The Comedy Vault – Dave Gorman Live.

Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure (2004)

Dave Gorman is a comedian who first became well-known about two decades ago for doing some rather unusual things. I also believe that he used to live not too far away from me, although be probably wasn’t there that often because he was on his travels. And my mum said that she saw him in the street once shouting at someone (that’s just about all of the showbiz gossip that I have to share on anyone).

One day, he realised that there might be other people who share his rather common name, and he decided that he wanted to meet them, wherever they could be, and he told the story of this in a stage show, illustrated with graphs, pictures, and so on, which in 2001 transferred to TV as The Dave Gorman Collection, along with also being turned into a book.

The following year, he hosted Dave Gorman’s Important Astrology Experiment, where he took his newspaper horoscope rather literally, and revealed all of the strange things that this made him end up doing. And a couple of years after this came his most ambitious challenge yet. One day, Dave realised that a phrase on his website was a “Googlewhack”.

This is where if you did a Google search, there would only be one match for the phrase. I wonder if such a thing could be possible nowadays, because just like the universe itself it seems, the information on the internet still doubles in size every day. it seems, He then realised that there was something in this too, and he travelled around the world to meet various “Googlewhacks”, when he really probably should’ve been doing something else like watering his plants at home.

This was then turned into another tour, which was released on DVD. He soon realised that he almost travelled as much telling his story on stage as he did meeting the people from all over the world. It really was all amusingly strange. Extras include Dave taking a few questions from the theatre audience, along with a few outtakes. This was all turned into a book too, which was much praised by critics.

With his work he had practically invented a new comedy genre that could be called “investigative stand-up”. In more recent years, he has done some more TV shows (all rather appropriately on the channel Dave) that have pondered what the world is all about in his now familiar style, including Modern Life Is Goodish and Terms And Conditions Apply. I don’t know if his website is still going though.

Advertisement