Professor Iannucci

We recorded the last episode of Genius last night and I'll be sorry not to be working on it any more. It's been a tremendously fun few weeks spent thinking about some very stupid ideas. Armando Iannucci was a brilliant guest and so right from the start it stopped feeling like a job-of-work to me and just became a fun night out. I will remember the audience all screaming Tetris-based advice for a long time to come. It floated through my head earlier today for no reason in particular and made me chuckle to myself while I was sitting on the tube. I expect the series will be broadcast in September but obviously when I know more I'll let you know.

It would have been great to have a proper last-night drink after the recording but because I've started another week on The Wright Stuff it wasn't possible. I felt like I was leaving my own party when I left the theatre relatively early. It still hurt getting up on Tuesday morning in time for my 7am car. I didn't think I'd be very compos mentis during this morning's show but it seemed like a lively one when it happened and as usual it whizzed past. Matthew Wright is also taking part in the London to Brighton bike ride on Sunday and we've both spent some time panicking about our lack of training. Oh dear.

On Thursday I'm a guest on Professor Iannucci's Radio 4 show, Charm Offensive. I agreed the date some time ago and was more than a bit miffed at myself when I realised that it clashed with England's second World Cup game. The game is at 5 and I was assuming that the recording started at 6.30 because that seems to be standard for these kind of R4 things. I confessed this to Armando but to my relief the recording doesn't start til later than I thought and there'll be no need to miss the game at all. Disaster over.

Something odd has been going on on my sponsorship page for the London to Brighton ride. I started to get a lot of e-mails from people telling me that they were failing to open the page and getting an error message instead. I got in touch with the British Heart Foundation because it's their website and this was obviously going to cost them money if people were unable to load the page in order to donate.

Apparently the problem was that there were too many sponsors and too many people trying to access the page. They reckon it will take a few days to fix it properly so in the mean time they've deleted some of the names of sponsors - but only as a temporary measure. They told me they'd made adjustments so that the total amount was still correct but I know that's not true because the total raised has gone down and that can't be possible. When last I was here it said it was £8682.99. More people have sponsored me since then, but the total is currently given as £8315.75. Whatever it really is, I hope they can sort it out and that they don't end up short changing themselves due to a technical error. I'm sure they will get it sorted. And of course, whatever it is, you can always make it more by visiting www.bhf.org.uk/sponsor/davegorman.

St Pauls at Night

St Pauls. Millennium Bridge, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

Playing dead...

Brian Sewell made for an excellent and eccentric guest at last night's recording of Genius. He really does play the role of Brian Sewell better than anyone else. The recordings are coming thick and fast right now - the moment a show is done, it's time to focus on the next show. The final recording is on Monday when my guest will be the brilliant Armando Iannucci.

I'll be seeing Armando again on the 15th when I'm a guest on his Radio 4 show, Charm Offensive which is, I believe, broadcast the next day. We have no such frenzied edits on Genius... it will be a few months before the series goes to air. We're recording it now because it was about the only chunk of time in my diary when it could be squeezed in and done properly.

I think when Genius was first conceived we imagined it would be a two-way conversation between myself and the guest each week. Instead it's definitely become a three-way conversation between the two of us and the individual who's pitching each idea and it's their input that makes the show so much fun for me. They all turn up with such different attitudes and given that they're unlikely to be accustomed to speaking in public they can be quite nervous.

But I don't think we've ever had anyone come to take part in the show and not enjoy it and they all leave at the end of the day with a real spring in their step. I wish we'd started a guestbook back at the start of series one because I'm sure if they could read the comments from previous guests in advance of the recording they'd all relax a bit sooner.

We've tried to set the show up so that they're under as little pressure as possible and we try our hardest to make sure they have a fun time. Every night, as they read their idea out, there is always a moment where the audience cheers or laughs or makes some other kind of noise-of-approval and I can see them visibly relax as they realise the audience are on their side and it's going to be fun. From that moment on they seem to have a ball.

Understandably a few people get cold feet and I mentioned recently how one chap called us on the day to say he couldn't come but was persuaded and had a great time. Well recently someone took the not-turning-up thing to a new level. When we start making the series we look through thousands of ideas and we get in touch with lots of people whose ideas we enjoyed. Then slowly as people's availability becomes clear we start to put ideas together that we think will blend well in the same episode.

This time round we had a couple of ideas come from people across the Atlantic. We got in touch with them but didn't really expect anyone to come from Canada or America in order to be on the show. This is Radio 4 so naturally we don't have the kind of budget than can afford to fly people over or anything silly like that. To our surprise and delight a couple of people - one from Canada and one from America - said they wanted to come over and were prepared to fly themselves.

The Canadian chap was scheduled to take part in the show with Carol Vorderman and an American lady (or Americaness as I believe they're called) was scheduled to appear in the show with Sid Waddell. The Canadian chap, Chris, (I'll leave his surname out to spare his blushes) was particularly keen and went to great lengths in his e-mails to explain how he was prepared to fly over at 72 hours notice if required. Then shortly before the show we found that he was no longer replying to our e-mails. Occasionally people have to pull out and as incovenient as it is we understand that there are reasons and we do what we can to accommodate people. If Chris had e-mailed us to say that on reflection he really couldn't afford a trip to London to take part in a show we would have been fine with that and we could have started work on finding an idea to replace his. But instead we just received no replies.

Then, onlya day or two before the show, we received an e-mail from his address but signed by 'Maria.' The e-mail started with the words, 'Sadly, Chris is no longer with us.' Hmmm... we weren't sure if this was someone at his work telling us that he was no longer employed there or someone from the world saying he was no longer a part of it. The e-mail went on to say that he would be dearly missed and that as he had often talked excitedly about the show that it would be a wonderful tribute to him if we were to still include his idea in the show.

It was a very odd e-mail. It was clearly implying that he was dead but at no point did it actually use the word. We were all pretty convinced that it wasn't quite right in some way but of course when the subject is as serious as that it isn't really easy to question it in case it turns out to be true and you appear to be incredibly insensitive.

There was no way we were going to include the idea in the show without someone there to pitch it because the show just doesn't work like that and so we replaced it and got down to work on the show and didn't really give it much thought. The show passed and then the next show came along and this time our transatlantic guest stayed in touch, showed up, pitched her idea and had fun. All was well.

Then a couple of days ago for some reason Chris floated back through my head. I was trying to write an intro for Brian Sewell and was distracted by thoughts of a potentially-dead-but-probably-not Canadian. So I picked up the phone and gave him a call. It went through to his voicemail. I didn't leave a message and returned to thinking about Mr Sewell. Then five minutes later my phone went. I picked it up.
"Hello," said a Canadian voice, "It's Chris, I missed your call."
"Oh," said I. "Hi Chris."
"Who's that?" asked Chris who I have to say was sounding very much alive to me.
"It's Dave Gorman."
"Oh. Hi Dave."
"Hi Chris. How are you?"
"I'm good," said Chris. There was a pause. And then the phone went down. He was definitely alive but, I imagine, rather embarrassed.

How odd? Imagine being so concerned about what some-strangers-you'll-never-meet will think of you that you would rather fake your own death than be honest about letting them down? How very, very odd.

Nine days to go before I cycle to Brighton. Not many opportunitues for training rides between now and then. Gulp. I'm really impressed by how much people have donated though. Total sponsorship so far: £8682.99. You can make it even more here.

Vorderman and Waddell

Genius continues to be a hugely enjoyable series to make. It's remarkably unfraught. Maybe that's just how radio is. Or maybe it's to do with the particular people involved - Team Genius (four bearded men and a Dutch lady - there's a film title) are a very affable bunch. Or maybe it's the fact that every show is so different. I really like the way in which the members of the public who are pitching their ideas all get involved and of course the guests all bring their tone to the show also. So it's impossible to rehearse and the show remains a fresh and fun night out for me as much as anyone else.

We've recorded two shows since I last wrote and they've been very different affairs. I was dead chuffed that Carol Vorderman agreed to be a guest and she was a brilliant sport on the night who completely entered into the spirit of the show. Sid Waddell was as wonderfully eccentric and Waddellish as anyone could hope for and again, I had a really fun night. I'm not sure everyone there understood him, mind.

The recordings are coming thick and fast now with one tomorrow and another on Monday so there's no time to sit back after a recording and we go straight into thinking about the next one. As well as the final show on Monday, I also start a week on The Wright Stuff. I'm going to be on with Janet Ellis again which is always fun. Don't get me wrong, I once enjoyed a week on the show in the company of Anne Widdecombe but I've done the show with Janet more than anyone else (well, apart from Matthew Wright... he's always on it... I think he knows someone) and whenever I've agreed to do the show there's a part of me thinking, 'oo... I hope it's a Janet Ellis week'.

Incidentally, Janet is involved in organising a benefit gig at the Lyric in Hammersmith on Sunday night. If I wasn't so busy with the Radio 4 show I'd certainly be going to it and if you're free you should think of doing so as it's a top line-up. There are details here.

Not so long ago I wrote about the evil ITV show, The Mint after I turned up as an answer. I really do think it's a horrible show while still admiring the skill of some of the presenters who can talk about nothing for hours on end. It's like QVC only instead of selling tacky jewellery they sell hopes and dreams. I mention this because last week I found myself in a photographic studio with Mint presenter Brian Dowling. I was wearing a vaguely Miami Vice outfit and holding a toy golf club while he was licking a cornetto. Did I confront him with the fact that I think his job is evil? Of course not, I shook his hand and said, "Nice to meet you" because I've been brough up properly and he's a nice man. A nice man who gets paid to persuade people to spend money they can't afford entering stupid competitions that offer them only the tiniest chance of riches maybe, but a nice man all the same.

A book I like...

A friend bought this for me after I confessed to my shocking lack of familiarity with Vonnegut's writing. This is described as a memoir but really it's slighter than that - more like a fireside chat with an old guy, albeit a particularly witty and wise old guy with a passion for life that has been undimmed by his years. I will definitely be reading some of his novels after this. Such suppression of religion was supposedly justified by Karl Marx's statement that "religion is the opium of the people." Marx said that back in 1844, when opium and opium derivatives were the only effective painkillers anyone could take. Marx had taken them. He was grateful for the temporary relief they had given him. He was simply noticing, and surely not condemning, the fact that religion could also be comforting to those in economic or social distress, It was a casual truism, not a dictum. When Marx wrote those words, by the way, we hadn't even freed our slaves yet. Who do you imagine was more pleasing in the eyes of a merciful God back then, Karl Marx or the United States of America? Kurt Vonnegut: A Man Without A Country

See all the books I've recommended so far here.

In Victoria Park...

Paramount, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

Addo

The second Genius recording was a somewhat less exhausting affair. I had a thoroughly enjoyable time in the excellent company of guest, Chris Addison.

There was still oddness... one of the people who was pitching a potentially genius idea on the show called at about 5.30 to say that he wasn't going to come. This is very late notice on the day of the recording and quite an inconvenience... after all, we plan the show around the ideas and with an idea missing, some of those plans are wasted. He claimed to be too busy but I suspect it was really nerves brought on by the prospect of speaking in public.

He was persuaded to turn up eventually and he wasn't too busy to hang around for quite some time at the end of the night. He definitely enjoyed it and was happy to have done the show - so far I'm pretty sure that everyone who's taken part in the show has done. It's one of the things that I enjoy most about the recordings.

The pitchers turn up and are inevitably a little nervous... but the audience are always completely on their side and part way through reading the idea out they give them a laugh or a round of applause and you can see the pitcher's shoulders relax and their confidence grow. They always walk away from it confident and buzzing.

Odder still was the weather... and the way it entered the theatre. The day was marked by huge downpours and there wasn't a problem during any of the time we spent setting the show up so there was no way of predicting it would happen. Part way through the recording rain started to drip down into the venue. To begin with it was a couple of drops but by the end of the evening it was no longer dripping, it was pouring in. It was a little distracting but we were lucky it fell where it did as it all fell at the front of the stage between our desks and the audience ... and more importantly, away from the electrics.

We're back at The Cochrane for another recording later in the run. I hope they fix it before then. Or that it's a dry day. The next recording is back at The Shaw theatre on Tuesday.

London to Brighton by bike. Total sponsorship so far: £7307.17.