Hello Milton Keynes!

Hello Milton Keynes!



I had no idea how controversial this series of photos was going to be. It started out as an idle way of announcing my presence to people on twitter. I wasn't intending to do it for every town on the tour... but after having done a few, people started tweeting me to say that they were looking forward to seeing what picture I tweeted from their town and so on. So I've felt a teeny obligation to keep it up.

When I posted my Dorking picture - it's of a statue that stands outside the venue - loads of people got in touch to say that they were disappointed it wasn't a picture of the giant metal cock(erel) that stands on a nearby roundabout. Apparently that would have been "more Dorking".

And when I posted the picture from Brighton again there were people telling me that it wasn't "Brighton enough" for them... they wanted it to be a picture of a pier or something else more iconic and Brightonian... when in truth they're just pictures of things I see - rather than things I go out of my way to find. If the day is a rush the picture will be of something I pass on my walk from the train station to the venue... there isn't always time for a wander around town.

Still... as I walked from the station in Milton Keynes this was in my mind. I would try to give people what they want and find a picture of something more iconic and Miltony Keynesy. It was dusk. Camera phones don't operate well in dusk so the airportesque architecture was out of the question. But the walk took me through the shopping centre where the replica concrete cows reside... hence the photo.

A few yards away the fantastic Waterstones book shop (I've done a couple of lovely readings there) had a huge model of a cow on display too. They were selling miniature replica concrete cows alongside a selection of I Love MK t-shirts. Like it or lump it, the concrete cows are a symbol of Milton Keynes. Just the job.

I posted the photo. The usual flurry of return "Hellos" came from happy locals... but one man was less than happy about it. I won't reveal his username because that always encourages people to run off and get involved and that can quickly become a form of bullying for which there is no need. Besides, my reaction was to laugh.

Because in return for me posting the innocuous picture of a concrete cow that you see above, one person replied as follows:
Or rather, as unfollows. I love the idea that someone loves Milton Keynes so much that they assume everyone else is mocking it constantly. To decide that a picture of a concrete cow is automatically a slight on that great city is... um... well, a touch over-sensitive, no? (If he'd read my latest book, he'd know that I really like Milton Keynes and devoted quite a few paragraphs to eulogising the place).

But even if I had tweeted some dastardly insult to the place, the reaction would surely still be over the top. The people who tweet that they are unfollowing always make me giggle. It's the same pomposity that fuels what I do with the Found Poetry... it's sort of supposes that I am on twitter for the sole purpose of amassing followers, that I crave the indulgence of that particular individual and that I will be upset when they decide to leave. It's easy to follow someone and easy to unfollow them too. You just click a button. There's no ticket price. Announcing that you're unfollowing is like slamming a door as you leave... only on twitter it's a revolving door and they don't slam very well.

I explained to them that I like Milton Keynes and that I found it ridiculously pompous of them to behave that way. It seems to me that when Outraged-Of-Milton-Keynes decides to announce his outrage at an insult-that-doesn't-exist all it proves, really, is that Outraged-of-Milton-Keynes is a bit of an oversensitive numpty. And anyone who tells someone that didn't ask them to follow them that they're unfollowing them just seems overblown on self-importance.

He then tweeted,
Which surprised me because I can't see the positive viewpoint in that first tweet. I don't think calling someone a "massive twat" is a really positive thing to do. It seems a bit aggressive to me. Even if it's motivated by a love for his home town the assumption that a picture of that home town is automatically an insult is, well... a little negative, really.

There's something about the idea that it was 'public' too that I find odd. As if his tweets to me aren't public but mine to him are. I didn't try to shame him at all... and I didn't criticise him for being positive. I criticised him for his lack of manners. And pomposity. I mean, really, if you think it's okay to call someone a massive twat in public... you kind of have to expect them to respond. Especially when you're motivation for the name-calling is so... um... non-existent.

Still, it provided light relief in the dressing room last night.

But my life it's put the pressure on for my visit to Guildford tonight... will I take a photo? Will it offend people? Gulp. Let's see.

The Continuing Tour Photo Diary...

Hello Cambridge...




Hello Southend...



Hello Dorking...



Hello Brighton...




Next up it's Milton Keynes, Guildford, Bournemouth and then Dublin... with many more dates still to come...

AFAQATT

When I'm on tour I get a lot of tweets about the show. Some of them ask questions and some of those questions get asked multiple times... so I thought I'd make life a little easier for myself by putting up an Actually Frequently Asked Questions About The Tour blog entry that I can link to when I need to.

I say Actually Frequently Asked... because I'm always suspicious when I read FAQs that some of the questions are really Rarely If Ever Asked Questions That Give Us An Opportunity To Tell You What We Want To Tell You. So I promise these are all questions that I have been asked every night of the tour by someone. Here goes.

1: What's the music playing before the show? Did you choose it?
I did choose it. It's by a band called Misty's Big Adventure. I'm a big fan of theirs. They did a special song as a DVD extra when Are You Dave Gorman? was released and also did the theme music for Genius. I like to play their music before the show because somehow it seems to be in the same spirit as the show. They're on twitter as Mistys_Big_Twit.


2: Will you be playing in Sweden?/Why aren't you playing in Glasgow?
This is definitely the most frequently asked of all the questions. Okay... it might not always be Sweden or Glasgow... but you get the idea. Substitute any place the tour doesn't reach and the answer's the same. I don't book venues, they book me. That's it. Simple as that.

Oh... and of course it goes without saying that you should at least check the dates before assuming we aren't coming to your town... many's the time someone complains about us not playing somewhere we are playing. I've asked a couple of people why. Sample answer: "I just didn't think you would play Aldershot." Really.

If you're asking this question and you're not on my mailing list then, together, we appear to be doing this the wrong way round. It's easier for us both if I tell you when I am coming your way instead of you asking on the off chance. I don't send masses of emails and I always let the mailing list  know about free things first. Some people seem to be scared of signing up as if it's some kind of commitment. It isn't. It just means that you'll get occasional emails when I have new things going on. And some of them might be near you. Spam free. No hassle.


3: Who organises your tour and don't they know anything about geography?!
This is asked by people who see that after the Liverpool show we were playing Aberdeen and then Edinburgh and then Nottingham. Or similar. Take a look at other people's tour posters... you'll see it's a common occurrence. Of course in a world where every venue was sitting idle doing nothing except wanting my show to turn up we'd probably do some more sensible driving. But they're not. A lot of venues are seven nights a week operations. They have schedules to fill as well. There's no reason why their available dates should be convenient to me... in fact sometimes venues have exclusion zones where they prevent you playing within a 50 mile radius, say, for a month or so. They don't want you playing just up the road the next day. Fair enough.
Some theatres are rep venues - they have plays on 6 nights a week - and are only available on Sundays. Fridays and Saturdays are easier to sell than other nights of the week. These are all factors. Agents don't ask whether the journey will be nice... only if it will be possible.


4: Will it be out on DVD?
I think some people assume that a tour exists solely so it can be filmed and released... as if - without that pay off - people wouldn't do live shows. That's not the case. Live shows are fun. And with this particular show I don't think it would be possible to put it on DVD for all manner of legal reasons. If that makes it sound like I'm some kind of dangerous firebrand saying the unsayable... well that's not it.
Hmm... I'm trying to answer this without providing spoilers... so I'll tell you a story about the last show that was filmed for DVD. In it there's a routine where I read from a postcard. On tour I'd use a postcard I bought in the first town and then replace it occasionally when it got a bit tatty. On the DVD I wasn't allowed to use a shop bought postcard because we would have had to get permission from the copyright holder first and we couldn't guarantee that they would give me that permission. So I used a postcard that had been produced by my publishers when they were promoting America Unchained. I owned the copyright to that image... problem solved.
Now... multiply that problem by 850 slides - some of them showing adverts from multinational companies that don't necessarily come out of the show with glowing reports... and you have a show that can't really be recorded or broken into bits that fit on TV.
That's fine by me. I didn't write a show so that it could be recorded... I wrote a show so that it could be performed .

5. Is it really PowerPoint or are you using Keynote? (Or Prezi or whatever)
Actually this isn't always phrased as a question. A sample tweet. "I went to see Dave Gorman's Powerpoint Presentation tonight. Very funny. But it wasn't PowerPoint. It was Keynote. I'll let him off." I know it's hard to believe that people do this... but they genuinely do. At least two every night. And they're wrong... it is PowerPoint. I've had a couple of twitter conversations about it and the reason behind it seems to be that a) I'm running it on a Mac and b) "PowerPoint can't do that and Keynote is better so you should use Keynote". But PowerPoint can do that. Because that's what did that. That thing you saw that you thought PowerPoint couldn't do. Besides... the show isn't about PowerPoint... it just uses it. It wouldn't be funnier if I used different transitions...

6. Do you want to come for a pint before the show?
Well yes. And no. I'm not really a pints-kind of fella... I'm more a rum man myself. But wanting to and being able to are different things. I never drink before this show. It's a physical show to perform. I think people who haven't seen me live - or who have only seen me doing a book reading, say - imagine it to be a gentle, amble of a show. It's not. It's full tilt. It's sort of like going to the gym every night. And only a fool would have a pint - or a rum - before going to the gym.
On top of that, doing the show tears my throat apart. I have the chance to sip some water about 30 seconds in... and then there isn't another moment where I can stop and do it again. I've had nodules in the past. They hurt. If I'm doing a small number of gigs I might have a drink after a show. But if I'm doing a proper tour I try to stay away. I have to try and look after the voice because without one there's no show. It's easy to go without because I enjoy doing the shows much more than I enjoy drinking... and drinking can mean I end up doing the shows in pain. Which is less fun. (For what it's worth, sober audiences are better too. Comedy is about an exchange of ideas. Sober people laugh at ideas. Drunk people laugh at swear words. Which is boring. Not that I don't swear. It's just that they're not there to make drunk people laugh.)

I think those are the most frequently asked questions I'm getting. Actually, there is another question I get asked a lot... but it's a question I specifically ask the audience not to ask me because it can be a spoiler... and I can't answer it here for the same reason!
Reading the answers to questions you didn't ask is probably tedious (especially number 5!) and definitely has the potential to make the person doing the answering appear presumptuous... so my apologies to those of you who ploughed through this for little reward. It wasn't really aimed at you. I reckon I answer a mix of these questions on twitter at least 30 times a day... so I've just saved myself a lot of future typing.

There were a lot of miles in the last run of tour dates...

After Cardiff & Salford, we said Hello Liverpool!



Then Hello Aberdeen!


Then Hello Edinburgh!


Before saying Hello Nottingham!

The next few dates are a little easier as far as travelling is concerned. Cambridge, Southend, Dorking, Brighton, Milton Keynes, Guildford and Bournemouth... it'll feel like no miles at all after this last week.

All details for this next run - and the dates beyond - Dublin, Birmingham, Oxford, York, Middlesbrough, Bristol, High Wycombe, Tunbridge Wells, Watford, Cheltenham, Wolverhampton, Leicester, London, Coventry, Carlisle, Preston, Perth and Belfast - can be found on the Live Dates page of my site.

A Tour Diary. Sort Of.

In no particular order...

Hello Cardiff!


Hello Salford!



Hello Sheffield!



Hello Newcastle!



Hello Derby!

Jabba, Jabba, Hey!

I'm getting a lot of emails from people asking me to play games with them when my tour gets to their town... but it's not proving very doable.

There isn't a lot of free time... or rather, there isn't a lot of predictable free time. Sometimes setting the show up takes two hours, sometimes it takes four. Sometimes we have a hundred miles to drive, sometimes we have three hundred. I can't accurately predict when we're going to arrive at each venue and when, if at all, we'll be able to duck out of there pre-show.

It makes it impossible to arrange a playdate in advance and means the best I can ever do is really a more spontaneous, pre-show game of darts... something I've managed in Norwich, Shrewsbury and, Aldershot.

In Aldershot I was delighted to discover a dartboard backstage. This was perfect for me because when the technical side of the show is being set up I have to be around but I don't have to actually be there the whole time. So I could play for 20 minutes, go and help focus a projector and then return to play. I played all through the interval. It's the perfect pre-show ritual.

I mentioned it on twitter (my apologies to all those people who seem to find the mere mention of darts distressing in some way) and mused that if every venue had a backstage dartboard I'd be a very happy man.

And my prayers were answered. Jamie Caven - Jabba180 on twitter - got in touch and said he was coming to the show in Derby and reckoned he could bring a Unicorn On Tour with him. I'd never heard of the 'on tour' but essentially it's a contraption that straps to a door and turns it into a mounting for a dartboard.

So last night my dream came true and Jamie turned up with an on tour - and some other goodies - and my dressing room became a darts room. I'm a very happy boy.

I'm also a bit of a fan boy. Because Jamie is a seriously impressive darts player. In that he's one of the top ranked players in the world. But you don't even have to be into darts to find Jamie impressive. I won't give you his whole life story... but I will tell you that he got stung by a bee when he was a kid... and as a result he's blind in one eye.

Blind in one eye. Professional darts player. That's just ridiculous. He throws tungsten arrows through 3D space... with vision in only one eye. And he's bloody brilliant at it. When he draws back his throwing arm he loses sight of his dart and only sees it again on the forward motion. Whether you're into darts or not, that is awe-inspiring.

Having set the board up he encouraged me to throw some darts. I was nervous - in that fanboy way - but they weren't bad. Especially for first-darts-of-the-day. I threw another three. The third one hit the treble twenty. I was relieved not to have humiliated myself in his company.

After a while Jamie took my darts off me and had a go too. His normal darts are 23 grams. Mine are 26. His are stick thin, like tiny pencils, mine are chunky, nubby, stumpy things. Within three or four minutes he'd thrown a 180. That's ridiculous.

Anyway... I'm hugely grateful to him and his wife Debbie (who isn't in the photos because she took them) and to UnicornDarts for the gift. Every theatre now has a backstage dartboard and this tour - already the most enjoyable I've done - just got even easier.

A Tour Review

Untitled, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

In Edinburgh, at the festival, you can't help but be aware of reviews. Even those people who say they don't want to read them know there's something they're trying to avoid reading.

But on tour, you don't really give it a second thought. I never ask if we have any reviewers in because there's no point. It's not as though I'd change the show if I knew they were there. I know it sounds cheesy but we try and do the best show every night, whatever the circumstances.

Anyway... I had no idea we'd been reviewed until this morning when I was having my breakfast in Bedford (which is just a ford away from the best place to have breakfast) and as I flicked through the paper I happened upon it. It's a review of the Aldershot show and it's lovely.

"Dave Gorman's latest offering, Powerpoint Presentation, is a much-needed reminder of how a truly gifted performer can delve beyond clever punchlines and make us look afresh at the world. The nearest thing we have to that late, great American raconteur, Spalding Gray, he turns monomania into the most compelling and uplifting of confessionals.

"The man who taught us about the mysteries of the Googlewhack takes off on another technological journey in this show using a screen and projector as his silent foil. The techie display however, never comes close to swamping the human element. Each intricately crafted routine becomes a masterclass in timing..."

Which is all rather lovely. I'm a huge admirer of Spalding Gray so to be included in the same breath as him is absolutely thrilling. Truly. I'm chuffed.