The Easternmost Point!

Well, ten days in and as you can see I - or at least my shadow - have made it to the easternmost point of the British mainland. Hurrah for things like that. So... here's how the last few days panned out.

Day 8's ride started at the Town Hall in High Wycombe, where Lloydy Junior and I were joined by Human Sat Nav, Chris:
His polka-dot 'King of the Hills' jersey should have been a warning that this wasn't going to be the easiest of rides... but the fact that Chris has a robo-bike with his own home-made sat-nav holder bolted to the front of it...

... meant that at least the mileage was lower than I was expecting. When I first looked at it the route from High Wycombe to Cambridge came in at 88 miles... one of the longest on the whole trip. But Chris had programmed his sat nav well and had plotted a route that came in at around 70 miles. Here's the way we went...

And here's how uppity-downity it was... you can see where we hit the fens:


I'm not sure where Chris or LLJnr disappeared to here...

This is what they looked like:


Here's Chris and I just before we crossed into the city of Cambridge:
And here we are with LLJnr at the day's finishing line, the Corn Exchange:


I was back there at the start of Day 9 to meet my next Human Sat Nav, Emma:

Her excellent navigating meant we went from Cambridge to Ipswich without having to deal with the horrible main roads:





As you'd expect in that part of the world there wasn't much uppity-downity in this 60 mile ride:

And here we are at the end of the ride, outside the Regent Theatre:


I had arranged a Human Sat Nav for Day 10 but while they replied to some e-mails a while ago, they haven't replied to any of my recent text messages or voice-mails... so I was getting worried that I was going to have to make the ride from Ipswich to Lowestoft alone. This was particularly worrying as my actual sat nav has been going haywire... for example, here's what it thinks I did in the middle of the ride to Cambridge:
You can see why I didn't want to trust the machine to guide me and I definitely didn't want to trust myself because I knew I'd only end up taking the A12 and that would be horrible. Luckily for me the theatre was full so I had 1300 people in front of me and I figured there had to be at least one cyclist with the right local knowledge in amongst them.

There was. His name's Dave. Here he is outside the Regent at the start of Day 10:

If I look happy, it's partly because I was relieved to have found someone as capable as Dave but also because I'd had a very good breakfast. This is why I like B&Bs and guesthouses more than hotels. You don't get a bowl of fruit like this - with figs picked from the garden - at many hotels do you?
We took a great route through the Suffolk countryside:
And I think the relatively flat landscape, a nice tailwind and some improvement in my fitness meant we averaged around 15.5mph for the 50 mile ride:



I've been getting a few messages from people on Twitter asking me what time I'm going to arrive at places and what route I'm taking and so on. The answer is always that I don't know. I'm letting my Human Sat Navs choose the routes and I really can't predict how long any given ride is going to take - especially when I don't know where we're going. But Gemma here saw that I'd mentioned we were leaving Ipswich at around 10.30 and took a good guess as to when we'd arrive at the easternmost point - Lowestoft Ness - so Dave and I actually had a welcoming party to greet us:

It also means there was someone there who was happy to take on the role of official photographer... so big thanks to Gemma for taking this picture of Dave and I at the finishing line:


So there we have it... the first coast to coast is complete... I've gone from Lizard Point:

to Lowestoft Ness...

... and now I start the long haul up to Ardnamurchan...

... and then Dunnet Head...


I'm looking forward to it...

The First Three Days

Picture 1: The day before my journey began someone on Twitter asked me if I was going to have a big send off or not. I replied to say that I could see no way in which watching a 38 year old man cycle uphill could be turned into a 'big send off'. It didn't stop these four lovely souls coming out to wave me off on day 1.

Picture 2: James and Richard: my two Human Sat Navs for Day 1, shortly before setting off from Lizard Point in the wind and drizzle.

Picture 3: We were joined by their friends, Tom and Pete.

Picture 4: But Tom and Pete peeled off before the end so at the finishing line - Grampound Village Hall - it was just me Richard and James once more.

Picture 5: Grampound Village Hall became the starting line for Day 2 with my Human Sat Nav, Ivan...

Picture 6: Who took me all the way through Liskeard and out to Upton Cross and the magnificent Sterts Theatre - the finishing line for Day 2.

Picture 7: Day 3 and my Human Sat Nav was Richard. This is us about to set off from Liskeard...

Picture 8: This was the hardest day's riding so far with Richard guiding me to Tavistock and up on to ...Dartmoor. It's quite a climb...

Picture 9: A curious Dartmoor resident...

Picture 10: And here we are at the finishing line for Day 3; The Northcott Theatre, Exeter. I think someone's having a laugh by trying to arrange shows in the highest venues in every town...

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.

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...

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.

Imbalance

It happens every time but it always takes me by surprise. At some point with every project there's a point at which a form of obsession takes hold, when those parts of life that don't relate directly to it start to feel like an imposition or an inconvenience even when they're nothing of the sort.

That's now how I feel about the tour. About both the ride and the show. I'm doing other things but there's a mild panic in the background of my brain telling me that I might have forgotten this or that. Or the other. I will shortly be setting out on the most intense month of my life. The ride alone would be a challenge. 32 full gigs on the bounce would be a challenge. The two combined means there will be little or no respite. I'm looking forward to it. And then I'm not. And then I am. And so on.

This afternoon I bought a large amount of food and drink. Energy bars. Sports drinks. Drinks to load carbs, replace salts and, um, something else. Drinks for before, during and after. I've probably over done it. But it seemed better than under doing it.

(Hmmm... can't help thinking that this picture makes it look like I have some kind of sponsorship deal. I don't.)

Hello Ardlui... is anyone there?

Hmm... I'm getting a wee bit worried about one of the gigs on the tour.


I know I'm going to be exhausted but I want to try and perform a show every night because in some ways I think it's easier to maintain momentum that way. A night off can be like letting the elastic out of the system and it gets harder to wind yourself up to top gear the next day.

Organising the shows has been a far more complicated affair than normal. With a normal tour you go wherever theatres want you. You play when they're available... which is why on most tours you see people going from Southampton to Glasgow to Portsmouth to Newcastle or whatever. If that's when the theatre is available, you fit it in. But with the cycling tour that obviously isn't possible. Every venue has to be within range of the last and the minute one gig was firmed up in the diary all of the others had to fall into place. The only sensible date for a gig in Preston was the day after the Manchester gig and so on. There have been one or two venues along the way who've bent over backwards to accommodate the peculiar circumstances - and I'm hugely grateful to them for that.

In the long stretch after Exeter travelling out east to Lowestoft then north as far as Lancaster the country is well populated and there are so many good sized towns dotted around the place that if we couldn't find a venue available on a given day we were able to look elsewhere and take a slightly different route instead.

But after Glasgow there really isn't that much versatility available. The route takes me out to Ardnamurchan - the most westerly point of the mainland - and then back across the country heading north and east and it's not exactly overflowing with people or towns which is why some of the venues are a little more improvised. I'm not complaining about that, I really like the fact that doing a tour in this unconventional way has led me to play in such a wide variety of venues. There can't be many tours that take in halls ranging from 30 to 2000 seats.

One of the trickiest to arrange has been Ardlui. There isn't really another town in range that day and they don't have a community centre or village hall or similar. In fact we were told they were trying to raise the money to build one. So we suggested that if we could find a makeshift venue for the evening we'd donate the money raised to the fund. I thought we'd found a solution - and we probably have - but the trail seems to have gone a little cold.

While the local paper seems to have confirmed that the show is welcome at the Ardlui Hotel, we're finding it rather difficult to actually speak to anyone from the hotel itself. I reckon it's just us fussy London media types panicking unnecessarily but I'm told that a lot of phone messages have been left and e-mails sent without reply and it's really difficult to trust that the show is definitely happening without actually speaking to someone to confirm it. Fingers crossed.

And if you're in Ardlui, could you tap on the window as you pass by and let them know we're coming.

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.

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...

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.

On Cycling And Twitter.

Bumper Car, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

Cycling:
So as I've explained previously I've recently been experimenting with some straight forward stand-up. I've been enjoying it and most of the gigs have been lovely with a couple of exceptions but after eight years away from it I'm still relatively rusty.

But then, working things out and making improvements is the thing I enjoy most about it...

One of the reasons I enjoy photography is that it provides a creative outlet which has nothing to do with how I make a living and in a weird way, doing some London club gigs right now is providing a similar pleasure. There's a learning curve - or at least a relearning curve - and it's good to focus the mind in any creative endeavour, especially when that's essentially all it is.

The first few I did, I'd take the tube so that I could scan through my notebook and try to familiarise myself with what I was intending to say... but after a while, when I felt a bit more secure about it I started cycling instead because... well, because I think it's the best way to get around London.

Somehow cycling adds to the low-key, lo-fi charm that I'm finding so appealing in stand-up right now. I can't explain why this would be the case but there's something about cycling to gigs that just underlines the fact that this isn't about business. I know it doesn't make sense and that a merchant banker who cycles to work probably doesn't feel like his mode of transport means he isn't really a career banker... but sense or nonsense, that's how it feels.

Twitter:
Meanwhile - and I know that some of you have noticed this already - I've succumbed to Twitter. I don't know what the tipping point was but I eventually caved in and created an account. I left it for a while but then when I looked back in I discovered I had 30 or 40 people following me and as I hadn't done anything for them to actually follow I thought I ought to either post something or delete the account. Anything but just let it fester.

Whenever I think about things like this (Myspace/Facebook/etc. etc.) I can hear the words of one of my old head teachers ringing in my ears. I can remember sitting on the floor at Berkswich Junior School when the head said the words, "A man with more than one watch is never sure of the time." It's stuck with me.

Well it seems to me that a man with more than one website is never sure that his message has been sent. I couldn't stand Myspace because it just led to thousands of mails a week from people who wrote asking questions that they could obviously answer for themselves within a couple of mouseclicks. For some reason, when I blocked my mail there and left a message saying that people could e-mail me at my website instead it just created a weird storm of abuse from people who thought that was unfair and uncool. (And also unkewl.)

Which is odd, because if I call someone and get a message saying that they're not checking that number but that they can be contacted on some other number instead I don't think that's unfair or uncool at all. I think that's jolly helpful of them. But Myspace users don't think like that. They demand the right to contact you through Myspace and seem to believe that anything else is against nature. So I deleted my Myspace account and gave it up as a bad lot. Tom is not my friend.

I was worried that I'd feel the same way about facebook but that seems to have worked out okay. And then people started suggesting, with an ever increasing frequency, that I should join Twitter as well. To begin with, I couldn't see the merit in adding yet another site to the list. Especially one that trades exclusively in messages of 140 characters or less.

Of course I might change my mind but right now it seems to me that where I at first thought that the brevity of the message rendered it utterly pointless, I now see that that is the point. It's what makes Twitter different to other sites... it's why this is a blog and that's a... micro-blog. But even more than that, after cautiously enjoying it for a couple of days, this evening Twitter was briefly bathed in a very positive light.

Cycling:
So this evening I was doing a gig in Shepherds Bush. So I popped on my helmet, lit up all my little lights and cycled across town. Now I think I'm a pretty safe cyclist. I think the key to cycling in a busy city like London is to never assume you're safe just because you have a right to be... you have to take responsibility for your own safety. So I look ahead. I assume drivers are going to open their car doors without looking. I wait at roundabouts until I have eye-contact with the drivers around me - proof that they know I'm there - and so on.

I'm glad that's what I was doing this evening because I nearly came a cropper. A man in a dark Jaguar was driving along Holland Park Avenue at about 7.15 this evening. I looked ahead and saw that he had his phone pressed to his left ear and that made me hang back a bit. Which is a good job because suddenly his car started to drift left. I could see he was looking ahead but nowhere else. He drifted about a yard and a half, shrinking the road in front of me to nothing and forcing me to take rapid evasive action to avoid being smashed into the kerb

Cycling when you're angry isn't wise but that's what happened next. I went after him. Not to actually do anything, just to have a word. I caught up with him a few sets of lights later - just before Holland Park Roundabout (which is as good a demonstration of the advantages of cycling over driving in a congested city as you need. (Although I suppose, the fact that he could have seriously hurt me is a demonstration of the disadvantages also.))

As I cycled past his open window, he was studying his phone, looking like he was about to make another call so I yelled, "Oi... you nearly killed me back there when you were on your phone." Realising there was nothing to be gained by prolonging the exchange, I then cycled on my way.

Twitter:
When I'd locked my bike up, I decided it was worth sending a message via Twitter about the, erm, incident. Partly to let off steam and partly because I'd sent a tweet (I know... but we'll all get used to it) saying I was about to cycle to Shepherds Bush before I'd set off. So, in less than 140 characters I explained that an idiot in a Jag had nearly knocked me off the bike and wondered whether it was reasonable or not (or indeed allowed) to publish the number plate which was still etched in my memory.

Only I'm a technological idiot and being online on my mobile phone still seems like magic to me so I couldn't work out how to see any replies until I got home after the gig.

So I did the show (nice enough, made some new things work, missed out a couple of things I'd intended to do, but all in all, a good experiment) and cycled home. Where I discovered a chorus of people encouraging me to name and shame him. Or at least his number plate.

Only by now - a few hours after the incident - my memory had faded a little and I was no longer 100% sure of his reg. So I posted something saying that I thought it was P16NAL but that it could have been a 17 instead.

And here's the thing that made me think Twitter really does have something special going on... within a few minutes someone had replied saying that they'd checked the licence plates out (I still don't really know how) and that P16NAL did belong to a green Jag. As somebody else commented almost immediately - that's like being in an episode of Spooks.

So... yeah... in conclusion, cycling's ace, Twitter seems lovely and if you're the Jaguaranus P16NAL ... well, I didn't wait around to see if you were in the mood to apologise or not but I'll assume you were and I'll accept it... just so long as you promise to turn your phone off when driving in future. You dangerous numpty.

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.