Comedian ready to bring fast-paced, fast clicking show to region

In the hands of Dave Gorman, however, it becomes two hours of fast paced comedy and fun, with a barrage of information and graphics mixed with visual storytelling aimed at making you laugh until it hurts.

The comedian, who was born in Stafford, will be bringing his Powerpoint to the People tour to Dudley Town Hall on November 30, the latest step in a comedy career which has provided hit Broadway shows, rave reviews and a mixture of experiences almost unbelievable to imagine.

From trying to meet 54 people with the same name as him to travelling the world to meet 10 Googlewhacks in a row (when he should have been writing a novel) to cycling to the most extreme points of the UK while on a comedy tour, Dave Gorman has led a life less-ordinary.

Even now as a 52-year-old, living on the South Coast with his wife Beth and child Eric, Dave said he can tell stories to Eric and feel like it happened to someone else.

He said: "I do find myself telling him some of those stories and feeling like it happened to someone else as this seems so far-fetched.

"I proposed to my wife at the end of the bike ride, which saw me ride from the southernmost point to the eastern, western and northern points, doing a show every night and doing it without a break, so I did that over 30 days.

"I love cycling as your brain solves problems when you're not thinking about them and one of the problems I solved was that the girlfriend I was with was the person I wanted to spend my life with, so I had my tour manager go to the northernmost point and hide a bottle of champagne, strawberries and a ring.

"She cycled the last 20 miles with me and I proposed to her there and it's become folklore in the family, but when I tell this seven-year-old boy about doing a show every night after cycling for hours, I think that I was insane and this doesn't feel like the same person, it feels out of body and weird when you talk about it.

"Having a kid is a great way of opening all the doors in your little filing cabinet and discovering all your tales because, naturally, things happen."

The different adventures Dave has had have been chronicled through books and DVD's, such as "Are you Dave Gorman", "Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure" and "Dave Gorman America Unchained" and Dave himself says that he can be like a dog with bone and when he has something, he has to go for it.

He said: "I don't let things go easily and my wife occasionally looks at me and rolls her eyes and says 'Oh, you're going to look that up later, aren't you?', which is usually because I need to know what things are.

"I don't like not knowing how the world works and I don't like not knowing why something is the way it is, so I always want to know and I like turning the corner in life.

"I like to be surprised and I like to experience things and I get bored easily, so I want to go off and do stuff and meet people and be in the world and don't let anything go by."

Dave also said the current show had come out of a state of boredom brought on by being in lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic, saying that he had been hugely informed by what had happened during lockdown, having not planned to be off work for so long after his last tour "With Great PowerPoint Comes Great ResponsibilityPoint"

He said: "This is the third leg of the tour and it's the first thing I've done since the lockdown as I kind of finished the tour and came home, then there was a lockdown, which I thought would only be a few months and would be inconvenient, but I'd planned to have a few months off after the tour anyway.

"That then became two years of not being able to work and I kind of started to work and wrote the show largely based, not on navel gazing, but it's largely informed by what happened during lockdown as you write from your own experience and I'd spent those two years not doing very much.

"But when you go back over, you think that homeschooling was interesting and that TV show I watched was interesting and the fact that the whole country was feeling like this was interesting, so it does sort of coalesce and become a thing."

In terms of the tour itself, Dave said he had seen the chaos within the industry of everyone trying to get back into the same theatres at the same time and experienced the issues of trying to book a tour when three times the number of people were trying to do the same, so wanted to keep it small to start off with, only to then realise the level of demand and plan to do more.

He said: "Normally, the venues are booked a year in advance for a tour, but the venues are telling me that they're still dealing with all the people they had to postpone, let along three times the normal number of people who want to go out on the road.

"So we thought we'll do a tour, but we'll keep it small and be a bit more modest that we normally would do, so we'll do 30-odd dates and see how it goes, then the minute I was back on the road, I thought we should have gone big because the demand was there and the houses were all full.

"When we finished that leg of the tour, we immediately did another one about the same size and when that finished, people were still saying please come back, which is why we're doing Dudley and places like that because they want you to come back.

"I feel very lucky as you never know if people are still there for it when you take any time off, but they absolutely are and there's a thirst to be back doing live entertainment.

"It's just so much fun to do and it's so hard to explain as people sometimes think that comics might get a little weary of doing the same material night after night, and some comics might have a veneer that they're doing slightly different stuff.

"Because I'm doing Powerpoint every night and pressing a clicker and the new slide is there and I've got 857 slides, the audience isn't thinking this is different to yesterday as they will know it's the same show because I can't change 857 slides night after night."

Dave Gorman has been hailed as the "high priest of the comedy Powerpoint talk” by the Times and said it was a really good comedy tool because, first of all, it was disarming for the audience.

He said: “All jokes are about bits of information colliding in your head, like everything you’ve ever laughed at, whether you’re aware of it or not is bits of information banging up against each other in your head and making new meaning to you in some way, shape or form.

“What Powerpoint is is a way of putting lots of information in front of you, so that’s the building blocks of jokes and the fact that you think Powerpoint is boring almost helps me because it’s disarming.

“You might think ‘Powerpoint, er, bit geeky and boring’ because you’ve seen people use it for boring reasons in business meetings and you’ve also seen people use microphones for boring reasons, but you’ve never once in your life thought ‘I don’t want to see a bloke with a microphone as microphones are really boring.

“You want to understand that it’s the person who was boring or entertaining and it was the information that was boring or entertaining and the same is true with Powerpoint as if you’re not putting boring information on the screen, then the show can be entertaining.

“If, for example, you ask about a TV advert, then start doing a routine on it, that will only work if 90 per cent of the audience have seen the advert, which might not be the case with streaming.

“In a previous talk, I did a routine where I showed you the British advert, then the Polish version, Canadian version and German version, all filmed on the same set, but with different actors, all using the same technique and I’d show 10 second clips of these things and the audience would be laughing.

“They suddenly think about the technique the advertisers use and think ‘isn’t that strange? How have we all fallen for that?’ as they realise it’s nonsense and that’s what makes it funny.”

In addition to the books and stage shows, Dave has also toured extensively across the world, including stints on Broadway in New York, presented several television shows, such as Modern Life is Goodish and Genius, and been on panel shows such as Have I Got News for You, QI, Go 8 Bit and Taskmaster, a show he described as really fun to do.

He said: “Taskmaster was the most fun job in the world and my only regret when I did it was that they did six episode in that series, whereas now, they do 10, and I wish I’d held on for a later series as I could have done more of them as it’s the most fun thing in the world.

“There’s such a big gap between when you do the tasks and when you sit in the studio, spending 10 days in that house and doing stuff, then you’re in the studio months later as they have to edit it and construct their stories and work out which ones they’re going to use, as some tasks don’t make it.

“You then turn up and I genuinely couldn’t remember what I’d done on any of them, so you’ve actually got the best seat in the house for a really funny show and you’re not precious about it as it’s funny whether you’ve done something well or really badly.

“It’s like a safe space from a comics point of view because if you’re good or bad, it doesn’t really matter as the end result is funny for the show and while I’m competitive, I’m sitting on that stage with some mates and having the time of my life.”

When it came to what inspired him as a comedian, Dave said he loved the freedom and making people laugh about things they didn’t think were funny, with his form of comedy making people think and, in terms of playing Dudley, he was also looking forward to that feeling of home, being just down the road from Stafford.

He said: “I’m going to play a theatre where 1,000 people want to see me and the good thing about Dudley for me it that, depending on the rest of the tour schedule, I might get to pop in and see my mum as well, which is like an added bonus.

“There is something just in your bones about feeling comfortable when you get close to home and the places I’ve lived, so I get it in the West Midlands, I get it in London, I get it in Manchester and I don’t get it anywhere else.

“It’s that feeling of I know this, I get this and I know that I get what I’m doing and what the people are like and it’s just a nice comfort as Dudley was my zoo when I was a kid and I just have a comfort level that comes with it and I know it more than everywhere else, which is just nice to have.”

Dave Gorman will bring his Powerpoint to the People tour to Dudley Town Hall on November 30 and promises two hours of non-stop show and a lot of bang bang rapid fire entertainment.

He said: “If you haven’t seen me before and you sort of know that I do Powerpoint, then you might think I take a newspaper story and talk about that for five minutes, then something else for five minutes.

“What I will say is that there are 857 slides and I’m going to be pressing that clicker every five to 10 seconds throughout the night, so the screen is constantly changing and it’s an absolute barrage of material, not a slow amble.

“It’s wrapped up, bang, bang, bang, bang for two hours and I will sweat my backside off to entertain you as I work hard and I love what I do and I’m proud of my graft and what I do, so I would love people to come and sit back and have two hours of not thinking or having a care in the world.

“That’s as much as I can offer for you.”

Tickets cost £27.50 and can be bought at boroughhalls.co.uk/dave-gorman.html