like this.

Commercial Photography

This is a picture I took of two stools in Taylor's Soda Fountain in Independence, Oregon.

There's very little point in taking photos like this. They're not the kind of thing you send to your Mum or e-mail your mates.

Showing them to people demands a reaction. It makes sense to send your Mum a picture of you at the Grand Canyon, say, in a way that sending her a photo of two stools in a diner just doesn't.


This is a picture I took of a remote gas station in Echo, Utah. Again it's not the kind of thing I'd ever send to anyone but it does bring back a lot of memories.

I took a lot of photos on that trip and although I flick through them from time to time they don't serve any great purpose.

Which makes it satisfying when someone sends me a copy of this ad for the Monday DVD release. It'll probably be appearing in a Sunday paper near you.

Suddenly my click-happy photo habit doesn't seem quite so lacking in purpose. Well, I can pretend.

I've been quite bowled over by the reaction to the film. It hasn't been purely positive but then nothing ever is. But the majority of reviews have been kind and the viewing figures were so above and beyond our expectations as to be frankly ridiculous.

Somehow we managed to get more than six times the channel's average figures for the slot. Which is just silly. I hope some of those people come back to the channel in the coming weeks to watch other documentaries in the series. There are definitely films there that will reward the effort.

More 4. Tuesday. 10pm.

This is a picture of Frances and Dennis and their giant beagle shaped Bed & Breakfast. It's in Cottonwood, Idaho and in the unlikely event that you ever find yourself in that part of the world, I can recommend you stay there.

They're in the documentary that airs tomorrow night on More 4.

I've been really surprised by the amount of press coverage the film has received. And flattered too. Documentaries aren't exactly the most written about of genres and More 4 - brilliant as it is - isn't exactly the most written about channel so when you've got a documentary on More 4 you don't exactly expect a blitz of press. But there's been far more than I expected.

On Saturday the Times made it the cover of their TV coverage and had this feature written by the Reverend Billy, which I thought was a novel way of approaching it. The Independent on Sunday gave it the cover of their TV coverage also and the Daily Mail's Weeekend magazine gave it a prominent preview and four stars saying, "Is it possible to drive across the US without staying at a chain hotel, eating at a chain restaurant or refuelling at a chain gas station? We won't spoil Dave Gorman's film by saying. His route follows its own peculiar logic, free from the carefully choreographed quirkiness that would be present in a more thoroughly researched travelogue, and this produces some real moments of magic - especially the closing 'mom and pop' soda fountain store, and a beagle shaped hotel which is in a class of its own. At one point Gorman rather loses it when his director is forced to drop out with a bad back, marooning him in a dead-end town. Towards the end it gets a touch repetitive - but the sense of adventure, warmth and Gorman's charm makes it work."

I honestly wouldn't have expected the Daily Mail to have noticed it existed let alone reviewed it. Given that they have, I'm really glad they appreciated the subtlety and could see what the film wasn't as well as what it was. (I can live with them saying it's "a touch repetitive" towards the end.)

The Scotsman was nice too. Mind you, the Daily Record seem to think I'm a Scotsman. Which I'm not. Still, at least he liked the film.

I'll be popping in to The Geoff Show on Virgin Radio tonight, The Wright Stuff on Channel 5 Tuesday morning and Richard and Judy on Tuesday also. And just to prove that I do leave the house for other reasons I'm taking part in an episode of Radio 4's Banter on Sunday. It's recoded at The Drill Hall in central London and if you want to get hold of some free tickets to come along you can get them here.

But all this aside, there are two huge honours being bestowed on the film that no one could ever have predicted. Apparently, the people of Britain are going to celebrate the screening by devoting the whole day to eating that most American of foodstuffs: the pancake. Thanks guys. That's a pretty amazing gesture. I won't forget it.

In America things have gone even crazier. The film isn't even being screened on US TV and yet the media over there have dubbed the day 'Super Tuesday!' How nice is that? I mean documentaries aren't exactly the most written about of genres and More 4 - brilliant as it is - isn't exactly the most written about channel so when you've got a documentary on More 4 you don't expect the country the film is about to declare the day of the UK broadcast to be especially super.

Enjoy your pancakes. Have a super Tuesday. I hope you like the doc.

RSA

We had a screening of the film at the Royal Society for the Arts a couple of nights ago. It was lovely. And nerve racking.

I'm not used to watching myself. And I'm definitely not used to watching other people watching me either. Normally when there's an audience involved I'm on stage and locked in the moment. That means things come out slightly differently each night as you adapt the words and timing to suit the mood. Or not as the case may be.

As a performer there's a strange powerlessness to the idea that an audience is watching something that can't be changed. Once someone's pressed the play-button the film will just start rolling and it will be the same regardless of whether they're liking it or not. (I know it happens all the time but I'm not normally there to witness it. I'm not in the habit of going round to a stranger's house to listen to Genius with them (no matter how many times he e-mails) so it doesn't affect me in the same way.)

Luckily it went down well and the Q&A session at the end was interesting and fun in equal measure as were the bar-conversations that followed. If you came along - thanks for helping to make it such an engaging night.

I spoke to a couple of people in the bar afterwards who registered their surprise at the film. They weren't surprised by a particular part of it (or at least, not that they told me) but they were surprised by it as an entity because, in their words, "It's not what we thought you'd do..."

I asked them what they'd expected from me and they didn't really know. Which is where this slightest of anecdotes becomes slighter still. Sorry. I'd love to give it more definition but it just wasn't there. Either they didn't know what to expect or they were too embarrassed to explain.

It brought back echoes of a thought process I was having nearly a year ago when the release of the Are You Dave Gorman DVD made me consider what might have been had I set off on a path of doing-what-people-expected-me-to back in 2001.

I don't know how different things would have been if I'd taken the shilling and pretended to be the namesake-obsessed goon that the pound signs were telling me to be... but I know it wouldn't have led to the same place I'm in right now. My guess is that it would have run out of steam a few years ago. That's a guess. I can say with certainty that it wouldn't have made me happy. I can't imagine More4 giving him the opportunity to make a bit of proper grown-up telly for instance. I'd much rather be me than him.

So... anyway, the film goes out on More4 on the evening of February 5th and is released on DVD on February 11. It isn't what two people were expecting it to be.


PS: It does have some bad language in it. Either that or I was wearing my 15 certificate shirt on the day of the photoshoot.

The bostin' Austin Film Festival

You might or might not know that last year I went off on an American road trip. I wanted to see if it was possible to get from coast to coast without giving any money to "The Man"... by which I mean I wasn't going to eat at a chain restaurant, stay in a chain hotel or - and this is the really hard bit - get fuel from a chain gas station.

To begin with the idea was that I'd do the trip, come home and then write a book about it. But when I talked about it with a few friends they suggested it would be a good subject for a film.

Initially I was reluctant... I didn't want to have a crew following me and I didn't want to end up hosting one of those travel shows where the presenter meets a sequence of pre-arranged eccentrics that a researcher has found. It seems to me that when it becomes one-of-those-shows you end up being robbed of the personal experience because you're just going through the motions of a story that someone has worked out in advance... whereas I wanted to actually try to do something and either succeed or fail on my own mettle.

So we ended up making the film in a nice low budget way by just finding a brave film-maker who was prepared to come along in the car with me and shoot whatever happened. No crew. No schedule. Just us, an idea and a car.

I'm still writing the book - which will be out in April/May (I think) but we've spliced the film together already. It'll be shown on More4 in February. I'm really pleased with the result... but it's always impossible to guess what other people will think of things... especially when it's really different to the kind of work I've done before.

The movie was submitted to the Austin Film Festival and I was really delighted when they came back saying they wanted to include it in the schedule. From my point of view it was the best way of getting some proper feedback on the film. The audience there wouldn't have any preconceived notions about what I do because they wouldn't have a clue who I was. They'd just view it as a film from a couple of unknown film-makers. Hopefully they'd enjoy it. Maybe they wouldn't.

It turns out they enjoyed it. I've been really pleased with the reaction. (You can see the audience reviews here.) That was pretty much all I hoped we'd achieve at the festival - just some good honest feedback - but yesterday the news got better still. I heard that we'd actually won the Audience Award for best Documentary Feature. A champagne cork has been popped. Hurrah for things like that.

If you've seen or read Googlewhack Adventure you'll know that Austin, Texas is the scene of one of the lowest points in my life. Right now it feels like I've pulled it back to a 1-1 draw.