Dave Gorman

Recently I was lucky enough to see Dave Gorman live at my local theatre. His current tour, 'Dave Gorman gets straight to the point...the PowerPoint', is a treat for anyone who enjoys chasing down oddities to their logically absurd conclusions, and I thoroughly enjoyed the show. Afterwards he was selling and signing some of his books, so obviously I had to buy one.

What's it about?

Loosely, the idea suggested by the title: there is just too much noise and stuff masquerading as information and show more intruding into our lives. This false or unnecessary information emanates largely from the Internet, though TV and newspapers have more than their fair share of irritations too, and we are often or even mostly overwhelmed by this flood of stuff and so stop exercising sensible judgement about its value.

Really it's just an excuse for Gorman to do his thing: to critique absurdity in order to make people laugh.

What's it like?

Appropriately, this feels like a book that could only exist in a world saturated by social media and sound bites. (I mean, obviously that's true because of the subject matter, but bear with me!) Gorman's chapters read like blog posts, anecdotal investigations of various oddities that just happen to have caught his attention. If I share a few of the chapter titles it should give you a good sense of his foci:

If It Isn't One of Your Greatest Hits Don't Put It on a Greatest Hits Album.
'Music From & Inspired by the Motion Picture' Can Sod Off Too
What's the Point of a Link If It Isn't Actually Linked?
There's No Need to Invent a New Word for Something Just Because It Happened on Twitter

In keeping with this slightly haphazard focus, chapters range in length from several pages to a mere page, depending on whether the complaint in question is deemed worthy of further investigation or is simply being flagged up as a ridiculous situation. This makes it a great book to dip in and out of quickly - perhaps during those moments you might normally devote to Twitter or Facebook?

Don't read this critique of modern life looking for solutions, as Gorman concludes that 'Can we do anything about it? Probably not.' And fair enough. This is a lazy Sunday afternoon book, not a life-changing creed.

Final thoughts

If you enjoy Dave Gorman's brand of comedy, or share his irritation with the illogicalities of much of the modern world, then it's likely you'll enjoy this. Really, I think most people would be hard-pressed to disagree with him when he suggests that it's a bit odd for the word 'women' in a random article to link to Dyson hoovers, or for the word 'dinner' in another article to link to denture adhesive.

Gorman on Amazon's Search Inside this book feature: "If you search for a badger glove puppet on Amazon, one of the things it's going to try and tempt you with is a book that I wrote about an American Road Trip...Is that a useful thing to show someone who's searched for 'badger glove puppet'? I don't think so."

In fact, it's probably worth reading the whole book just to reach the chapter where Gorman explores The Daily Mail's slightly shaky concept of 'matching' in relation to celebs and fashion. In it he points out that not only is this a cynical ploy designed to grab the reader's attention by pretending there's some sort of actual story happening, but it's also a diversionary tactic to stop readers' considering how truly creepy such 'stories' really are (since fundamentally they are all really 'Man Stalks Woman and Takes Pictures of Her With Her Child / Lover'). I defy anyone to read that chapter without agreeing that, yes, such 'stories' are odd, and a definite case of TMI...or perhaps of nothingness posing as Information.

Ultimately, this book neatly affirms the spirit behind its epigraph: 'There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant'.

Epigraph credited to Ralph Waldorf Emerson show less

In the never-ending quest for methods to waste one’s time by, the Internet has fast become THE source of quick-fix, easy-access, mind-numbing pleasures. Online gaming, chat rooms, and much, much more (read: pornography) has ensured that work will always take second place to fun.

Dave Gorman understands the lure of time-wasters all too well. Given a surprisingly large advance to write a novel (based partially on his assurance that he will grow a beard), the English comedian finds himself show more caught up in googlewhacking, an online diversion that rapidly becomes more addictive than he could have possibly guessed.

A googlewhack, for those in the know, is found by entering two dissimilar words in the Google Internet search engine; say, “Hippocampi Wallpaper.” If the search (of well over three billion sites) discovers only one site containing both words (barring some qualifications), a googlewhack has been discovered.

Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure, as the title implies, testifies to Gorman’s increasing lunacy over the game, a lunacy that goes well beyond the realm of common sense. Caught up in a bet to meet ten googlewhacks in a row before his next birthday, Gorman traverses the globe, meets an assortment of eccentrics, and grows out his beard; all the while avoiding the novel he will never, ever, write.

Gorman is no stranger to unusual quests. His previous non-fiction effort, Are You Dave Gorman?, chronicled a humourously pointless trek around the world to meet 54 distinct individuals, all with one common element; they were all named Dave Gorman.

Googlewhack Adventure is equally pointless and equally humourous, a good-natured account of some interesting eccentrics and places. Gorman is a rather engaging host, a fish out of water remarking on the world around him, noting that the Lincoln Memorial “looked pretty much as he had done when he showed up in Star Trek. Only taller. And more marbly.”

But as charming as Gorman can be, Googlewhack Adventure is hardly that. There is no real sense of any of the people he meets, only his reactions to them. As he zips from person to person, quickly noting their quirks before moving on, his constant effusions become repetitive and tiresome. In the end, he’s simply not all that interesting a person.

Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure is too unfocused to be memorable, and too slight to be meaningful. There seems to be little point to the travelogue, other than to explain why he never wrote the book he was contractually obligated to write. Gorman has indeed written a book, an often witty one. show less

I’ve been a fan of Dave Gorman for a long time – his tv shows and stage shows (I’m lucky enough to have been him live) are always witty and entertaining, and his books are always a good source of amusement. In this book, he basically travels around England playing games with strangers. He plays traditional games such as Cluedo, Ping Pong, Darts and Poker, and some other games which were – to me at least – unknown, such as Khett, Kubb, Smite and erm…Rod Hull’s Emu Game (I know show more who Rod Hull and Emu are obviously. I did not know that there was such a game. And neither did Dave!)

Gorman is an affable and engaging narrator and while the book is not constantly hilarious, it is amusing and made me laugh out loud on a number of occasions. There is at least one episode which took both myself and Dave Gorman himself by complete surprise, and when you’ve finished the book I am sure you will know which one I mean.

Overall, a lovely read which I would definitely recommend. Also, I now would love to find a local Smite team to join! show less

Googlewhack: a single result when you search for a combination of two words on the search engine Google.

Stand up comedian Dave Gorman has turned 31, and decides it's time to grow up. He's going to grow a beard, write a novel, and put his youthful folly behind him. But a random email from a stranger distracts him from the novel, and he soon finds himself on a trail to find 10 googlewhacks in a row, and meet the owners/authors of the sites where the googlewhacks were found. The rules of the show more game are: he cannot find anymore googlewhacks himself, but every googlewhack he meets must find him two more, and so on. And he has to find his chain of 10 before he turns 32.

Dave's quest takes him from different parts of America, to China, to Australia, and Wales - amongst other places. He meets a man who collects pictures of women and dogs (more innocent than it sounds) a group of Mini enthusiasts, an American who takes him into Mexico to buy Coke (the legal kind) and pharmacueticals, a professor in Creationism, and many more interesting and varied people.

The book is genuinely hilarious in parts - I constantly found myself either bursting into laughter or at least having a quiet giggle to myself. Dave experienced various highs and lows along the way (some of his googlewhack chains came to a dead end), and the reader experiences them all with him. At times it seemed so unbelieveable that if it had been written as a novel, I might have found the plotline too far-fetched.

And speaking of a novel...the whole time that Dave is on his googlewhacking quest, he is also avoiding calls from his agent and the publisher with whom he struck his literary deal. But he knows that whatever the outcome he's going to face the music at some point...

This is a light hearted, hugely enjoyable read, which I would definitely recommend. (And incidentally, it sounds as though it should be fairly easy to find a googlewhack - but looking at some of the googlewhacks which were found in this story, it's clear that some imagination needs to be used!) show less