Dave Gorman is currently on tour with his show ‘Powerpoint to the People’ – fortunately this is not ‘death by PowerPoint’ as he is a funny, very clever man.
There is a big screen and it is pretty much showing his slides, however they are all pertinent to his story-telling witty take on life. The slides are there to highlight, accentuate and clarify any points the audience might need to make the connections, some which makes us gasp with realisations.
Dave talks about the things in his life, such as his other ‘job’ which is devising cryptic crosswords and how much fun can be had sending secret messages, plus he takes us through the ‘battering’ he gets from the online discussion forums and how he cleverly and subtly deals with the negative comments. This section of the show demonstrates how much of wordsmith he is.
He takes us through the stupid comments which people post on social media and recites the ‘Found Poem’, a collection of these comments which becomes poetry. He shares with us texts from his mother, and guides us through his self-imposed challenge of proving that Tom Hanks is not the nicest celebrity in the world. Talking of celebrities, we are taken through the part we must play for his hotel gag – and that is all I can say on the matter.
Dave’s humour is not laugh a minute constant gags or one liners, it’s a storytelling humorous journey with sub-stories on the way which reaches its conclusions to the audiences eagerly awaited laughter and delight. The amount of research Dave carries out to obtain all this information must reach many days, months, years even of his time, and to see how his brain works to make connections and links for his jokes is entertaining, engaging and awe inspiring. He is an extremely smart man.
Dave is also known for his long game methodology in his jokes. Jokes and stories which can take months, or years to reach fruition. They are worth the wait, we had ones which were show-length, but there is one coming and we wait in anticipation to see if he pulls it off.
His humour might not be grasped by all, however his logic, wordsmithing, intelligence and commitment to the long game needs to be admired.