For many years I have followed the work of Dave Gorman, possibly the only comedian in the world you can get me to roll around the aisles laughing at his use of a pie chart. Yesterday, for the first time, I saw him live at the Royal Festival Hall on his Gets Straight to the Point* (*The Powerpoint) tour. For years I have told students about ‘googlewhacks’ and his astrology experiment. It was finally time to see him in the flesh, and thanks to an old friend, I got the chance.
To avoid specific spoilers – there’s a book, there is an amazing section on knees, his usual mischievous ideas about researching his material, and the usual amazing use of data in visual forms. Trying to breath was a problem by the end of his second ‘found poem’, which really puts a different slant on comments at the end of news articles.
As the final show in a tour that started in 2014, so something like 90 shows, it was slick and perfectly timed. Yet, it did not suffer from such a long run, with much spontaneous laughter from the stage. Nick Doody, as the warm-up act and pianist, was hilarious, although the highlight was when he set Dave Gorman up by playing the Muppet Theme.