Powerpoint: packed with comedy
British observational comedian Dave Gorman tells James Croot why a laptop is now an essential piece of his stand-up kit.
"I always found it frustrating that people always thought I was embroidering things... So I thought using Powerpoint was a way of demonstrating that I was telling the truth."
New Zealanders are finally getting the chance to see British comedian Dave Gorman’s popular topical show Modern Life is Goodish.
Now in its fifth series in the UK, the show sees the 46-year-old father-of-one riffing on everything from the perils of stock photography to celebrity lookalikes and ATM etiquette.
Fairfax Mediacaught up with him ahead of the series’ Kiwi debut on Duke.
Firstly Dave, where did the idea come from?
I did a tour of a show that was just called Dave Gorman’s Powerpoint Presentation. A lot of times a comic onstage invites you to join in on ‘‘a funny thing happened on the way to the theatre’’ and you think, ‘‘Maybe a funny thing happened on the way to a theatre once,’’ but you buy into this shared little whimsy anyway. I always found it frustrating that people always thought I was embroidering things, when I based my comedy on truths. So I thought using Powerpoint was a way of demonstrating that I was telling the truth.
And, contrary to popular belief, using it doesn’t make it a laboured process – it actually helps cut through. Instead of having 10 minutes of explanation, you can do something in five seconds – bombard the audience with things at pace. I know that sounds like it might be hard work for an audience – that they’re going to need lecture notes, do homework – but it’s actually the exact opposite. They can relax, they don’t need to bring much to the party because I’m doing all the bloody work.
And how do you come up with your topics for the show?
I wish there was a scientific way of doing it. What happens is, at the start of a series, the producers will sit me down and we’ll have a lot of coffee. They go: ‘‘What’s happened? What have you been doing? What do you think of this?’’ They sort of unpack my brain for me and then we take a lot of notes based on those conversations and I go away do a load of work.
The great thing about having a team, though, is you can brainstorm.
In the first series, we looked at the journalistic trope where someone will say ‘‘an actor who has been in everything from The Bill to Eastenders‘‘. The range in that is not very big, you know. What they really mean is ‘‘they’ve been in a lot of things, but you’ve heard of these two’’.
It’s a fairly mazy turn of phrase that makes it sound like you’ve got an all-encompassing overview of a whole career.
We found some truly absurd examples, like ‘‘European countries from France to Germany’’. That’s not very far – alphabetically or geographically.
We get a lot of messages from punters who have seen the show going, ‘‘You should do something like this.’’ When that first happened, I thought crowdsourcing could be the way forward, but we stopped doing it. Anything that hasn’t come from my own experience doesn’t work – it just feels a little bit hollow – it doesn’t have the honesty it needs to push it over the line. Likewise, anything that has already been found by the internet. We have to be the wellspring of ideas.
Has the recent rise of fake news changed things for you?
We were pointing that out before the phrase took hold. I planted a fake story in the (London) Metro about faces of Jesus appearing in a stained T-shirt in order to demonstrate how easy it was for fake news to get out there. I couldn’t believe it was possible for a journalist to have read the press release and thought: ‘‘That rings true.’’ I think we’ve been slightly ahead of the curve on fake news.
And do you think modern life has gotten slightly worse-ish in the past five years?
I get a magazine called Delayed Gratification, which gives you the news three months after it happens. With hindsight, it focuses on the things that were important. I think there’s a slow creep in the media that has been very disturbing. The news agenda, the way it’s driven – being first, rather than being best. Get it online quickly, get it published, get the clicks – that’s seems to be the most important thing. And I think that’s a bit weird.
We were having a conversation at work today. When I was kid, my parents’ conversation – ‘‘How was your day, darling?’’ – would take most of the rest of the day because neither of them would have seen the news at all and they wouldn’t have known any of the gossip about each other’s work. They’d unpack their days with each other and then it would be time for bed.
These days, I come home from work and speak to my wife and I’ve seen what’s on Facebook and she’s seen what’s on Facebook and we’ve both seen the news because it has come up on our phones every five minutes. We’ve got nothing to say to each other.
A while ago, I came home and one of my wife’s friends was leaving. My wife was beside herself with glee because for the first time in months she had a bit of gossip that she knew I hadn’t got yet and we could have an actual conversation with some actual news and some actual information. She was just joyful – and I think that’s what life used to be like before everyone knew everything and half of it turned out a day later to be wrong.
Modern Life is Goodish
Tuesdays, Duke. 9pm,