I've been to quite a few comedy gigs. Some can be quite intimate in small clubs, but some comics can get away with playing bigger venues. This was a case of the latter. Dave Gorman is a British comedian who makes clever use of Powerpoint and his obsessive nature. He pointed out that some may think his show title is from Spiderman, but he's referencing much earlier sources, and we will reference those.
The venue was Milton Keynes Theatre, which is a nice modern venue where we have seen a few shows. They have a couple of balconies, but we were seated down in the stalls.
The support act was Nick Doody who works on Dave's TV show, but is a talent in himself. He's also a fine musician who do some very funny songs on piano. It was great that Dave came out to give him a proper introduction that was pretty good on its own.
Dave Gorman himself has become known for his use of Powerpoint to illustrate his routines. This is not like any business presentation. He uses hundreds of slides over 90 minutes along with video clips. He loves to analyses things that do not really matter in great depth. He is also obsessed with various daytime TV shows I hardly ever see. He points out how contrived shows about selling houses and antiques can be. He has a show on the UK Dave channel where he does similar routines, but with a lot less swearing.
He'll also fact-check some of the UK tabloid papers who get away with printing outright lies about trivial matters like TV shows just to get clicks on their web sites. This sometimes involves a level of research most of us would not indulge in, but he seems to enjoy it.
These are along similar lines to what we got, but short clips cannot do him full justice as he tends to set up jokes way ahead and we laughed a lot. I am not going to tell you exactly what he talked about last night as that could spoil the show for anyone planning to go, but I will say you will love his giraffe joke. Worth the ticket price on its own!
As well as watching a lot of TV he spends a lot of time reading through on-line comments on articles. He finds some real gems there that he turns into 'found poems'. We got a couple of those in the show. I assume it was genuine, but he found it impossible to keep a straight face through some of those.
There was a guy in the audience who wanted to be part of the act, but he was kept in line. We were there for a class act and not some amateur. Best put down? 'You have come unarmed to a battle of wits'. Although there was some swearing, this is not a crude show and it only attacks those who seek to exploit us or are just incompetent.
We thoroughly enjoyed our evening. We could have met him and got a selfie, but on a work night we were eager to get home and the queue was long.
Who are your favourite comedians?
I'm Steve, the geeky guitarist.
