Dave Gorman

September 2011


MY weekend is shaped by my work because I’ll usually be gigging and doing my radio show (for Absolute Radio) on Sunday mornings. So I don’t have particularly lairy Saturday nights anymore. Not that I would anyway because I’m a married man of 40.
I’m on air from ten which means I leave the house around 8.30am.
In fact my perfect weekend would still include my radio show but I’d want to somehow merge that with one of the local Sunday markets that go on in London near to where I live. There’s Columbia Road flower market, Brick Lane, Spitalfields... they’re all really vibrant. Ideally they’d happen on a Saturday morning, then I’d go out for a really nice meal on Saturday night with my wife and do my radio show on Sunday morning. I’d be a very happy boy. I’m not demanding.
I’m often gigging each weekend. Tonight I’ll be in Shrewsbury. All I know is what I’m doing today. I have to look the rest of it up.
When I come off stage I walk straight out front to meet people. I don’t even hit the dressing room. I walk out of the venue and into the foyer to greet people if they want to have a chat. They’ll chat about all sorts of things. I was told an amazing story earlier this week in Norwich. This guy was in the Royal Navy and he had two months’ leave. He bought one of my books called America Unchained, which is about a road trip and he said that after he’d read it he decided he wanted to do that himself.
So he flew to New York. But the first night he was there he met an Australian girl who decided to cross America with him. They drove from New York to LA together. They now live in Norwich and are planning on getting married next year. How amazing is that? My tiny part in that, I feel ridiculously touched by.
After I’ve had a chat with the audience I’ll go for a meal and have a drink or we’ll drive over to the next city. There are three of us on tour together.
I don’t eat meat so that helps me eat healthily anyway. There’s no moral reason for it.
It’s partly so I do eat healthily. It becomes so easy to grab a sloppy burger when you are on the road. You have a rider at a gig, that you are paying for anyway, and you make sure there is some fruit and veg.
I won’t drink before a gig and I’ll only have a couple afterwards. If I drink too much then my voice gets wrecked and that’s no good when you’re facing a paying audience.
I have DVD box sets on tour with me and at the moment they include Arrested Development and 30 Rock (pictured left).
When I’m at home, we will watch X Factor but only because Twitter has changed X Factor. I could never watch it before because I hated it so much but with Twitter it’s like watching it with other people who hate it. Twitter makes it funny.
Although it does bring out the snobs in people. If I tweet that I’m watching X Factor I’ll have all these people coming back with “How dare you watch that, I thought you were better than that!” They don’t say that when you tweet about Newsnight.
I go to see live comedy at the weekend if I can make the time. I don’t go to arena gigs. I’ve never been to one. I’m not interested. I prefer small clubs where there are comedians that I don’t know. It’s how I found Jay Foreman, who is on tour with me. When I saw him he blew me away.
I also go to music gigs. I love Misty’s Big Adventure and I’m a big fan of Half Man Half Biscuit (below). I got my hands on their new album this week.
I’m looking forward to coming back to Nottingham although it was where I died on stage for the very first time.
I was 19 and I’d only just started doing stand-up. It was about my third or fourth gig. A promoter phoned me up and said “Do you need the money because you will die? They always kill the first act.”
The idea of being paid was exciting and yes, I did need the money, so I said yes. It was at a nightclub called The Hippo (later The Bomb in Bridlesmith Gate). Before I even got to the microphone to say hello the entire audience was chanting “eff off”.
And I died for the whole 20 minutes. I was even being heckled by the bar staff.
When I came off the promoter said “Why did stay on there for the whole 20 minutes?” I was so naive that I assumed that if I didn’t do the whole 20 minutes I wasn’t going to get paid.
I’ve had many fond memories of Nottingham since then, I hasten to add.


Dave Gorman appears at the Royal Concert Hall on Monday October 24. Tickets are £20 from the v www.trch.co.uk