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The Guru of Googlewhack

British comedian Dave Gorman.
British comedian Dave Gorman.

British stand-up comic Dave Gorman is the creator of the one-man show Dave Gorman's Googlewhack! Adventure. As he tells NPR's Scott Simon, the "adventure" began when he discovered the magic of a one-hit result on the Web search engine Google.

A few years ago, Gorman, 31, decided it was time to grow up. He somehow convinced a publisher to advance him money to write a novel, but Gorman's obsession with surfing the Web led him to the high altar of Google.

After discovering the Googlewhack -- the combination of two unrelated words that return a single result from the search engine -- Gorman traveled the globe three times tracing the sources of the eccentric Googlewhack Web pages.

While his novel never got written, Gorman did produce a bestseller about his experiences and his one-man show, which share a title. The show, which has broken records at the Sydney Opera House and sold out nearly 75 shows in England, recently opened for a month-long run in New York.

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Scott Simon is one of America's most admired writers and broadcasters. He is the host of Weekend Edition Saturday and is one of the hosts of NPR's morning news podcast Up First. He has reported from all fifty states, five continents, and ten wars, from El Salvador to Sarajevo to Afghanistan and Iraq. His books have chronicled character and characters, in war and peace, sports and art, tragedy and comedy.