CityLife

Dave Gorman: Sit Down, Pedal, Stop and Stand Up

WHEN Dave Gorman began gigging again late last year it had been eight years since his last stand-up show.

Back in 1998, a little bored with straight gag telling he took a show to the Edinburgh Fringe that deconstructed the Ian Dury and The Blockheads song Reasons to be Cheerful.

He followed it up with such shows as Are You Dave Gorman? where he ventured on an around the world quest to find 54 other Dave Gormans and Googlewhack Adventure borne out of trying to score a single search result from Google with just a two-word search.

So, ‘Sit Down, Pedal, Pedal, Stop and Stand up’ is a departure as it’s his first tour in a decade to not feature, at its core, a gimmick or quest.

The first thing to clear up however is that, for anyone who doesn’t know, the title refers to the fact he is cycling between the venues on the 2009 leg of the tour visiting the southern, eastern, western and northern most tips of the British mainland.

This however is not going to be a distraction from the stand-up; he announces the fact that he has covered 815 miles in 15 days to be here at the top of the show only because he’s a man and so is compelled by his gender to voice his achievements.

Then his method of transport is barely mentioned - it’s not what his material is about.

Exquisitely constructed

Instead the meat of the offering is two hours of exquisitely constructed stand-up, truly a masterclass of its kind.

With Gorman you expect his writing to be a bit clever but it’s continually self-reflexive without being so self-absorbed it would pass over the heads of the casual comedy-goer.

There’s a deconstruction of the lengths a comedian will go to create an anecdote to tell their crowd, the punch line to a gag that takes half an hour to arrive and some pure filth that Gorman shoehorns in via the device of his seven-year-old nephew telling him some gags.

His delivery is deliberate and considered, a story about his elevator embarrassment after a long boozy birthday in Las Vegas is to be savoured plus there are some fine visual images that he creates in the mind - of the Christians that quietly campaign at football games and the reason he likes to think that Muslims leave their shoes outside the mosque.

Then towards the end, there’s the return of a Gorman favourite. But it would be churlish to let it slip and spoil the surprise.

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