Once upon a time (I’ll admit, it was a drunken time) I went off on a worldwide trip to meet other people called Dave Gorman. I did it because I had become locked in a stupid bet with my flatmate Danny who accompanied me on the journey because he’d become locked in a stupid bet with his flatmate, me.

It was a very stupid thing to do: it nearly bankrupted me and it nearly split Danny and his girlfriend up.

The story became a stage show, later a TV series and then a book (available from all good book shops folks). Now, a lot of people labour under the misapprehension that we went off meeting my namesakes deliberately, in order to create the show/series/book that followed. No, no, no, that’s not how it happened at all.

But imagine if the shows hadn’t happened? Imagine if I’d been on that trip and never told anyone about it? Wouldn’t that make the story even stranger? Wouldn’t that be a peculiar thing to keep to yourself?

It may take an idiot to travel the world meeting 54 namesakes but it takes a man who knows he’s an idiot to tell you about it. And that, I hope, lifts me one place higher on the idiot food chain.

Telling the story to an audience, turning those strange events into a project of sorts, helped me make sense of it. It also saved me from bankruptcy.

Two years later I’d been commissioned, and indeed paid, to write a novel. That’s a proper grown-up book, so you’d think I’d be sitting at home keenly typing away like a happy little grown-up wouldn’t you? But no, while trying to begin the novel I had discovered the obscure Internet word game known as googlewhacking.

There isn’t space here to explain what googlewhacking is. What I can tell you is that it was responsible for taking my life into another strange and peculiar journey.

Let me give you an example: earlier this year I found myself alone in an Internet café in South Central LA. A knife fight had recently finished, the sound of gunfire could be heard in the distance and this was all because of a sodding word game. Scrabble with the Kray Twins never got this out of hand.

I checked my emails and found one from a woman called Susan. Susan runs the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Susan’s email said, “We’ve checked with your agent and he says you don’t have a new show at the minute because you’re writing a novel. But if you have any ideas and you’d like to come to Melbourne, we’d love to have you.”

This was my chance to make sense of events once more. This was my chance to pull myself back up the idiot food chain by telling the story. I emailed Susan back. “I’ll do a show. I don’t know what it’ll be like yet, but I’ve got a title for you. Call it Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure.” Dave Gorman 25 July 03

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