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.

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.

Are You DVD Gorman?

I've had a busy few days promoting the DVD release of Are You Dave Gorman? which means I've been popping up in all sorts of radio and TV shows. It's been a bit odd and time-warpy suddenly having to promote something that I haven't had to talk about for a long time. It's a show I'm very proud of and I've no doubt that it will cast a shadow over everything else I do for a very long time to come. I'm more comfortable with that now than I was a couple of years ago.

There was a time when I felt a little trapped by the show because every offer that seemed to come in was relating to it in some way. For me, it was just one of many storytelling shows I'd done but because it was the first one that I allowed to transfer to TV there were loads of people out there who thought it was the first and only thing I'd ever done.

Actually, I think there are still people out there who think that.

At the time, I (obviously) hoped people would like the series and think, 'That's a funny story, well told. I wonder what other stories he might have up his sleeve' but instead it felt like people thought, 'Ha ha... that man is obsessed with his namesakes... I hope he finds some more... he is the namesake-man and must live forever on a permanent namesake hunting quest because THAT is what he does.'

I got offered loads of money to licence 'Stop Me If You're A Dave Gorman' T-shirts and other nonsensical merchandise that would have encouraged the idea that I was looking for every Dave Gorman in the world - something that the show had never claimed because... well, because it wasn't true. I was offered walk-on parts in all sorts of stuff where the basic premise always seemed to be the same: I turn up at the door, ask if there's anyone called Dave Gorman there and then leave when they tell me there isn't. I hated it all and said no to everything.

I think if I'd done it I would have been selling a cartoonish version of myself, sort of like when a David Dickinson character suddenly bubbles up to the surface for a year or two and makes a fortune running around the world saying 'Cheap as chips!' and 'Bobby Dazzler' for anyone who'll pay him. It's bound to exhaust itself isn't it? Isn't it? I mean it's obvious that it's just a facade. The whole point about the show was that it was a true story so carrying on with it after it was over in some weird fake way would only serve to undo the whole thing in time.

Maybe I'd be living in a bigger house right now if I'd taken the shilling and sold that version of myself to the world but I doubt I'd be very happy and I doubt I'd be very employable either. You could hardly convince an audience you had another true story to tell them if you'd spent two or three years obviously pretending to be something you're not.

Looking back I think the pressure was really on the Googlewhack Adventure show to compete with it in some way. As both a stageshow and a book it was more successful in any measurable way so I guess it did compete - as well as directly railing against the perception of me as one of those (shudder) wacky-bet-guys. (Self-indulgent? Me? Surely not.)

I think my inbox is probably as good a guide as any as to what projects dominate people's imaginations and from the day Are You Dave Gorman? first started on BBC2 my inbox was just flooded with e-mails relating to that one show. Even right through the broadcast of my Important Astrology Experiment, it was namesakes-related e-mails that kept on flooding in... despite the fact that I wasn't doing anything to stoke the fire.

Since the Googlewhack Adventure though things have been different... I get more e-mails about that than anything else these days, quite a few about Genius, The Daily Show and what have you and while there are always a fair few asking about Are You Dave Gorman? they tend to be asking more sensible questions about it and are less obsessed by the idea that I'm obsessed with it than they once were. It all makes the release of the DVD a much happier thing for me because it no longer feels like I'm selling the idea that this-is-all-I-do... instead I'm just glad that a show I'm really very proud of is out there for anyone who wants it. I'd hate for it to disappear completely... I just don't want it to be the only thing I appear to have done.