1366: Modern Life

I'm in a bit of a hurry tonight, so apologies if there's any typos or bits that don't quite make sense.

I'm in a bit of a hurry because in approximately 15 minutes' time I'm going to be watching the one TV show on at present that I will actually watch when it's broadcast — Dave Gorman's Modern Life is Goodish.

I'm a fan of Dave Gorman's comedy, and have been ever since I saw his show from a few years back where he travelled around trying to find all the other people called Dave Gorman in the world. He followed this up with Googlewhack Adventure which, besides teaching me what "Googlewhack" meant, was a similarly entertaining experience. And so far Modern Life is Goodish has been just as enjoyable.

Gorman's comedy is fairly distinctive in that his shows are almost structured like a lecture, complete with Powerpoint presentations, visual aids and all manner of other things. He picks a topic and explains it in detail, taking great pains to provide evidence and proof for the things he's saying, usually in the form of photographs or diagrams. He often lampoons himself, though, by launching into a detailed quasi-scientific explanation of something utterly ridiculous and pointless, yet treating it as seriously as if it were a lecture on, say, global warming, or Shakespeare's influence on modern theatre or something.

Modern Life is Goodish has been particularly enjoyable to me as a lot of his observations are in line with things I think about the modern world. It's always nice to have your own opinions (and irrational prejudices!) validated by someone else, and while I haven't always found myself agreeing with everything Gorman says — particularly outside the context of his shows, such as on Twitter — I've found enough common ground in my limited experience of him to know that he's someone that I like, and that I enjoy listening to.

The absolute highlight of Modern Life is Goodish, though, is his weekly "found poem" feature, in which he trawls comment sections of news stories from a topic he's discussed throughout the rest of the show, then arranges them into, well, a found poem. Not only is this an enjoyable feature in its own right, it brings back incredibly fond memories of an English lesson back in secondary school where we were challenged to create our own found poem using only things we could see around the classroom. Our particular effort was an increasingly urgent exhortation to "Graham Coop" (actually someone we knew from a couple of years above us whose work happened to be displayed on the wall) to put out a fire in the classroom. (Pull out pin, Graham Coop!)

I'm not entirely sure why I remember that particular experience from school, but it's one of those things that's stuck with me for no apparent reason. Graham Coop wasn't even a particularly good friend (though I did borrow Terminal Velocity from him at one point) and I haven't spoken to a lot of those other people from school for a while; regardless, that particular experience has stuck with me, and I'm reminded of it every week when I watch Modern Life is Goodish.

I'll leave you with a teaser from one of the early episodes. If you're in the UK, you can find the most recent episodes on Dave's website.