Before Modern Life Is Good(ish), Dave Gorman wrote and performed a pair of what would become known as his trademark comedic lectures in the early 2000s. The first of these was Are You Dave Gorman?, the result of a drunken bet between him and his housemate, Danny Wallace, after learning that the assistant manager of a Scottish football team shared his name.
The task? Find a total of 54 other Dave Gormans - one for each of the cards (including jokers) in a standard deck of playing cards - and take photographic/video evidence to document the entire journey. What ensues is tens of thousands of miles by road and air, amusing anecdotes and one impulsive international flight after another.
Tropes:
- Arc Words: Given that each utterance of it brings him one step closer to his goal: "Hello! My name is Dave Gorman."
- "...and, if you don't believe me, here's my boarding card."
- Big Bad: The Graph. Dave built one showing the correlation between the miles he travelled and the number of Dave Gormans he met, with the objective to stay within the range of 300-500 miles for each one he met.
- And, given he didn't want Dave to win the bet, Danny Wallace counts as one too.
- Credits Gag: The sixth episode both does and doesn't do one of these. As Dave Gorman both wrote and presented the show, had one of the other Dave Gormans (#5, from Edinburgh; also known as "Little Dave") be his assistant and had two other Gormans and someone called Dave Gurman as special guests, the opening few entries have his name rightfully repeated, albeit with their birth names as aliases for the two who changed their name via Deed Poll.
- Fantastic Measurement System: MpDG. Miles per Dave Gorman.
- Go Back to the Source: When on the trail of the Canadian author Dave Gorman, the brief foreword in his book - Looking At Ourselves - says he can be easily recognised in the south of France. After jetting out to the village of Saint-Alexandre and trying to locate him with little to no knowledge of the language, Dave and Danny finally get to the author's home... only to find out that he's in London.Dave Gorman: He was in bastard Greenwich!! He was five miles from my own front door while I've been stood one yard from his!
- Godzilla Threshold: With a handful of Dave Gormans left to find, Prime-Dave busts out his "ace in the hole": offering to help people change their name by Deed Poll to Dave Gorman. He even gets two women to take up his offer, one of whom was in a relationship with someone who also changed their name; a literal "Couple of Dave Gormans".Dave Gorman: It's a serious offer. Is anyone gonna take it?
Colin: ...I'll fuckin' take it, mate!
