Less Doublet & Hose, More Lycra, Less Crown, More Helmet

When I was in Edinburgh for the last America Unchained book reading someone very kindly gave me a couple of packs of playing cards as a gift for the tour. (If it was you; thanks!)

I knew they were made by the Bicycle brand - quite possibly the only brand of playing card I could name - but it was only when I opened one of the decks today that I saw this card and realised quite how apt they were for the journey ahead of me.

I guess the likeness was better a year ago - I've lost a stone and a half since then - but even so...

I'm packing right now - I leave for Cornwall tomorrow so that I have a day of rest before the journey really begins on Sunday morning - and I'm going to stick this in the bag of show-stuff... and then stick it to the mirror of dressing rooms up and down (and across) the land as a good luck charm. Nice.

Andover

This is the bicycle ride I completed today. I had a couple of hours recovery - eating and bathing - before it was time to head to the theatre and get ready for tonight's preview show. The good news is that even after the physical exertions of a day like that I can remember what I'm supposed to be saying. Well... most of it. I'm knackered now though. And I think the performance was a bit below par but not because of tiredness... I think after a few days off I expended so much energy remembering stuff that I wasn't quite as in-the-moment as I'd like.

Incidenatlly... a while back I wrote about seeing myself on google streetview - and many people accused me of making it up and simply refused to believe it was me. (Wouldn't that be an odd thing to invent?) Anyway... I saw another google streetview car today. I was on the A30, on the other side of Basingstoke and approaching the Kempshott roundabout. Maybe when this stretch of road is added you'll see me there, I'll be the cyclist in the red top and with pain etched across his digitally blurred face. Time to sleep.

Work In Progress

Digger, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

I'm really enjoying my time in Porthcawl. It's exactly what I wanted it to be.

Doing gigs around town helps me to build up material and I've collected a lot of elements that I know work. Doing a few hour long sets has helped me stitch some of it together - in my memory as much as anything else - but it's only when you come to put it together as a full show that it starts to really take shape.

The point of this trip to Porthcawl - and next week's three day stint in Andover - is to have a sort of show bootcamp. To do the whole thing one night, then spend the next day refining it and see what effect the changes have on it that night and so on.

The first night went well. There were obvious flaws in it, some lulls and some bits misfiring - but the strengths outweighed the weaknesses. The important thing is that I knew after night one that the ingredients were all in place, I just needed to improve the recipe. I spent yesterday going through some notes with a friend and making chops and changes that I implemented last night. Every single alteration improved the end result which is hugely satisfying. No matter what you do for a living seeing the fruits of your labour is always satisfying.

There are more tweaks to make - there will always be more tweaks to make - and there are still a few moments where my memory fails me which is inevitable with a brand new show but it's snapped together a bit quicker than I thought it would and that's left me in a very upbeat mood. (I hope I don't end up eating these words at tonight's show.)

For me, this stage of the process is pretty much the most exciting. By the time you get to the biggest live gigs you've generally pretty much nailed the show... but it's at this stage - when you suddenly discover that changing the order of two routines makes them both funnier or that by cutting a joke out you can double the strength of the next laugh - that the work is most rewarding. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy this.

Having a great time at the seaside. Wish you were here.

D x

PS: there's a nice article about the tour in The Times.

Previews

Buttercups, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

The upcoming tour offers two quite distinct challenges. There's the bike ride - which is far and away the most physical thing I've ever done and then there are the the gigs: every night. I've done gigs before, obviously, but it's a long time since I've done straight stand-up and while doing a gig every night is one thing, doing them while dealing with the physical effects of cycling each day is another.

I find my concern oscillates from one to the other. There's no point doing the thing if the show isn't up to snuff and there's no point having a great show if the physical effort involved in getting there breaks me.

Luckily both concerns seem to be being well looked after. Having completed the 120 mile ride to Brighton and back I reckon my training has paid off. I've lost a chunk of weight and seem to have picked up some stamina along the way. So without stopping training completely I feel free to focus on the show.

I've done two previews recently. One in Leamington on the 6th and the other in Cheltenham on the 10th. (I wonder if something I said was misheard by my agent and he thinks I insisted on Spa towns?)

Anyway... when the show tours properly it will be something like 90mins+ in most venues but for these previews the intention has just been to see if I can put together a decent hour.

They both had nice full rooms and they both went well - very encouraging. I had to glance at notes only four or five times and I forgot a chunk in Leamington and another smaller bit in Cheltenham but they both ran to an hour and ten and left me some material to spare.

One of the things that fascinates me with stand-up is that it's not just how a particular piece of material is written or performed it's how it's placed in the greater scheme of things. A new routine that stormed in Leamington felt lacklustre a few nights later when I was doing a short set in London and then in Cheltenham it suddenly packed a real punch again. Same words. Same ideas being traded. Odd. And really interesting to observe and learn from. (Hmm... maybe it is the Spa town thing?)

In August I'll be doing fuller previews - there are three nights in Porthcawl and a further three in Andover (see the main site for details) - where I'll be adding more elements and reshuffling the jigsaw to try and find the best blend. I'm looking forward to them. Especially now it feels like the show has strong foundations.

I didn't cycle to the previews. I thought about it for the Cheltenham gig. I reckon it was just about in range. But the point of these gigs is to sort out the content and I had stuff to do the next day that made a long ride home a bit more problematic. So I hired a car for each of them.

It's ages since I've driven a car. It's horrible isn't it? Especially in London traffic. On the way to Leamington there had been an accident on the M40. It was on the other carriageway but rubbernecking meant that those of us heading North were crawling too. That combined with the normal slow route across London meant that it took me two and a half hours to travel the first 60 miles.

The drive to Cheltenham was worse. A road in East London had been blocked by the police which gridlocked a whole load of roads. By the time I'd weedled my way around it all - effectively getting me one mile into my journey - an hour had already gone. It took another hour to actually get across London and then I got snarled up in the Friday rush hour around Oxford too. All in all, the 90 mile journey took just over four hours.

So not only did the gigs give me confidence in the show's content, they also left me feeling very glad that I'm going to be cycling.

Tonight! 10pm! BBC2!

The final episode of Genius goes out tonight. 10pm. BBC2. The title for this entry was your clue.

Here's a preview clip:


As you can see, Stewart Lee is the guest. I think Stewart might well be the finest live stand-up in the country. If you've seen his recent BBC2 series you'll know just how smart and clever he is. It was certainly a real pleasure to work with him.

He was a guest on the first series of the radio show too. Because the show was brand new back then people were sometimes suspicious of the format, perhaps thinking it was a combative show (in which case, bringing in members of the public to spar with a professional comic would be ridiculous) but Stewart saw that they were the heroes of the piece straight away.

"This is bound to go to TV soon," said Stew, "can I come back and do it again if it does?"
"If it does, we'd love to have you," said I.

And four years later we did just that. It's nice when the world works. Fab.

Standing Up.

Doing a tour by bike offers two distinct challenges. I'm obviously going to be pushing myself physically but the fact that when I get to each town I won't be able to disengage the brain and switch off creates a mentally challenging situation also.

But, as with all these things, the challenge has started already. I have to try and improve my fitness - mental and physical - before the tour starts. I have exercise my writing and performing muscles as well as my legs... there's no point being able to cycle all that way if the show's not up to snuff and there's no point having a great show and not being able to get there.

So, as often as I can I pop out to gigs in town to try out new ideas and play with material. Slowly, incrementally, the amount of stuff I have in my mental locker increases. There are nights like Old Rope on a Monday and various nights at Lowdown At The Albany - not to mention all the regular club nights in London where I'm lucky enough to be able to get a small amount of stage time every now and then. I find it fascinating how material starts to coalesce... the first time you say it, it kinda works. After three or four goes it suddenly gels into something that feels more whole. Or it finds a place next to something else that lifts it. Or something. But it isn't simply a matter of trying out sufficient bits until you've added up enough minutes... things have to hang together. Disparate bits of material that might work individually can work for or against each other when placed in the same set.

So when I've got a chunk of new stuff together in bits and bobs I need to try a longer set in order to see how it flows. To that end I recently did a couple of longer spots at a couple of great London gigs: Islington's ace monthly; Comedy Gold and Kingston's just as ace, Outside The Box.

I'd highly recommend both clubs to anyone wanting to see live comedy because they're both discerningly booked and both likely to turn up interesting surprise guests. I asked if I could compere at Comedy Gold because I knew that would give me a chance to do a bit longer and also because I knew it would offer a different challenge - it was a fun night - and last night I popped into Out Of The Box for the second time. Which was very satisfying for a couple of reasons.


I don't have a proper training schedule in place because I don't keep regular hours... I just try and cycle as and when I can. I've been trying to get some miles under my belt on the lovely new bike but took it out for a proper ride for the first time on Saturday. I went to Windsor and back, a round trip of just over 60 miles - easily the longest ride I've done since the London to Brighton run a few years ago. (Only without any kind of climb to rival Ditchling Beacon) I felt okay on Sunday but didn't have the time for a ride although I did get a good long walk in.

But Monday was a perfect opportunity to get both types of training in. A round trip to Kingston and back added up to around 35 miles - which I did on my old bike because I haven't got locks and luggage sorted for the new one yet - and I set myself the challenge of doing a set that didn't overlap with anything I'd done there the last time.

Because normally I'm doing a short set of new stuff - some of which I'll keep and some of which I won't - or doing a longer set that's made up of old and new and whatever's on my mind at the minute - placing myself under that restriction made it the best barometer I've had so far as to how the writing has been going while the Saturday ride and the journey there also gave me a small, bitesize taste as to the physical side of things. It was a far from perfect gig but the hit rate was still way better than I'd been expecting it to be and the ride to and from was actually just fun. Today - however briefly - I feel confident that things are on target.

It'll be brief, mind you. After all, fear that I'm falling behind schedule is the greatest motivator of all.






PS: I have come up with what I think is probably a sure fire way to stimulate the economy. It could save us. More soon...

This Friday!

We had to take a week off over Easter because of the golf. But we're back on Friday the 17th and in a novel twist we appear to be on at the same time in all the regions! How refreshing. 10pm. Friday. BBC2. With Johnny Vegas. Hope you can catch it.

Genius 3

One of the things I've always insisted on with Genius is that we don't only rely on comedians to be the guests. Having a few in each series is fine but we should be confident enough with the format to know that it will still be a funny show whether or not our guest is a professional comic.

I also love it when the guest has enough years on the clock to mean they're invested with some believable wisdom. All of which means that this weeks' guest: Jonathan Pryce was right up my street.

It's nice when someone else recognises there's some merit in these thoughts. This weeks' Time Out has (another) nice piece about the show:
...Genius is so pointlessly silly that it remains enjoyable, and the celebrity guests are deftly chosen. Actor Jonathan Pryce leaps headfirst into every given situation, presenting the weather forecast in regional accents and advertising a new, symmetrical Isle of Wight that's better for tourism...

It was properly exciting for me having someone as well regarded as Jonathan Pryce in the chair.
He's a Bond villain. He's in Pirates of the Caribbean. He's the star of Brazil; one of the best films ever. And he was a brilliant Genius guest. Completely in the spirit of the show. Funny funny, but also funny simply for taking the ideas quite so seriously. A real star.

Incidentally... I see that Piers Morgan managed to get a half page in The Sun for saying that he's banned David Beckham from his chat show. How the hell did that happen? Do you think David Beckham was ringing up begging to be on the show? No. If the show had asked him do you think he'd have said yes? No. You can't ban someone from doing something they were never going to do anyway. It's completely meaningless.

It's almost as if Piers Morgan has some uncanny knack for understanding the tabloid agenda... although quite how the former tabloid editor would learn that sort of thing is beyond me.

Still, half a page in the Sun is not to be sniffed at. So as host of Genius let me tell you that Nelson Mandela is banned from the show. As is Bill Clinton. And I'm banning Angelina Jolie from my bedroom too. And Madonna is absolutely 100% forbidden from adopting me.

Glad I cleared that up. Something else which needs clarifying is the schedule for Genius. If you're in England or Scotland it's on tonight (Friday) at the regular time of 10pm. If you're in Northern Ireland however this week's show has been moved to a different time. It's on Friday night... but so late as to be Saturday morning: 35 minutes past midnight. Thanks Northern Ireland schedulers... what have we ever done to you? In Wales the show doesn't even have a regular time. Three weeks running and the show's been on at a different time on each occasion. The first week we were moved to Saturday night. Then for week two it was on the Friday night like everyone else. Now this week, we're back to being a day later than the other regions and twenty minutes earlier. Wales: 9.40pm. Saturday. Criminy... 10pm on Friday was meant to be a great slot... I had no idea how much the regions were going to screw us around. But enough of the harumphing... it's a good'un, enjoy!

Oh... by the way, I'm getting a lot of e-mails (and Tweets and the like) from people with Genius ideas. I'm the worst possible person to send them to. I'm an idiot. I'm disorganised. I remember that we had an idea but I lose the e-mail. Or I forward the e-mail but we don't get a phone number for you and then when we try to get in touch your e-mail address fails and we're left with nothing else. That's no use to anyone. You really have a far better chance of getting your idea in the hat by sending it in via the show's website: bbc.co.uk/genius Go on. You know it makes sense. Sort of.

Re: Cycling...

Since announcing the tour I've been inundated with questions and advice. All of which is lovely... but I'm really not very well equipped to deal with much, if any of it.

A lot of people don't seem to believe me when I say that there's no real plan in place. It was an idea for a bike ride. Then I added in the idea of doing a gig every night. Then the gigs were booked. Then we announced the tour. But that's it. That's all I know. I haven't mapped out any particular routes. I don't know the ins and outs of how I'm going to get from A to B (to C to D to...) I don't know where I'm staying, what bike I'm going to use, whether or not anyone will be accompanying me, whether or not there'll be a support vehicle coming along as well or... well, or anything really. I genuinely don't. I just know that I'm doing it.

I can tell you that I've rejected the idea of a documentary. I'm very proud of America Unchained but one of the results of making the doc is that people assume that the events only happened in order to make a film. People don't realise they're doing it, but as innocent - and perhaps natural - as the thought is, it stirs a smidgen of cynicism into proceedings that doesn't deserve to be there. I think a fair few people who might well have enjoyed the book have decided that, having seen the film, they know the whole story... it's just that stuff I did in order to make a film isn't it? It isn't. It wasn't a "job" I took on... it meant more to me than that... it's just I allowed a film to be made about it.

I don't want people to be as cynical about this bike ride. It's something I want to do for myself. It's not a show about cycling... I'm just cycling to some shows. And I'm pretty confident I'd sell tickets for the show without the cycling. But if I was to make a doc about it... well then somehow, something beautiful would be stripped from it. I've learnt that it's impossible to convince an audience it would be happening anyway... if it's on telly it must have been done for the express purpose of getting on telly, right? Wrong. But seeing as that's how people feel, I've decided to turn down the opportunity to make a doc. Less people will hear about it. Those that do will know less of the details. But they'll know more of the spirit of it. Because it just is.

Loads of people have been in touch to recommend a route or to ask if they can accompany me. The answer to all of this is... I can't plan that far ahead. I'm not going to make an appointment to meet and ride with a stranger months in advance because I have no idea what I'm going to feel like when it's happening. Maybe I'll want to be by myself. Maybe I'll be craving a companion or two. If you ask me the day before a particular leg, I'll know how I feel about it. If you ask me before that... well the answer is always going to be, I don't know.

I can't pretend that I'm not scared of the physical challenge. It's a hell of a thing. It seems far more scary for having made it public. I genuinely hadn't appreciated how much harder I've made it by adding in the gigs. Riding from the southernmost point of the mainland to the northernmost, via the easternmost and westernmost points is one thing. If it was just that - just the journey - then it wouldn't have mattered if I took 6 weeks instead of 4. If I got tired and took a day off. Or just decided to call it a day 20 miles shy of that day's target it wouldn't have mattered. But when there's an audience waiting for you at the other end there's no choice. You have to complete the journey. It has to happen to a timetable. I have to get there every day. And when I get there, there's a mental challenge waiting for me, stretching out the day even further.

I've been cycling in my day to day business, getting myself in and out of town, but that's just pootling. It doesn't compete in terms of distances. So on Thursday afternoon I decided to go for a proper training ride. I headed off into the Lea Valley and just kept going.

I love London when the sun is shining. I love seeing crowds of people using the parks. I don't remember seeing that in my hometown of Stafford. The only people I remember seeing in the park were teenagers drinking cider and the occasional dog walking gran. Maybe it's because most people there have gardens - and most people with dogs will head for the wide open spaces of Cannock Chase. Maybe people use parks in London because they have less options. It doesn't matter. Whether it's because of the relative rarity of London gardens, or for some other reason entirely, there's still something really refreshing and energising about seeing public space so well used by the public.

Anyway, I rode out to somewhere near Broxbourne in Hertfordshire. Out past the pages of the A-Z, under the M25 and beyond. It was beautiful out there and it was agorgeous day for it. I'd have kept going but I had my eye on the clock so I turned round and came home. It turned out I ended up with a 36 mile round trip. I feel fine after. And momentarily, I feel just that little bit more confident about the tour.

You can do it Duffy Moon.

Outside The Bubble

What a ridiculous and lovely weekend. On Saturday morning I travelled up to Northumbria for a wedding of two beautiful friends.

I wouldn't have missed it for the world but selfishly I think it was really good for me too. After a week of living in the publicity bubble as we built up to Friday night's first episode of Genius it was the perfect way of reminding me that there are always more important things out there.

Because I had commitments in London on Friday the only way of making the journey was to fly up to Newcastle and then hire a car. If you're a regular reader you might know that I gave up car ownership a few years ago. The last time I drove in the UK was when I got to drive one of those tiny electric cars for an item on the Grand Designs Live thing I did last May.

The flight was, um, unpleasant. Really the only thing that made the weekend less than perfect. Newcastle United were hosting Arsenal that day so inevitably the plane was full and had a blokes-away-day tone to it. At one point, when a conspicuously pretty young girl returned to her seat from a trip to the loo she was given a round of applause by fifty blokes. Charming. I'm sure the knowledge that every woman who made the walk to and from the back of the plane was being judged on their appearance made everyone feel really relaxed about the rest of the flight. Especially as some of the blokes sitting near me then had a loud conversation about the relative merits of the stewardesses who - they decided - weren't as pretty as they'd hoped.

I really hate being in crowds of men when this sort of thing happens. I know they think they're just having a laugh and to many I probably just sound like a killjoy but not one of them would behave like that if they weren't bolstered by the power of the mob (and booze). We landed at 9.30am and they were loudly boasting about being four pints in already.

There's obviously no way of doing anything about it so the best you can do is meet people's eyes and try to tacitly express that you're not a part of it. In order to assert to myself how uninvolved I was I put my headphones in and listened to the campest music I could. Thanks Boogaloo Stu.

At the airport I joined the queue for the hire car company and suddenly had a heart stopping moment. I was sixth or seventh in line and I watched as everyone else in front of me took out their driver's licences. They all had the paper part of their licence as well as the card. I felt the blood drain away. The e-mail that confirmed the booking for the hire car had explicitly stated that I needed to bring both parts of my licence. I'd made a note of it. I'd even checked that the paper part was kept in the drawer I thought it was at the time. But at midnight, when I was packing my bag I'd forgotten that detail and had neglected to fetch and pack it. Oops. (Or as they say in Denmark: ups.)

I spent ten minutes in the queue certain I was about to be told that while I'd already paid for the car I couldn't actually take it. Certain I would meet a there's-nothing-I-can-do refusal. Sure I was about to take a very expensive cab instead. When it was my turn I told him straight away that I didn't have the paper licence and he just shrugged and said, "No problem, I'll just have to call the DVLA and check your endorsements." Such a relief.

Then he tried to persuade me to pay for an upgrade. I'd arranged to hire a small hatchback. I was being offered a Mercedes sports car. I turned it down to begin with. I'd arranged to pay extra for a sat-nav. The Mercedes came with an inbuilt sat-nav so he explained that they'd take off the fee for the sat-nav as an add on if I took it. By the time he'd finished explaining the benefits it was going to cost me something ridiculous like an extra £8 to take the sports car. So I did. The photograph up top shows you the car I was driving and the hotel I was staying in. Ridiculous. Very out of character for me. But lovely. Very, very lovely.

I don't want to write about personal things - especially other people's personal things - so I'll only say that the wedding itself was fabulous and a glorious time was had by all. By the time I'd returned to London late on Sunday afternoon I was feeling pretty wiped out.

Digression: I went for a wee in the gents at Newcastle airport. Above every urinal there was an advert. It was for a bookmakers that was located within the airport by security. They were doing a special Mothers' Day offer. A free £3 matched bet. What? Is that as misplaced an advert as it seems to me to be? Perfect for any bloke who's forgotten Mothers' Day, but taken their gambling addicted Mum to the airport for the day. What!

Digression over: ... feeling pretty wiped out. Not at all in the mood to do a gig. But a gig is what I had to do because I'd agreed to do a spot in Ali McGregor's Late Nite Variety Nite night. Elated by the weekend's football results I decided to laugh in the face of exhaustion and cycle into town. I'm glad I did. I know Ali but had never seen her perform before and didn't really know what to expect from the evening. It was camp and silly and very, very funny cabaret. Ali and all her guests were amazing. There were singers, accordionists and burlesque acts (how odd that having followed a burlesque act for the first time so recently I got to do it again so soon) and by the time the interval came I was feeling like some stand-up would be a wholly inappropriate interruption to the flow of the evening.

It made me change the way I approached the gig. Stand-up is by and large an illusory artform. Most comics are pretending to be more in the moment than they appear. Things are normally more written than a lot of the audience appreciates. Even most of the comedians who appear to be making it all up as they go along are largely doing no such thing. (Although I saw Phil Kay last week and I'm pretty sure he was for real and he was absolutely ace.) But every now and then, you are. And when you're on stage and saying things you've never said - or thought - before and it's working you feel incredibly alive. It's when the thing you normally sort of pretend to be doing has come to life.

Following four other stand-ups changes the way you approach a gig. The audience has got used to a stand-up rhythm and you feel like you have to bang it out in order to hold their attention. But following a Lady Elvis, an accordionist, a camp singer of torch songs, an omnichordist (don't ask) and a Star Trek themed burlesque made me abandon any plans and just feel my way through a set.

Don't get me wrong, most of what I said on stage was material I'd done before - although none of it was the stuff I'd thought about doing in advance. But maybe 20% of it was completely new. By which I mean, not-even-from-my-new-things-I-haven't-tried-yet page of my notebook. Things I'd never even thought about before, let alone written down or said out loud. About half of that new stuff will never work again because it was about the night and the situation and the moment and the shared consciousness in the room... but maybe the other half can be turned into something.

Of course it will never be as exciting for me as it was last night when I was saying - and hearing - it for the first time. And maybe that's the more important gain. I've been out of stand-up for a long time and while I think gigs are generally going well it is something you never stop learning about. Comedy clubs create their own atmosphere and expectations, as do cabaret nights like last night. But it's useful to do them all because you learn something about yourself by working in such different environments.

Or not so soon, depending on where you live...

It was only when I read the comments to my last post that I discovered Genius has been scheduled differently in Northern Ireland and in Wales.

So actually, the schedule is as follows:
England/Scotland: BBC2, Friday, 10pm
Northern Ireland: BBC2, Friday, 11.35pm
Wales: BBC2, Saturday, 10pm.

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.

From L to B and back again

Having announced this tour (which is really a long bike ride with gigs added in) I've been inundated with questions. The easy questions have been about why I'm playing where I am... answer: because it's a big bike ride with a gig every night, but the others haven't been so easy.

Amongst the oft asked Qs are things like, "Are you planning on filming the show?" and "Have you got any plans to perform it after the tour?" The answer to these is no. But then people go away convinced that I'm not going to perform the show again and certain that the show won't be filmed. Every answer makes things seem so definite when the truth is that I'm a disorganised old thing who hasn't made any plans at all. I haven't thought about such things yet... the tour is a long way off. I probably will perform the show again... after all, it's not a show about the journey so there's no reason why not. But that's not the same as having plans which implies I have some secret dates in my diary that I'm not revealing. I haven't.

I've also been bombarded with advice and offers of help from people which is really lovely and touching. People with local knowledge are suggesting routes I should take and recommending places to stop along the way and so on and quite a few people have offered me places to stay. Quite a few more have asked if they can accompany me on one of the day's cycling. It's really been quite overwhelming and I'm very grateful for all of it... but I'm left feeling all the more disorganised because I simply can't keep track of it all. Right now, my priority is getting the show together and I haven't stopped to think about the logistics of the ride.

I'm worried that if I encourage people to accompany me I'll have a duty of care towards them. Am I responsible for their safety on the road if they're doing a journey they wouldn't have done but for me? I'm happy to take responsibility for myself but being responsible for other people fills me with dread. I don't want to be a tour guide.

And I can't decide whether staying with strangers would be more or less relaxing than B&Bs, hotels and the like. It appeals to the hippie minstrel side of me that is part of the reason for touring in this fashion in the first place but I have no idea what I'm going to do.

The end of August is just too far away for me to contemplate these details and the fab e-mails offering route-advice that I won't need til then have already been swept off the front page of my inbox to places where I'll struggle to find them. It's the kind of advice that my head doesn't cope well with at long range but loves when I can act on it with some immediacy.

I'm not really very au fait with the mobile internet. I've never craved a phone that has that kind of facility because the idea of being followed by my e-mails when I leave the house fills me with dread. But for this journey it might be a useful tool. If I was getting advice about routes the night before I needed them it'd be fantastic. On the day I'd know if I fancied company. After a night in a bland hotel I'd know if I fancied a change. At six months notice these things seem impossible to even begin thinking about. In the moment they should - I hope - make complete sense.

Incidentally, somewhere at the back of my mind, when I thought about doing this was the fact that I had previously done the London to Brighton bike ride for the British Heart Foundation. It's a roughly 60 mile bike ride and having done one it gives me confidence that I can do more. Whether or not I can do 33 of them in a row I've yet to find out. And the London to Brighton event creates artificially friendly conditions. There are nice, helpful marshalls lining the route, keeping you and the traffic apart and you're surrounded by tens of thousands of other cyclists who are going the same way. That won't be the case when I start my ride. The reality of what I've taken on is starting to hit me - and having announced it, it feels ten times more real than it was. Oh well, it's too late now.

But it occurred to me that I had no good reason not to sign up for the ride this year. And as a training exercise I think I'm going to try and cycle home the next day. I'm going to have to get used to intercity cycling between now and the tour so I might as well. If you want to sponsor me, (officially for the first ride and secretly for the next day's return journey) then please visit www.justgiving.com/dgorman

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.

Time to fall over.

We recorded the Genius Christmas Special last night... in what turned out to be a marathon recording.

I think we ran nearly an hour longer than our normal shows... and I'm aware that my energy levels were dropping by the end of the night.

I thought it was a more rambunctious show than normal but all of the punters were great, as was our special guest, Lee Mack... and the diversity of the ideas was lovely too. It should definitely make for a fine show... but I wouldn't fancy being the one who has to cut it down to thirty minutes. You can judge for yourself when the show airs on Radio 4 at 6.30 on December 22. (It's repeated on the Sunday after Christmas too.)

I've spent the last two or three weeks trying to shake off an annoyingly persistent cold. I tend to get better as the day goes on... but then wake up each morning feeling like I'm back to square one. My normal reaction to a cold is to exercise. I like to tell my body that I'm here and I'm fighting... so I've been cycling to Genius HQ each morning. Someone who seems to know what they're talking about has recently told me that it's the wrong thing to do and that it lowers the immune system... but by the end of a five mile bike ride I feel so much better than I do after cooping myself up on the tube so I keep doing it.

There was one day last week when I did a morning in the office, an afternoon at home, a gig (yes, my experiment with unadvertised, short notice, short sets of stand up is ongoing) at the Albany on Great Portland Street, another gig at The Kings Head in Crouch End, returned to the Albany to see a few friends and then returned home. I reckon that added up to something like 25 to 30 miles of cycling although the hills around Crouch End made it feel like more.

By the end of the day I was feeling the full smugness of a cyclist. Not only had I done my travelling in about the same time as the tubes and buses would have reasonably got me from A to B (to A to C to D to C to A) but the exercise left me feeling really healthy. I felt like I'd conquered my cold. My lungs were full of oxygen instead of the radioactive phlegm I'd been growing accustomed to... I really thought I'd won.

Boy did I feel shit the next morning. Wiped out. You can't win. The only thing that makes me feel better in the short term is some exercise. But the next day it seems to have made things worse. So I get on the bike once more... and feel better. Only to be worse still the next day.*

Anyway... last night's show was my last work for the year. I've been trying to fight the illness for long enough to get that out of the way. Today I feel completely wiped out so I think it might be time to give in to the cold and let it take me down. I'll emerge on the other side. Hopefully before Christmas.











*You have no idea how hard it was to resist the obvious, "it's a vicious cycle" pun.

Last Night's News... and Christmas Genius

Cor, last night was exciting wasn't it? The world feels like a different place already. It's obvious the man's a born leader.

No doubt about it... not everyone could have slotted home that 95th minute penalty, salvaging a draw and leaving Liverpool top of the group. Now... I ought to check the news and see what happened in those elections they were having in Americaland. I hope that Obama chap won. The Palin lass scares me.

Now... Christmas.

Retro Christmas, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

I know it's only early November... but these things need to be planned.

We're going to make a Genius Christmas Special for Radio 4 soon... and it would be fabbo if the show was jam packed with seasonal ideas. So if you think you might be a genius and you have an idea that relates to the festive season - whether it's Christmas, Hanukah or simply something that'll make the New Year go with a swing - then get in touch by e-mailing the show on Genius@bbc.co.uk.

If you fancy being in the audience... well, as I type this, free tickets are still available here.

The show will record on the evening of December 10th... see you there, yeah? Yeah? Great.

Live

I did some stand-up for the first time in nearly 8 years last night.

I mentioned a few days ago that I'm trying to work out how to get back into some kind of live performance... but that I'm not sure what form it should take.

The thing is, I gave up stand-up for what seemed to be very good reasons at the time. The landscape has changed a bit these days. Somebody has coined the phrase 'documentary comedy', giving a name to the genre*. Each year at the Fringe there are maybe a dozen shows tagged with the phrase and audiences turn up to see them without questioning what the format will be.
*Or maybe they're just pretending that the age old art of story-telling is some kind of new genre by coming up with a new name for it. Either way, the effect is the same.

When I first did Reasons To Be Cheerful at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1998, audiences were confused about what to expect. There would often be some awkwardness at the start of the show as it dawned on them that they weren't watching the stand-up show they were perhaps expecting. People simply didn't believe that I really was going to spend the whole show discussing one subject, without jokes, and that it would be funny. Luckily, on most occasions, most people were won over eventually. (As those who saw it will know, I've got the marbles to prove it.)

Of course it makes sense that audiences were expecting a stand-up show: I'd done stand-up shows at the festival for a few years running. I was a stand-up comic. And there wasn't really another kind of show for them to expect it to be.

The night I finally decided to knock stand-up on the head came after a gig at The Meccano Club in Islington. I'd just finished a ten-show run of Are You Dave Gorman? in the West End. I was really proud of the show. It hadn't been on TV yet but word of mouth meant I'd managed some respectable ticket sales in a proper West End theatre. It was really exciting and I was convinced it was the best show I'd done thus far.

Then a week or so after the run had ended I was booked for a thirty minute set at The Meccano. It went well although most of the material in the show was more than three years old. At the end this nice young couple came up to me.
"It was really good to see you tonight," said she, "We wanted to come and see you in the West End but we couldn't get a baby sitter. But it doesn't matter because we've seen you now."

That was it. As far as they were concerned seeing me do 30 minutes of jokes was equivalent to seeing me tell a 90 minute long story. I wanted to try and point it out to them... I wanted to explain that it was a completely different thing. But I didn't. I think I'd have looked like a churlish arse if I'd tried to explain it. I probably look like a churlish arse right now for admitting that I wanted to. But I did.

So, while I left my arse unchurled, I did decide there and then that if audiences were going to see me once and make their minds up about me based on that one offering, then I should only make available the work I was proudest of. If people didn't like it, that was fine - so long as enough people did - and it was better than confusing the issue by working in different fields... especially when they appear to be so similar in an I-talk-I-stop-they-laugh way.

I didn't have many stand-up engagements left in my diary... so the next day I called my agent and told him that I wouldn't accept any others. From that point on, the only thing I wanted to be judged on were the one-man shows.

Over the next few years I toured four different stage shows. And over time I definitely noticed that audiences' expectations were changing. When I revived Reasons To Be Cheerful a few years later they were entirely comfortable with the format of the show. There was no awkwardness at the start. The idea that I was there to discuss one subject, to tell one story was no problem. In fact that's what people expected of me.

So part of me thinks that maybe I don't need to draw the line in the sand for myself anymore. If someone saw that I was doing a storytelling show one night, a book reading on another and some stand up the night after that, I think they'd understand that each of those things were going to be fundamentally different in a way that wasn't clear 8 or 9 years ago.

It's probably been true for a while. It's just taken me some time to see through the fog I created for myself. I am stupid.

Anyway... I haven't toured a live show since I came home from my exhausting American tour of Googlewhack Adventure nearly three years ago. And that means I've been starved of audiences. I love doing Genius and that obviously involves a live audience but at six shows a series it's hardly feeding a habit.

When I was doing the book-readings for Googlewhack Adventure they were fun but it didn't possess any great novelty because I'd only just finished touring the UK with the stage show and more overseas touring was just around the corner... so facing an audience was just a normal, everyday thing to do. It's always been something I've enjoyed... but it's only when you don't do it for a while that you realise quite how much fun it is. And that's what I discovered (rediscovered?) when I did the run of book readings for America Unchained. I was really excited to be doing them... and I decided that when the book readings ended I'd try to work out a way of doing something else live instead.

I don't think it would be sensible to try and contrive another big story-telling show. I'm proud of how honest and un-contrived the previous shows have been and think it would inevitably feel a bit lacklustre if I engineered something just so I could do another one. Several people have suggested I create a stage-show out of America Unchained... but I can't see the point in telling people a story they already know and so, with the book and the documentary already out in the wild there's no reason to tell the story another way.

I still don't know what this is all going to lead to. Maybe I'll get back into stand-up properly. Maybe I won't. I just know that sitting around and trying to think of things in the abstract isn't very helpful. The only way of finding out is to go and do something and see how it fits. It'll either provide enough fascination and drive or it won't. Maybe it'll close down some options but maybe it'll open up others. On stage, with an audience to play to (and with) the possibilities become real in a way that they never will when I'm sitting on my sofa muddling my thoughts.

But I'm aware that I've unlearned some of my stand-up ways and it's a form that needs to be respected. So, I'm not going to start hawking myself around as the finished article. So yesterday, I put together a short set - maybe 5 or 6 minutes - and went to a new material night run by some friends.

It went well. I enjoyed it. Things clicked. I was aware that my brain wasn't thinking as fast as it should. I was lucky. Because the audience were going with things I had plenty of thinking time to spare. It didn't matter that I was a bit behind the pace. But if it had been a quiet room - or perhaps if it hadn't been a new material night - where the audience don't expect the performers to be quite so well-oiled and slick - I might have been playing catch up; finding my next move a few moments after it was really needed.

Still it was a worthwhile exercise. And I guess I'll do some more short sets in the next few weeks. Just to loosen my muscles and tighten up some words. I might as well find out.

Genius...

After shows three and four I said something about how every show was turning out really differently as the guests - and the people pitching their ideas - had all stamped their personalities on their respective shows.

There was no chance of the last two recordings bucking the trend as our guests were Johnny Vegas and Germaine Greer respectively. They were both on remarkably good form. There was a moment in Johnny's show when I looked across and saw people literally crying with laughter. The fact that I was experiencing no small amount of physical pain at the time wasn't unconnected. Definitely a highlight. For the audience at least.

Germaine really is a remarkable woman. She's sharp, witty, feisty, flirty and seems to have boundless energy. A real treat. The fact that she left our show and immediately skipped into the studio next door to appear on a live show - Newsnight Review - only served to underline quite how fab she is. She's a force of nature and quite, quite, brilliant.

There's always a strange low after something like this draws to a close. Making the show has occupied pretty much every waking minute of the last few weeks - and not just for me. So many people have been putting in remarkable hours to make things happen. From the outside looking in I think people imagine there's an endless pot of money in tellyland and that anything you want built will be... but obviously that's nowhere near the truth. We've had a small team working really hard with quite limited resources... tie that up with a show that is constantly evolving as the recording approaches and you don't get a show out the other side without people going the extra mile to help.

It's going to be a bit strange on Monday when I don't head to Genius HQ in the morning... and I'm going to miss working with those people. But then it's going to be nice to sleep. And to have my social life back and... and I'm going to miss working with those people.

Two thirds...

Genius seems to be happening remarkably quickly now that we've started filming them. It feels like we've only just started but we've already got four out of the six shows done. Crikey. It's exhausting... but at the same time it's giving me an adrenaline rush and I think one is cancelling the other out. I expect I'll collapse into a heap the day after the sixth show.

This Tuesday/Wednesday our guests were Stewart Lee and Frank Skinner respectively. They were both brilliant. They also, both took really different approaches to the show which is one of the things that makes the job so exciting for me... it shows no signs of ever becoming routine.

There are so many variables in a show like this. It's not just the guest genius, there are also the members of the public who pitch their ideas, and of course the ideas themselves. The end result is that every show feels really unique... while at the same time, the series seems to have a really strong identity binding it all together. I hope that comes across on screen as well as it does in the studio.

Once again, our pitchers (for want of a better word) all seemed to have a good time. On paper, Genius could have been a show that chewed people up and spat them out and I'm really proud of the fact that we don't do that. Without exception they're always really beaming at the end of the night and whether they were deemed a genius or not, they're always happy that they took part. Before the show I always tell them that they're going to enjoy it... and I can tell they don't all believe me... but afterwards they always tell me how much fun it was. Which makes it all the more fun for me.

This time next week I'll be part way through recording the fifth show... and by the end of Friday night, the series will be over. Lorks.

By the way... a few people have asked a few questions about the show... so here are the answers:
1) It'll go out early next year some time. The dates will be on my site as soon as I know them.
2) Simply because we get loads more ideas from men than we do from women. Of the ideas we receive, something like 19 out of 20 come from men. We'd love to have more female pitchers too - get thinking ladies...
3) Yup, the ideas for this series are locked and loaded... but we're always looking for more. But I'm not the person to send them to. I'm the least organised member Team Genius... so visit the Genius website instead.
4) Yes, he is real and yes, his name really is Thorin.