Review: Dave Gorman Gets Straight To The Point, The Lowry, Salford Quays

DAVE Gorman has a strange hobby.

The comedian, author and presenter collects photo slides...and many of them are from strangers' holidays from decades ago.

As he told a sold-out crowd at The Lowry in Salford Quays on Sunday, the 43-year-old has bought thousands of these forgotten pictures over the years which offer a peculiar window into people's lives.

It feels intrusive until Dave clicks a switch and turns the photos into pictures of strangers – on Facebook.

It is a remarkable shift in the show's tone which focuses on how technology and social media have altered how we interact with people and the world around us.

Gorman's now signature Powerpoint presentation style of stand-up delivery is the kind of show that will have you nodding in recognition as much as laughing out loud.

The comic spoke of the thousands of pictures that exist for the average youngster these days while you would probably be lucky to find more than a handful of pictures from your grandparents' youth.

And while holiday slide shows used to be considered an exercise in mundanity, Gorman pointed out that most of us subject ourselves to that by morbidly sifting through photos on Facebook.

The hilarious show also saw Gorman talk animatedly about the new terms that have come about in this modern age like 'photobomb' and 'selfie'...and a certain tabloid newspaper that continually gets the concept of both words wrong.

Odd Google search results and battles with your smart phone over which way up a photo should be also fitted in with the theme about how handheld technology and internet at our fingertips is dominating our lives and causing us to question our instincts.

Then Gorman took a comedy scalpel to the fame-hungry social media generation where anyone can become a celebrity...the anecdote involves knees but I won't spoil it here.

But the highlight of the show was Gorman's 'found poems' – put together using the combined 'wisdom' of the people who leave comments on scandal stories online.

Constantly cheery and yet fiercely intelligent, Gorman's sideways view of the world was as funny as it was thought-provoking. A natural showman on top form.

DAVID MORGAN