dave gorman birmingham

Dave Gorman Gets To The Point Review

After Saturday’s rather challenging evening of watching Ken Dodd – Mike’s review of which you can read here – Mike and I decided to go to the other end of the scale tonight and see one of our favourite comedians, Dave Gorman, in his live show Dave Gorman Gets To The Point * (*The PowerPoint) at the Symphony Hall in Birmingham.

Firstly, we forgot it was at the Symphony Hall and on the way to the the Town Hall, Mike text me to say that the show was already starting. I thought this was odd, as it was half 7 and the show was due to start at 8pm. I thought he must be joking. Then he rung me up and said “Ben, the guy’s saying I need you here with the ticket to go in.” and then he put the guy in question on the phone. I thought bloody hell, he’s taking this a bit far. Needless to say when I arrived and we realised that we were not in fact here to see John Grant, we were quite relieved that we were still on time.

We got to the Symphony Hall – or Sympathy Hall as my Nan calls it – and settled down for the show. A ‘surprise’ support act was announced and he was Nick Doody. He was a nice chap and very funny to boot. I can see why Gorman chose him as his support, because some of his jokes and observational stand up were very Gormanesque. Towards the latter half of his routine, he started to get a bit rude, talking about masturbation and the like. I’m not really a fan of dirty humour, and what made it worse was that there was an old woman next to me who was clearly quite uncomfortable with the topic. After the act, a juggler and a woman playing a recorder came on. I’m joking. There was a short interval.

Gorman opened by inviting the audience to sing If You’re Happy And You Know It and then pointing out the obvious flaws in the song. Before tonight I’d been worried that he might do something different to his TV show (Modern Life Is Goodish) which has been so successful, but this opening reassured me. I don’t really want to go into the jokes, because if anybody is going to see his show or he brings it out on DVD then it’s no fun spoiling it. But it was much the same format as the TV show, with observations on social media, photography, ideologies, some of his pranks and even two found poems.

Quite a few times watching his TV show I’ve laughed uncontrollably, but some of the jokes tonight had me laughing to the point of tears. One part about his mother being on Twitter was particularly hilarious. Gorman has clearly honed his material and this show is a celebration of what he is good at; pointing out the absurdities of life.

I realise that when we do these reviews, I often review things or people that I like and seem to be quite biased with giving them a favourable review. This is no exception, for the simple reason that I could not find a single fault in the show. It was funnier than anything I’ve seen of him before, he delivered beyond expectations and even the support act was damn good. At the end, he assisted Dave by providing accompanying music on the piano, and even his contributions and the banter between the two was fun.

After the show I queued up to meet Dave Gorman himself. As expected he was a really nice guy. I would recommend highly that you find and watch something by Dave Gorman. It’s good clean fun that’s more than just standing on stage telling jokes, it’s an experience. You take things away from it and you leave with a little more insight into the mad world we live in.

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Our rating: 5 out of 5 stars (5 / 5) [divider top=”no” size=”1″ margin=”10″]

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