A VETERAN comic tells Su Carroll how he'll be travelling a little easier this year

DAVE Gorman strikes me as a kind of mad inventor, coming up with extraordinary ideas on an almost daily basis. He searched for all the other people in the world called Dave Gorman, created a new word – Googlewhack – for things that only occur once on a search engine and harnessed public ingenuity for his radio (and now television) show Genius.

Last year he undertook an epic stand-up tour, cycling to each and every venue on the way.

"I'm really happy I did it," says Dave. "It was bloody hard but it's the most enjoyable tour I've ever done.

"I was approaching my 40th birthday and was planning on doing a bike ride from Land's End to John O'Groats, as lots of men do. But I was a bit crestfallen to discover that they weren't the most southernmost and northernmost points.

"So I decided to go from the southernmost to the most northern point, and then the most easternmost to the westernmost – the four corners.

"I had been doing the odd bit of stand-up again and my agent said 'you should be touring'. I said 'I can't do it, I've got this big bike ride. So there was a moment when we both just looked at each other and I found the tour added to the bike ride."

The result was the Sit Down, Pedal, Pedal, Stop and Stand Up tour. Dave says the hardest part was not the cycling, but the logistics of planning so that he did a sensible distance every day without hanging around for gigs.

"I think if you travel a lot in Britain you see quite an urban Britain," says Dave.

"If you're cycling you realise how much of the land hasn't been filled in yet. You can take a cycle route from Bristol to Swindon and hardly see a car.

"Cycling is sort of meditative. You're in your own little space. One day I passed two different pairs of people on tandems. How many times do you see them? And here in Suffolk were two, an hour apart, going in different directions.

"We also saw two boys on a unicycle ride from Land's End to John O'Groats and coincided with them for part of the way."

Dave's 1,500-mile cycle ride took him to such delights as Lizard Point, Lowestoft Ness, Ardnamurchan Point and Dunnet Head. Along the way he performed sold-out gigs in venues ranging from the 2,000-seat Colston Hall in Bristol to the 32 folk who could fit into the Glenfinnan Railway Station Dining Car.

This left many of his fans disappointed so Dave decided to embark on a second Sit Down, Pedal, Pedal, Stop and Stand Up. Except without the Pedal, Pedal bit.

"There will be no blisters and I won't be walking like a cowboy," he laughs.

"The last time I did a big tour it was so intensive, I didn't get home for eight months. It's much nicer having a relationship than being away from home for eight months. I wouldn't have gone from that point to this point without the bike ride in between and I'm really enjoying it now."

Dave Gorman is at Plymouth Pavilions on March 4. Box office: 0845 146 1460.