"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Modern Life Is Goodish." "My name is Dave Gorman." "I have a large screen, a remote control and a laptop full of things that I want to show you." "And it's especially important to me tonight that you understand that this show is genuinely made on that laptop." "And that genuinely is my laptop." "It's important because some of the stories" "I'm going to tell you this evening mean that that laptop - my laptop - contains files that, at first glance, might appear to be of a questionable nature." "LAUGHTER" "And we live in a paranoid age, an age in which rumours abound that innocent citizens are routinely surveilled by the powers that be, that we are all being spied upon, our every movement tracked by government agencies." "I think I might have caught this sense of paranoia from a friend of mine." "I had an odd phone call from him recently." "Just to put it in context," "It's not odd to receive a call from him." "He's someone I've known for 20 years, he's a very good friend and by good fortune he has recently moved to the same street as me." "So getting the call from him wasn't odd." "But the phone call was odd." "He didn't say hello." "He didn't ask how I was." "He didn't ask after Mrs Gorman." "His first words were just, "Have you got a shredder?"" "LAUGHTER" "With that note of panic in his voice, which to begin with was quite exciting." "I felt like I was in an episode of Breaking Bad for a moment." "And there's mystery there, there's intrigue, and there's panic... and there's a man who wants to destroy stuff." "I said, "Yes, of course I have." And said, "Brilliant." "Can I come round?"" ""Well, hang on." "What is it you want to shred " and he said," ""I'd rather not say on the phone."" "Five minutes later, he's at the front door, he's sweating, he's carrying a hold-all." "Long story short, ladies and gentlemen, this is what he wanted to shred." "LAUGHTER" "Yeah." "Basically, he's bought this house, ten or 12 doors down from mine." "They've been unpacking boxes and dealing with stuff and the last room they've got round to is the spare room." "Eventually, they're in the spare room and the previous owner has left a wardrobe behind." "And they like the wardrobe but they decide they don't want it against that wall, they want it against that wall and so the two of them move the wardrobe, and when they do, they discovered this, underneath it." "And there is a dilemma here." "Because he wants to get rid of the porn, but he wants to do it ethically." "He knows that the morally responsible thing to do would be to put it in the recycling." "But you can't just put that in the recycling." "Not where we live." "Not in the borough of Tower Hamlets, you can't." "This is a Tower Hamlets recycling bag." "Right, let me just show you this." "It's not exactly hiding my hand there, is it?" "That's pretty transparent, if you ask me." "When we put our recycling out on our road, there's no bin to put it in." "You basically open your front door, there's the pavement, you just put your bag of recycling right there on the pavement." "It's there for about 12 hours and you do not want to leave that outside your front door." "LAUGHTER" "That's pretty obvious, what's going on there, isn't it?" "That's basically what porn looks like to people with cataracts." "LAUGHTER" "That's no disguise at all, is it?" "Even from the other side of the bag with the print on, it's not exactly hard to work out what's going on there." "You don't have to be Columbo to know that says, "Finally Legal", do you?" "And I'll be honest, I'm not sure why I'm showing you that, because I've brought it with me here tonight and there it is and that's pretty bloody obvious, isn't it?" "You can't go leaving that in the street, can you?" "And you can't just put it in with your usual rubbish either." "We put our black bags out also on a Tuesday and they're also meant to be collected on a Wednesday but about half the time, they're not collected until the Thursday and nine times out of ten, if they're not picked up good and early" "then by the time they are, a fox, or some human scavenger, has torn the bag open and spilled our rubbish out on to the street." "So if he puts the porn in the recycling, everyone will see it, but if he puts it in with the black bag rubbish, there's basically a 90% chance that everyone will see it and it will be much, much worse." "If that happens, not only are you the neighbourhood pervert, you're also the pervert who doesn't give a shit about the environment." "That's two strikes on your record, isn't it?" "And you can't burn it because we live in a clean-air zone, no bonfires allowed." "So he's decided that shredding it is the answer." "And so, we set about shredding it." "As you can see, I wore..." "I wore rubber gloves." "LAUGHTER" "Well, you don't know where it's been, do you?" "Actually let me rephrase that." "I wore rubber gloves because I've got a pretty good idea where it's been." "Incidentally, I'm sorry about those." "Incidentally, I'm sorry about that as well." "And it took ages as well." "The shredder only takes ten sheets of paper at a time and you've got to remove the staples." "It takes forever." "And there's a problem with this." "Because that is what it looks like when it's been shredded." "And that is pretty obviously, ex-porn, isn't it?" "LAUGHTER" "Look at that!" "Look at the amount of flesh-tone there!" "It may no longer have the power to arouse or titillate, but it's pretty obvious what it was, isn't it?" "If you put that out, your neighbours will still think you're throwing out porn, but now they'll think, "Blimey, his porn's so bad," ""he's felt the need to shred it."" "What we've done here is we've invented porn-fetti." "In reality, we've made the problem five times bigger." "Literally." "Right, I've got some of this with me as well." "That bag contains half of the pornography and that bag contains the other half, literally all it does is make it five times bigger in volume." "Just look at that." "It's like a magic-eye poster of an orgy." "It's like one of those optical illusions where the image is incomplete but the brain somehow sees the whole." "Actually, that might not be the best choice of words." "LAUGHTER" "The more you stare at this, the more it stares back at you and makes you question your own humanity." "Look, that is a part of someone's face." "It's awful, isn't it?" "Hopefully, so is that." "I don't know." "And this is what it looks like in a recycling bag." "It's pretty obvious, isn't it?" "That's my normal recycling there." "That's my normal shredding." "Put them side by side and it's pretty obvious that something is up, isn't it?" "And I know what some of you are thinking." "Some of you are thinking, "That could be any kind of magazine." ""There's nothing essentially pornographic about that."" "One, I disagree." "Two, list for me the kinds of magazines you think someone would be embarrassed enough to shred." "There's only bloody one, isn't there?" "In any case, I have now tested the theory." "I thought I'd try some other magazines, just to see if they look the same when shredded." "I thought I'd try some of these magazines." "They tend to have a lot of flesh tones." "They're brightly-coloured, gaudy, tacky things." "You might be embarrassed to be seen reading them." "They had something in common." "Incidentally... how weird are these magazines?" "I've never really paid them much attention." "If you didn't speak English, if you didn't know what any of the words meant, you could be forgiven for thinking those were happy magazines." "They're definitely not." "These are cheerfully-packaged sacks of misery." "If you take in what is on the cover of these things, the design starts to look really schizophrenic." "Who would put these words on the cover?" ""Crazed Lover Carved His Name In My Door."" ""A Crisp Could Make Her Bleed To Death."" ""My Girl Should Still Be Alive."" ""I Walked My Best Friend To Her Murder."" "And then think that this was the face that summed it all up?" "This is the literary equivalent of getting a fancy chocolate selection box and then discovering that in each of the spaces there's a horrible steaming turd." "Seriously, look at this stuff." ""Maggots Died In My Tummy."" ""I Had My Evil Dad's Baby."" ""Killed By Her Own Grandson."" ""Killed By Her Own Hubby."" ""I Made A Chess Set Out Of Dead Mice."" "LAUGHTER" "You did what?" "!" "How do they put those stories on the cover and then think that this is the face that represents them?" "The worst one...the worst one was That's Life, last Christmas." "That's Life magazine, last Christmas." "I'm not going to even say these words, they are too ugly to be said and I don't want you to misconstrue what I'm doing." "Just take in these words for yourselves." "These are on the cover of this magazine." "Take all this in." "This is horrific." "Just take that in and realise that they thought that was the correct face to go with that." "And even worse, these were the words." "Everything's shit, we're all going to die, Happy Christmas!" "It's ridiculous, isn't it?" "Anyway, that's by the by." "The point is I shredded some of these magazines, just to see how they compare, and do you know what?" "They look different." "Look at that!" "You can see words!" "It's obvious, isn't it, when you see them like that?" "Put them side by side, it's even more obvious." "And if you don't believe me," "I've brought samples of that with me as well." "Look at this." "If I put them down, side by side." "I'll shuffle the bags so you won't know which one's which." "What's going on there?" "If I put these down side by side...?" "A fella and a lady, would anyone like to come and sample?" "You can have a quick look and you will be able to tell which one is which." "If I space these out like that." "Would you, on the end, sir, would you like to come and have a look?" "And you just point to which one you think is the porn." "That one." "Exactly." "You knew exactly, straightaway." "It's obvious, isn't it?" "Basically porn is indestructible!" "That's why people go to such extreme lengths to get rid of it." "That's why people throw it in railway sidings." "That's why people bury it in graveyards." "And if you think my friend coming round to my house and asking me to shred it is extreme, well, I heard about one bloke who got rid of his by putting it under the wardrobe and selling his bloody house." "That's extreme." "That's extreme." "Now, as it happens, we did, eventually, find a way of getting rid of it." "And I'll tell you how we did it later in the show." "I'll see you after the break." "I'm Dave Gorman and before the break," "I was talking about the awkward subject of porn disposal." "And you could probably tell from my demeanour that I am a little bit prudish about these things." "It's not that I think porn shouldn't exist." "I just think that in polite society, everyone should pretend that their porn doesn't exist." "LAUGHTER" "I think this prudishness probably goes some way to explaining why this is one of my least favourite phrases..." "You hear this all the time." "You always hear actors on chat shows telling you that their job is the most fun you can have with your clothes on." "If you visit Trip Advisor, there is barely an activity out there that hasn't been reviewed by someone as being "the most fun you can have with your clothes on."" "Apparently, segway riding in Australia is the most fun you can have with your clothes on." "Going go-karting in Ireland is the most fun you can have with your clothes on." "All of these activities are the most fun you can have with your clothes on." "And so are all of these." "These are all the most fun you can have with your clothes on." "And this is just the tip of the Trip Advisor iceberg." "Now to explain why this bugs me," "I need to really unpick what this phrase means." "When you say something is," ""The most fun you can have with your clothes on,"" "what you're really saying is, "Oh, that's really good fun." ""I mean not as good as sex, but it is really good fun."" "That's what you mean." "Now if someone's talking about, say, skydiving, and they say, for example, that skydiving is," ""The most fun you can have with your clothes on,"" "what they mean is, skydiving is amazing but there is one thing more amazing than skydiving and that thing is sex." "Skydiving is my second favourite activity." "My favourite is sex." "That's what you're actually saying." "Not literally." "As a joke." "But that's the gist of the joke." "But it's become such a well-worn phrase now, it's used so widely, they've forgotten that it's a sex joke." "I'll tell you what it reminds me of." "I was at a wedding recently and when the father of the bride made his speech he referred to the mother of the groom as a MILF." "UNCOMFORTABLE LAUGHTER" "Exactly." "Exactly." "He had heard the phrase MILF used so often, he'd forgotten it was an acronym meaning mother I'd like to..." "HE WHISTLES" "He, in his head, just thought it meant an attractive older lady." "That's all he was saying when he said, "And Graham's mother," ""I'm sure we'd all agree, is a MILF of the highest order."" "LAUGHTER" "That's what he meant and your reaction to hearing that just then and the way everyone at the wedding reacted when they heard it at the time, is how I react when I hear people saying that without realising that there is a sex joke in there." "They're just saying it's a lot of fun." "Here's an example for you." "This is an American news broadcast, speaking to a woman about a summer camp for dogs." "This one offered a full slate of activities for dog and owner." "Oh, yeah, it's the most fun you can have with your clothes on." "There is no way on Earth she would stand there, broadcasting to all of America and, even in jest holding her dog, say, "This is great." "It really is." ""I mean, I'd rather be having sex but this is great." ""Yeah, we love it." "Don't get me wrong, if cock had been available," ""I wouldn't be here, but this is a very good second best."" "She would never do that." "She would never do that." "So why is she doing that?" "It's all over the place, this phrase." "This is on Twitter." ""As my farrier says..." This woman's got a farrier." "That's not a typo." "She doesn't mean "As Mo Farah says..."" "No, no, she's saying, "As my farrier says," ""horseback riding is the most fun you can have with your clothes on!" ""But then, so is singing." "Hashtag fun."" "And there's a picture of her riding a horse." "I don't think she would ever be likely to tweet," ""I would rather be having sex than riding a horse."" "Would she?" "That's what she's doing." "This is my favourite of them." ""Heads up hashtag Sustainable Haringey" ""hashtag Compost Giveaway, October 20th, Hashtag AllyPally." ""The most fun with your clothes on." "See link for proof."" "And if you click on that link, you get a video of some old people putting bags of compost into the boots of their cars." "LAUGHTER" "I'm not saying that giving away compost isn't fun but if you listed every human activity that is fun in order of fun, I reckon pretty much everything else on Earth falls somewhere in between giving away compost and having sex." "I don't think the person who tweeted this would ever be likely to tweet" ""There is only one thing I enjoy more than giving away compost" ""and that's having sex."" "Using that video as proof, would they?" "The only thing worse than people using the phrase without being aware that they're saying something sexual, is when people use it, and they do know what they're saying." "This is the kind of thing I mean." "This is an interview for a French website with the cast of the movie Inception and the actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt is going to use the phrase." "Just focus on the way he pauses part way in." "This was just about the hardest thing" "I've ever done in my life, physically, and, um...maybe the most fun I've ever had in my life, physically... with my clothes on..." "I'm going to play that again, but this time," "I'm going to show you what I think is going on in his head during that pause, OK?" "This was just about the hardest thing" "I've even done in my life, physically, and, um...maybe the most fun I've ever had in my life, physically..." "..with my clothes on." "That's what I reckon was going on there." "Do you really think that this guy really means it when he says it here?" ""For me, helping other people" ""is the most fun I can have with my clothes on."" "Is helping other people really that much fun?" "I mean, I do help people." "I don't mind helping people." "A friend calls me up to ask if he can use my shredder, I'm there for him, but I'm not sure that was fun." "I tried to help someone recently and that definitely wasn't fun." "What happened is..." "I found a camera." "I was working with a bunch of friends." "We were in Brighton on the beach and we found this camera, just there." "It was in amongst the stones." "It wasn't near a bar." "It wasn't near any bags." "There was nowhere you could go with it and say, "Someone's lost this"" "and just leave it for somebody else to take care of." "And the tide was coming in and we figured if we left it, it was going to get washed away and so we decided we had to intervene." "And as a group, we decided that, because of what I do for a living," "I had the most social media clout which meant that I was in the best position to try and find the camera's owner." "And I'll be honest with you, my ego kind of liked that idea." "Because there have been a few stories where people do this and the person who found the camera always comes out of that story looking pretty heroic." "This is the kind of thing I mean." "This is a scuba diver who found a camera and managed to get it back to its original owner." "This is one where the camera had been dropped on Ben Nevis, and again they got it back to them." "This one is amazing." "The camera was dropped in Hawaii, it washed up six years later in Taiwan and it got returned to the owner who lived in Georgia." "Such is the power of the internet." "The trouble is, in all of these cases, the cameras were digital." "So people were able to extract some photos and put those online and it basically worked out because people recognise faces." "But this is a film camera." "That's a bit different." "If I want to get the pictures out of that," "I'm going to have to go to Snappy Snaps and give them some money." "And you understand that initially I wasn't that keen on doing that." "Not at first, anyway." "I figured, I'd try spreading the word first of all, so I blogged about it and I tweeted about it, and I joined a few forums for people who found cameras." "I basically spread it as much as I could." "And I figured if someone recognises the camera and gets in touch then that's all good, and if they don't then in a couple of weeks, I will pay to develop the photos." "I am prepared to go that far, 8.99, because I want to be a hero." "Two weeks go by, nobody claims the camera and so I head down to Snappy Snaps and hand in the film." "And I'll tell you what, the guy who works there was really, really friendly, very chatty." "But when I went back to pick them up, a couple of hours later, he wasn't so friendly." "LAUGHTER" "Just sort of pushed the envelope across the counter with a bit of a shrug." "A bit solemn." "I didn't understand what was going on." "I didn't really think about it." "I just took my photos and went." "I don't think anyone has ever left a shop with newly developed photos and waited until they get home to look at those photos, have they?" "Nobody ever gets more than five yards out of a Snappy Snaps before they open that envelope and have a little peak." "That's what I was doing." "I looked at the first photo and then I immediately put it straight back in and sealed it up and went home to look at the rest." "Ladies and gentlemen, there is only one photo that I'm able to show you." "LAUGHTER" "And even then, I have had to add a little something." "What the hell is going on there?" "If you're watching..." "If you, sir, are watching and you would like to get your camera back, by all means do get in touch." "I can't work out if someone's done this on purpose or not." "Has someone lost a camera with some rather sensitive photos on it or has someone deliberately left their camera there on purpose because they get a kick out of imagining the awkwardness in Snappy Snaps?" "Is this some kind of new thing?" "Is this long-distance flashing where you concoct a way of showing your tackle to strangers without even being there?" "Basically, what I'm asking is, have I been dick-rolled?" "Is that what's going on here?" "This is ridiculous, isn't it?" "This is the camera." "I've looked it up now." "This camera is about 20 years old." "You can get one on eBay for a fiver." "It wouldn't be an expensive plot to enact, would it?" "I've spent 8.99 developing the photos!" "I've spent more money being exposed to his cock than he's spent on showing it to me!" "Frankly, it is a shame that I'm not allowed to show you his face." "If I took that top box away, you would be able to see quite how happy he is." "Then again, if I took away the bottom box, you'd be able to see quite how happy he is." "And he should be happy." "He should be happy." "After all, we know that what he is doing is more fun than any of these activities." "More fun than any of that." "More fun than any of that." "APPLAUSE" "There's something weird about leaving that up as a faceless entity like that." "I did think, for a moment, that this... ..might take the sting out of it, but really it's just worse, isn't it?" "It's not better at all." "It's not as bad as that, mind." "That is..." "That is just too disturbing." "I'm going to take that away and I promise you this." "I will do my best to restore the karmic balance to our universe after the break." "I told you about the time that I found a camera and, to be honest, I feel a little bit scarred by the experience, a little bit unsettled." "But it did get the cogs turning." "I decided that I ought to do something to restore the karmic balance of the universe." "I thought I'd do something similar, but nice." "And what I'd thought I'd do, is I would lose some cameras." "But they would be nice cameras, they would bring pleasure to strangers." "What I used is a bunch of disposable cameras." "You know the kind of thing." "They're made of cardboard, you use them once, that's all they are." "You know that wedding I mentioned earlier, where the father of the bride accidentally told the world he wanted to WHISTLES the mother of the groom?" "At that wedding, they did this thing where they bought a job lot of these and left a couple on every table with a little note asking you to take as many photos as you wanted and drop them in a box at the end." "And nobody used them." "Nobody used them because most of their guests were so young they didn't know what a proper camera looked like and they all had their iPhones out and nobody bothered so the happy couple ended up with a job lot of these disposable cameras" "that they didn't want and so I took them off their hands for a pound a pop." "The idea was I was going to leave them in public places and they're obviously not very weather proof, so I also bought a load of these zip-up, plastic bags to put them in." "They're made to take toiletries onto airplanes, things like that, but they work pretty well for this." "So what I've ended up with is 40 of these." "The idea is, there's a camera in there." "The camera has an address written on it, on the body of the camera, and £3.20 in stamps on it." "There's a little note in the bag." "The note says, "This camera is not lost." ""It is for the first person who picks it up." ""If this is you I would be very grateful" ""if you could take some photos of the following items."" "And then I've just made up the first five things I could think of." "I wanted to make it stuff that wouldn't put people off but that would still give them something to do." "1, a telephone box, 2, a bench," "3, a dog, 4, a newspaper and 5, a tree." "Nothing very challenging but it's a nice little list to get on with." ""When you've finished, please put the camera in the nearest postbox." ""I look forward to seeing your photos." "Thanks in advance, D."" "So I've got 40 of these and I've cycled all over London, leaving them in public places." "And, as far as I'm concerned, if someone just wants to just steal the camera, then that is OK by me." "And if someone wants to peel off the stamps and have £3.20's worth of postage on me, then that is absolutely OK." "But I figured some people would find them and enjoy taking part in something, a little photographic treasure hunt that they don't know what for." "I thought that would spread a little bit of delight." "How many of the 40 cameras, do you think came back?" "Any guesses?" "Four?" "Two?" "20?" "20 is the correct answer, 20." "50% of them came back." "I think that's pretty bloody good." "And when the first film came back, it was very, very exciting." "I went straight to Snappy Snaps." "LAUGHTER" "At which point it occurred to me, what if whoever found this camera has also used it..." "LAUGHTER" "..to take pictures of their bits?" "There's no way the man in the shop will believe me if it happens twice." "Luckily, that didn't happen, I'm glad to say." "They did exactly as I asked them." "I asked them to take pictures of a telephone box." "I had three pictures of a telephone box on that first film." "I asked them to take pictures of a bench." "They took pictures of benches, of course they did." "I asked them to a picture of a dog." "They took pictures of dogs, ladies and gentlemen." "I asked them to take a picture of a newspaper." "Yeah." "There was one newspaper in there." "I asked them to take a picture of a tree and of course they took pictures of trees." "I love these guys." "And I say guys because I feel a little bit informed." "There was a bonus picture on this roll of film." "I assume this is a selfie from the people who were taking these photos." "I love those fellas." "God love 'em for joining in, and hopefully they enjoyed it as well." "That's lovely, isn't it?" "We had some lovely stuff back." "This is the next film, it's brilliant." "There's the phone box." "This was dropped in London." "There is a bench, there is it." "There's the bench." "There's a dog." "There's the newspaper." "That says Nottingham." "They found this camera in London and it's ended up in Nottingham." "They still send it back in the post." "There's the tree." "And again there were bonus photos on the end of this film." "It wasn't a selfie." "This time, and I think this is brilliant, it's the inside of a sorting office." "LAUGHTER" "And the back of a postman's head." "I think that..." "Why wouldn't they?" "It's just a camera." "It's not in an envelope or anything." "It's going through the post so they can have some fun with it." "That's glorious." "But my favourite film of all is the next one I'm going to show you." "The only way to do this one justice is to show you every photo they took, in the order in which they took them." "This is genuinely a piece of art." "This is a beautiful thing they've done." ""No." "I. Will." "Not." ""Do." "As." "You." "Tell." "Me."" "How beautiful is that?" "APPLAUSE" "They have put ten times the effort into non-compliance that compliance would have taken." "This is beautiful." ""I. Am." "A. Free." "Man." ""I. Have." "Free." "Will." ""Oh." "Alright." "Then..."" "LAUGHTER" "They have plotted this beautifully." "They have taken all those pictures." "They have left themselves one photo on this roll of film." "That's the sort of contact sheet for it and there's the one photo." "I told you one little fib there." "There were two "Nots" in there." ""No, I will not not do as you tell me," but you get the idea." "So there's just one photo left." "This, ladies and gentlemen, in the final picture they took." "How beautiful is that?" "APPLAUSE" "How amazing is that?" "That is a phone box." "That is a tree." "And that is a man dressed as a dog, sitting on a bench, reading a newspaper." "I love whoever did this!" "This is amazing, isn't it?" "I'll be honest with you, and as a performer, this makes me feel slightly guilty here, because that applause, that laughter..." "I'm only the messenger." "That is not my appreciation." "That is appreciation for whoever did this." "I think this is amazing." "I wanted to track them down." "I wanted to see if we could get them to come on the show." "But obviously," "I dropped the cameras anonymously, they sent them back anonymously." "It's not exactly easy to contact that person." "But I wanted to try." "Before I dropped the cameras I put a small number on each of them in the top right hand corner, so I would know when they came back which one was which." "I thought it might be interesting to see if certain types of areas were more likely to return them than others, but that's not the case." "I just thought that would be interesting." "But it means I know where this camera was dropped." "This camera was dropped in Camden somewhere, round about there." "So I figured if we could find where the photos were taken we'd know that the person probably lived and worked somewhere between where they found the camera and where they took the photos." "That's Camden, where the camera was dropped." "So I basically had everyone who works on this show scouring the streets around here on this map - not in person just on Google Street View - hoping to see that bench, that phone box, that tree." "I was travelling virtually up Prince Albert Road on Google Street View in that direction, ladies and gentlemen, and I think I found it." "This is me, travelling up on Street View." "It's weird, even on a computer, I was getting a bit annoyed with that van in my way." ""Oh, bloody hell." "I'm stuck at the lights."" "But you go up and you turn a left here and look at that," "I reckon that's a pretty good bet, isn't it?" "You go past it and then look back." "Look at that." "That's pretty good, isn't it?" "Look at that." "I reckon we've found it." "And that means, well, basically we knew roughly where they might be, it was worth a punt." "So I put up some posters in the area, figuring that this might attract their attention." "LAUGHTER" "I thought..." "The thinking is, if that's got nothing to do with you, you probably won't give it a second glance, but if that is you and you're passing, you're bloody well going to notice that, aren't you?" "But that's what I put up, not just on that lamp post," "I put it on the phone box there." "I put it all over the place." "And obviously not just where the photo was taken, all through the park, Regents Park, Lisson Grove, all the way..." "Near the zoo." "It's that part of London." "It did get a bit of attention." "We put them out in a few places." "This is in Camden where the camera was dropped." "It's not just that one." "I don't know if you've noticed, there are a few others..." "You can't be..." "You can't be over cautious with this sort of thing." "And do you know what, I can't believe this, but it bloody worked." "CHEERING We have managed to find him and he is here tonight." "So, ladies and gentlemen, the appreciation you showed for him, please, show him again as I say welcome, our photographer, ladies and gentlemen, there you go." "APPLAUSE" "Look at that." "Absolutely." "Good man." "Thank you very much." "Good man, ladies and gentlemen." "APPLAUSE" "I wanted to have him in the audience but the producer wouldn't let me because technically, he's not allowed on the furniture." "And actually, and I do feel that I need to say this, and please don't be too disappointed, that's not him." "No, no, no." "This is the thing." "He got in touch." "He genuinely saw that poster and he did get in touch but he didn't want to come on the show." "He was really thrilled that we had liked it." "He was really thrilled that it was going to be on the show but he didn't want, himself, to be on the show." "And then I suddenly thought, we let's call him back and ask if we can borrow the costume." "LAUGHTER" "Because that was a man in a costume, and it what way was your experience any different if that had been him?" "It's basically exactly the same thing, isn't it?" "Don't pretend that when they changed Tinky Winky your children were disappointed because it was no longer the real one." "That's how it works." "It's exactly the same." "Don't let that take away your pleasure." "And I promise you that when we come back, everyone will be exactly who they say they are." "I'll see you soon." "My name is Dave Gorman and this is Modern Life Is Goodish." "Now, if you've seen the show before, you're probably aware that there is normally a point in the show where I draw the various threads together and establish some kind of theme and you might be thinking that the theme of tonight's show" "is going to be something to do with nudity or pornography or something in that area but I don't think that is what really connects these things." "I see the pornographic magazines that were left at my friend's house and the film camera that was left on Brighton beach and I think, these things are the last remnants of our analogue world." "The digital age is doing away with these things." "In 20 years' time, nobody will be moving into a house and finding a stash of dirty magazines." "Surely, the internet age will kill that industry off." "In 20 years' time, if you move into someone's house and find their porn collection, you'll be thanking them for leaving you a computer." "And like many people of my age," "I feel a bit torn between these two worlds." "I hanker after the old-fashioned ways and yet I embrace the advantages of new technology." "I mean, look, here I am right now doing a show that I made on my own laptop." "This is a very digital way of working." "Before this technology was around, I used to do shows like this but with old-fashioned slide projectors and overhead projectors and stuff." "I used to do shows with screens that looked like that and if the producers of this show had their way," "I still would be because that would be cheaper." "Although, I'm glad I'm not because I think this bit of the show would look weird, wouldn't it, if I was doing on that?" "Because if this bit of the show was done on that then right now it would look like that." "That would just be weird." "Just to explain how the technology works." "This is an old-fashioned projector, really." "The light is travelling from behind there, hitting the back of the screen so if anything moves behind the screen, it will cast a shadow." "Now I have worked with screens and projectors all my adult life and never in all my days have I seen a screen that can do that, ladies and gentlemen." "How on Earth..." "How on Earth does that happen?" "That is just weird, isn't it?" "Anyway, like I say, tonight's show is really about the conflict between the analogue and the digital worlds." "And there are lots of ways in which I am a little bit behind the curve." "For example, I rarely drive, but when I do, I never use a Sat-Nav." "And this turns out to be a hot topic online." "It is much debated." "Here is the Guardian saying "Forget Sat-Navs," ""give me a good old-fashioned map any time."" "Here's the Mail saying that drivers prefer the printed map, and that's the Mirror saying very much the same thing, and the Telegraph." "They also say in the Telegraph that road atlas sales have been soaring as drivers seek extra help." "And, oh, you should see how passionate people get on this debate." "The bottom half of the internet turns into a bubbling fury when a topic like this is debated." "And I do enjoy seeing people get so worked up about things that don't really matter." "Because I have a hobby, ladies and gentlemen." "I've visited a dozen or more sites where this was under debate and I've taken my favourite comments from those debates and turned them into something that I like to think is a little more beautiful." "I've turned them into something that I like to call a Found Poem... that I would like to perform for you now." "STRING QUARTET PLAYING" "There is no debate here." "Sat-Navs are best!" "Maps are old." "Sat-Navs are new!" "I rely on my Sat-Nav 100%." "I would be lost without it." "LAUGHTER" "I don't mean that I would literally be lost, although that is true as well." "I mean that I wouldn't know what to do without it." "But then it's true that I wouldn't know where I was either." "So despite what I say, I would be literally lost without it." "I've never used a Sat-Nav and I never will." "I don't even know what they are." "LAUGHTER" "Maps are best." "Maps are beautiful." "Maps can be folded up and put in one's pocket." "Sat-Navs can't." "While I agree with you in principle, it is only fair to point out that most Sat-Navs will fit in most pockets." "LAUGHTER" "Map reading should be a part of the national curriculum." "The people of Britain ought to know how to read a map of Britain's roads." "Map reading is an essential life-skill." "Imagine you are being dropped in a foreign jungle and told to hack your way out?" "There's no power supply to charge a Sat-Nav." "See?" "LAUGHTER" "You should have learnt to read a map." "Stupid!" "What use will your map reading be if you are dropped in a jungle without a map?" "LAUGHTER" "There's no power supply in this jungle of yours." "But no map-shops either." "Worse still, imagine being dropped in a jungle and this time, imagine you have a map but it turns out that it's a map of a completely different jungle." "Now your map reading skills are putting your life in danger." "The problem with standard road atlases is that they only work one way up." "They are perfect if you are driving from south to north." "But the moment you try driving from north to south, a road atlas becomes as good as useless." "Either everything is pointing the wrong way or everything is pointing the right way and the words are upside down." "LAUGHTER" "A Sat-Nav solves this problem." "I call mine Sally." "Sally Sat-Nav." "Sally Sat-Nav has a nice voice." "Sometimes I turn Sally on even if I'm just going to the shops." "She makes me feel less lonely." "If you depend on satellite navigation then the battle has been lost." "Because that means you depend on the system and one day the system is going to break." "When the satellites go down, humankind will descend into chaos." "It will be a dog-eat-dog world." "Every man for himself." "When your kids need feeding and you find that your local supermarket has been looted, or worse..." "..fallen into the hands of a rebel militia, say..." "LAUGHTER" "Then you will regret being so reliant on a Sat-Nav system that no longer has a Sat ...ellite." "I call my Sat-Nav Henry." "Because, like Henry, he always knows where he is going." "(Henry is my brother in law.)" "LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE" "The Billroth String Quartet, ladies and gentlemen." "The Billroth String Quartet." "Now, earlier on in the show, I told you about my friend, shredding the porn that he'd found in his house and how doing so had actually made it even harder to dispose of." "But I also told you that we had found a solution." "And we have." "We were in the pub one night, discussing it with a few friends and one of our friends piped up, saying, "I know someone who'll take it off your hands." ""In fact, I think they'll like it."" "We reminded him that it had been shredded, and he said," ""I know, that's why Thelma and Louise will like it."" "Ladies and gentlemen, this is Thelma." "LAUGHTER" "And this is Louise." "They are gerbils." "And this is how Thelma and Louise have been living." "And this is how they are now living." "Surrounded by cut-up genitalia and who knows what else." "But they don't give a shit!" "They love it." "Although, and I have to point this out, we didn't know this at the time and their owner didn't know this, but the best advice is not to use magazines and anything with brightly-coloured inks as bedding for rodents because" "it's possible that the inks can bleed out and do them some damage." "We didn't know that." "Their owner didn't know that." "They made a decision in good faith and it's happened." "And it's fair to point out, also, that it doesn't actually appear to have done them any harm." "In fact, it seems to have done them the world of good." "That's Thelma." "And that's Louise and the reason that my friend has a Thelma and a Louise is that he only wanted two gerbils." "But it turns out... that he didn't have two girls at all." "He's had to change their names." "They are no longer Thelma and Louise." "They're now Thelma... and Louie." "They have lived together for six months and at no point has Louie been the slightest bit interested." "And within two weeks of their bedding changing," "Louie's libido has been awoken." "Somehow, minute scraps of human-centric porn have stirred the loins of a formerly disinterested male gerbil." "It is ridiculous but true." "And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the result." "AUDIENCE:" "Aw!" "Yes, look at that." "Such cuteness, surrounded by such filth!" "Look at them there." "Such innocence." "Blind before they can even read it." "Just look at this." "This is a remarkable thing." "Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for watching." "I'd love to say that this has been the most fun I've ever had with my clothes on but I can't because I've done this show naked." "LAUGHTER" "We're going to CGI some clothes onto me in the edit, yeah?" "They can do that now." "It's a digital world after all." "Thanks for watching." "Good night." "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd"