Funnyman Dave Gorman has become known for his humorous take on the mundanities of modern life, which he brings to his live show in Kent this week. Jo Roberts reports.

Coming out of the Manchester scene of the 1990s, Dave Gorman is a contemporary of such household-name comics as Caroline Aherne and Steve Coogan.

He had his first BBC series, The Dave Gorman Collection, in 2001 and has enjoyed many TV and radio appearances since, including The Googlewhack Adventure and Genius.

Yet it seems to have been with Modern Life Is Goodish for Dave TV that the funnyman has become a household name himself, outside of keen comedy circles.

The first series was the highest rated new-commission on the channel last year and was recommissioned for a further two extended series. Series two has just completed its eight-week run, and series three will be on air next year.

If you can’t wait that long, there’s good news; Dave is appearing at Dartford’s Orchard Theatre on Tuesday, December 2, with his new live show.

Dave Gorman Gets Straight To The Point*... (*The PowerPoint) promises more of his unique blend of stand-up comedy and visual story-telling. He told What’s On about his early days in comedy as a writer on Mrs Merton, and where he gets his inspiration for his innovative projects including this show his recent book, Too Much Information (or Can Everyone Just Shut Up For A Moment, Some Of Us Are Trying To Think).

What got your brain ticking ahead of this particular show?

“Y-e-s... the difficulty is, if you start describing what the show is about you’re listing a load of mundane topics and part of the point is the audience can’t work out what’s going to be funny in that: ‘It’s about a cup of tea and a photograph? How’s that going to be funny?!’ But they come along to the show and they can; in that dullness there are hidden details. Among the themes are the way that modern technology has changed things. We photograph so much more than we ever did, because everybody is walking around with a camera phone. My youngest niece, who is 18 months, has already been photographed more than 7,000 times; yet my dad, who is 75, I doubt there are more than 700 photos of him on this earth. That’s an amazing change in our lives across three generations of a family.”

On the subject of modern technology in your recent book you asked, ‘Can we hear ourselves think over the rising din?’ What conclusions did you come to?

“We’re lost in a sea of information. I don’t think I was ever going to come to a conclusion or a way forward that solves it for everyone. I’m very comfortable with modern life and all it offers. The first time you got a mobile phone you were a bit resistant, and then six months later you were thinking, ‘How did I ever cope before it?’ That is the same with every technological step you make. Because its new, and people embrace it and are excited by it – for example, when you’re first on Twitter you’re telling everyone everything – and then you start taking it for granted in a healthy way, you just use it for the important stuff or whimsical stuff.”

You emerged from the thick of the Manchester scene in the early 1990s when a lot of comedy and music was coming out of the city. How was it for you?

“I loved it and had a wonderful time. I was at university and I wasn’t an NME-reading teen, I was much more into comedy. I was never one of the cool kids, and half the people at university had gone to Manchester specifically for the music scene, the Happy Mondays, the Inspiral Carpets and the Stone Roses were just on the cusp of breaking big. Manchester felt like it had arrived.”

How did your life in comedy start?

“When I started doing stand-up at the end of my first year, there was a very small comedy scene in Manchester. There was one weekly comedy club in one of the suburbs, it had two big names on every week and you’d get on once a year and if you were good they’d have you back. There wasn’t a club scene like there was in London. I was 19 and I had to travel out of town to open spots in Leicester, Birmingham, Sheffield and Liverpool. But there was a small group of comics who were doing quite well – Steve Coogan, John Thomson, Henry Normal, Caroline Aherne. All of those people who were quite established were really helpful, and they all shared phone numbers and gave me writing work, and persuaded promoters to let me do 15 minutes here and there.”

You not only wrote for Mrs Merton but also for The Fast Show, who were more of a London crowd – how did that come about?

“That probably exaggerates my contribution [to The Fast Show]. Caroline was part of The Fast Show, and we were working on Mrs Merton. Mrs Merton had a really quick escalation. It started off as a late night BBC2 thing, and then became a prime time BBC2 thing, and then became a late night BBC1 thing. So Mrs Merton was riding high at the time, and then The Fast Show was happening, and Caroline really wanted to stay a part of it, but it was quite hard for her to find time to make for it. So all that used to happen is occasionally when we’d be in the office working on Mrs Merton, she would say, ‘Can anyone help me out, I’m trying to do a thing for The Fast Show’, and we’d sit around and spend half a day on The Fast Show.”

Who are your mates on the comedy scene these days?

“Most comics know most comics, and get on well. There’s sometimes a fictional portrayal of stand-up as a bitchy, back-biting, aggressive arena but I find it’s a friendly, supportive world of people. A close friend is Chris Addison; he and I go back years to that Manchester thing.”

Dave Gorman Gets Straight To The Point*... (*The PowerPoint) is at Dartford’s Orchard Theatre on Tuesday, December 2, at 8pm. Tickets cost £21. Visit www.orchardtheatre.co.uk or call 01322 220000.