Evolution

The show originated following a drunken bet between Dave Gorman his friend Danny Wallace. The bet was thus: Dave claimed that he shared the name "Dave Gorman" with the assistant manager of East Fife F.C. and that there must be "loads" of others around. Danny disagreed with him. So the two travelled to East Fife (from London—several hundred miles), with a video camera, to meet the assistant manager, whose name was indeed Dave Gorman. More trips followed, to meet more Dave Gormans. During a trip to New York, Dave revealed his arbitrary criteria for inclusion when he excluded one man from the list purely because he had a metal plaque outside his offices bearing the name "B. David Gorman". (Dave's justification for this prejudice – given on his web forum was "You've got to have rules.")

Initially the bet was fairly vague, but on the way to meet Dave Gormans numbers four and five, they debated what "loads" meant. Danny decided on one for every card in the deck. That is 54 (including jokers).

Stage show

To aid the search, which by his own admission became scarily serious, Dave created a stage-show about their travels that was also used to appeal for further Dave Gormen to come forward. The show was called Are You Dave Gorman?. This acquired something of a cult following and several people helped Dave in his quest, which he did eventually complete. (Five even changed their names by deed poll to Dave Gorman).

Television show

All this came to the attention of the BBC, who gave Dave a series, co-written and co-produced by Danny, entitled The Dave Gorman Collection, which took the form of televised lectures, in which he explained what he had done. The six episodes were directed by Pati Marr. The show will be released on DVD in February 2007 under the title Are You Dave Gorman?.[1]

Later a book entitled Are You Dave Gorman? was written by the two of them.

Once the TV show existed Dave stopped touring the show in the UK, instead taking it to several overseas festivals and later running the show for 3 months off-Broadway, a run which saw Dave appearing as a fully-fledged guest on The Late Show With David Letterman.

Two Australian soap operas have named fictional characters Dave Gorman as an in-joke and the comedian has been bombarded with so many e-mails about it that he has had to publicly appeal to people to stop sending him details of other Dave Gormans. He was, after all, only trying to meet 54. At the time of writing he has met 106.

External link

• davegorman.com