Dave Gorman Vs the Rest of the World

Bestselling author and comedian Dave Gorman is back and he wants to challenge you to a game

There's a warm humanity to the book, built on the camraderie of strangers united in gamesmanship

A hugely entertaining book ... I definitely recommend it

Dave Gorman is an award-winning comedian, storyteller and writer. He has numerous TV writing credits and was part of the double BAFTA-winning team behind The Mrs Merton Show. His live shows have won many awards and he is the only performer to twice win the Jury Prize for Best One Person Show at the prestigious HBO US Comedy Arts Festival. He was the host of Genius, which ran for three series on Radio 4 and then two series on BBC2. He has appeared in numerous other TV shows, including Absolutely Fabulous, The Frank Skinner Show, Late Show with David Letterman, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. His documentary film, America Unchained, won the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature at the Austin Film Festival. His 2013 TV show, Modern Life Is Goodish, made for UKTV’s Dave channel, saw him dissecting the foibles of modern life in six hour-long comic performances. It quickly established itself as the channel’s most successful original programme that year and a further sixteen episodes have been commissioned for broadcast in 2014 and 2015. His ambition is to one day become a team captain on Call My Bluff. 
 
www.davegorman.com

Remember when you were a kid, and you used to go round to a friend's house to see if they were playing? Well, as adults we're not supposed to do that. Which is a shame... because Dave Gorman likes playing. He REALLY likes games. So he knocked on the biggest door you could ever imagine - the internet - and asked 76,000 people if they fancied a game. This is the story of what happened next. 
 
Dave was up for anything and gamely played them at whatever they chose. He played some classics - Monopoly, Scrabble, dominoes and cribbage. He played many games he'd never heard of before - Khet, Kubb, Tikal or Smite anyone? 
 
He played board games and physical games. He's thrown sticks, balls, frisbees and darts. He's rolled dice and he's drawn cards. 
 
From Liverpool to Hampstead and from Croydon to Nottingham, Dave travelled the length and breadth of Britain meeting strangers in strange places - their homes, at work, in the back rooms of pubs - and getting some hardcore game action. From casual players to serious game geeks, from the rank amateur to the world champion, he discovered a nation of gamers more than happy to welcome him into their midst. 
 
He's travelled all around the country and met all sorts of people - and it turns out us Brits are a competitive bunch. And it seems that playing games can teach you a lot about what makes the British tick. Of course, Dave hasn't been keeping score. Much.

America Unchained

One man, one car, no chains, and one hell of a coast-to-coast adventure

The plan was simple. Go to America. Buy a second-hand car. Drive coast-to-coast without giving any money to The Man™. What could possibly go wrong? 
 
Dismayed by the relentless onslaught of faceless American chains muscling in where local businesses had once thrived, Dave Gorman set off on the ultimate American road trip - in search of the true, independent heart of the U S of A. He would eat cherry pie from local diners, re-fuel at dusty gas stations and stock up on supplies from Mom and Pop's grocery store. At least that was the idea. But when did you last see an independent gas station? 
 
Gamely, Dave beds down in a Colorado trailer park, sleeps in an Oregon forest treehouse, and even spends Thanksgiving with a Mexican family in Kansas. But when his road trip mutates into an odyssey of near-epic proportions and he finds himself being threatened at gun point in Mississippi, Dave starts to worry about what's going to break down next. The car... or him?

Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure

Another hi-octane, pointless adventure from 'the Bill Bryson of stand-up'

This chronicle of his global search is the best kind of nonsense - totally stupid, incredibly pointless and absolutely hilarious

A rollicking, funny, sometimes disturbing, high-stakes personal journey with the pace of a thriller. Brilliant

Following his hilarious search for his far flung namesakes, this gently but persistently funny book is another to savour

Gorman's writing style and use of language is clever and frequently so amusing it will make you laugh out loud...hilarious, diverse and sometimes disturbing

If someone called you a 'googlewhack' what would you do? Would you end up playing table tennis with a nine year-old boy in Boston? Would you find yourself in Los Angeles wrangling snakes, or would you go to China to be licked by a performance artist? 
 
If your name is Dave Gorman, then all of these things could be true. 
 
Fuelled by a lust for life and a desperate desire to do anything except what he's supposed to be doing (writing that novel and growing up), Dave falls under the spell of an obscure internet word game - Googlewhacking. Addicted to the game, and gripped by obsession, Dave travels three times round the world, visiting four continents and the unlikeliest cast of real life eccentrics you'll ever meet in what becomes an epic challenge, a life-changing, globe-trotting Googlewhack adventure.

Are You Dave Gorman?

'A magnificent tale of obsession and adventure' The Independent

A magnificent tale of obsession and adventure

Gorman is becoming the Bill Bryson of stand-up: charming, whimsical, adventurous and laced with belly laughs

You'll like this so much you may want to change your name to Dave Gorman

What starts out as adrunken bet grows into an existential odyssey and a life affirming, heart-warming chapter in the history of English eccentricity

The average Dave Gorman is 37, 5'6" and works in the financial sector. Our Dave Gorman is 29, is a Perrier Award-nominated comedian and writer. His TV work has earned him two BAFTAs for The Mrs Merton Show as well as his own BBC2 series. Danny Wallace is a writer, producer and award-winning journalist, whose work has appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines including The Guardian, The Independent and Melody Maker.

'A magnificent tale of obsession and adventure' The Independent 
 
After a heavy night of tequila, flatmates Dave and Danny set off on what turns out to be a 24,000-mile journey to meet all the other Dave Gormans in the world. They visit Scotland, Israel, America, France and Ireland. They even hold a party in London where 50 Dave Gormans attend, including two women who have kindly changed their name via deed-poll. Silly, but engrossing, fascinating and addictive - and a touching, funny story of two friends who grow to share a mutual obsession. 
 
'A warm, funny, life-enhancing book' The Guardian 
 
The average Dave Gorman is 37, 5'6" and works in the financial sector. Our Dave Gorman is 29, is a Perrier Award-nominated comedian and writer. His TV work has earned him two BAFTAs for The Mrs Merton Show as well as his own BBC2 series. Danny Wallace is a writer, producer and award-winning journalist, whose work has appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines including The Guardian, The Independent and Melody Maker.

Dave Gorman

In the study of modern miscellany Dave Gorman is the equivalent of a professor emeritus

Dave Gorman is funny and brilliant in equal measure

Gorman turns his astute, observational wit on the rampant information age in which we live

Or: Can Everyone Just Shut Up for a Moment, Some of Us Are Trying to Think

It’s hard to imagine a world where anything you could possibly want to know about – and everything you don’t even know you want to know about – isn't accessible 24-hours a day, seven days a week, with just a few taps of our fingers. But that world once existed. And Dave Gorman remembers it. He remembers when there were only three channels on TV. He remembers when mobile phones were the preserve of arrogant estate agents and yuppie twonks. And he remembers when you had to unplug your phone to plug the computer into the landline in order to use the (crippling slow) internet. 
 
Nowadays of course, the world is full of people trying to tell us things. So much so that we have taught our brains not to pay much attention. After all, click the mouse, tap the screen, flick the channel and it's on to the next thing. But Dave Gorman thinks it's time to have a closer look, to find out how much nonsense we tacitly accept. 
 
Suspicious adverts, baffling newspaper headlines, fake twitter, endless cat videos, insane TV shows where the presenters ask the same questions over and over. 
 
Can we even hear ourselves think over the rising din? Or is there just too much information?

Too Much Information

About us

About Us (Header 4)

Best-Jane-Austen-quotes_Online-Desktop_Penguin

James-Baldwin

Marian-Keyes

haruki-murakami-320×320-1

Richard-Osman

Malorie Blackman

Lisa-Jewell

Charlie-Mackesy

Authors (Header 3)

Children&#039;s

Company

Discover

Fiction

Non-fiction

Penguin Classics

Penguin Shop (Header 5)

Useful links

Work with us

sectionTitle

isEnabled

anchor

anchorLabel

prhuk/featured-book

prhuk/praise-section

maxBooks

showViewMore

prhuk/books-section

hideAuthorAlert

formName

iterableDivision

iterableBrand

buttonText

description

heading

legalText

successHeading

successText

image

alignment

variation

prhuk/email-section

prhuk/series-section

prhuk/biography-section

prhuk/articles-section

prhuk-authors

The perfect gift? A Penguin Shop gift card

Dave Gorman

Praise for Too Much Information

In the study of modern miscellany Dave Gorman is the equivalent of a professor emeritus

Dave Gorman is funny and brilliant in equal measure

Gorman turns his astute, observational wit on the rampant information age in which we live

In the study of modern miscellany Dave Gorman is the equivalent of a professor emeritus

Dave Gorman is funny and brilliant in equal measure

Gorman turns his astute, observational wit on the rampant information age in which we live

In the study of modern miscellany Dave Gorman is the equivalent of a professor emeritus

Dave Gorman is funny and brilliant in equal measure

Gorman turns his astute, observational wit on the rampant information age in which we live

Books by Dave Gorman

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter