'I'll be honest with you... I had a few concerns about hosting a show called Genius. Firstly, I didn't want anyone to hear the title and assume that my ego had spiralled out of control and that the show was supposed to be about me. Let me clear that one up from the start: I'm under no illusions... I know how stupid I am, and if ever I forget there are scars on my body to remind me.
No, the show is about other people's genius and the format, like the host, is simple: each week I'm joined by a different celebrity guest, several members of the public pitch their ideas to us and the celeb in question declares whether or not the idea is the genuine article; a work of 24 carat genius.
Which brings me to my second concern. Would there be enough Radio 4 listeners out there with ideas to share? I needn't have worried about that one; the show was trailed a few times on Radio 4 and pretty soon thousands of ideas were flooding in. Most of them were, I imagine, conceived in the pub; but a huge number of them definitely had the whiff of genius about them. If Thomas Edison was correct and genius really is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration I can tell you now that Radio 4 listeners are a very sweaty lot.
I'm glad I put my concerns to one side and hosted the show, because in every episode there was at least one moment when the situation filled me with such childish glee that I wanted to pinch myself to make sure it was real.
There's something faintly surreal about sitting on stage with Richard Madeley while an audience watches the two of you have an earnest conversation about breeding miniature elephants as pets (Come on Dave... think about it, this could really work!) and trying to work out exactly how this came to be your job!
The conversations weren't just contained in the show either... they regularly continued in the bar afterwards. 'What would happen if we put giant spokey-dokeys on the Millennium Wheel?' 'Could you really get every pedestrian in Britain to step to the left?' 'You see, this is where a 99p coin would come in handy!'
There's a fine line between genius and stupidity, and while I can't tell you which side of the line the show falls... I can tell you that I thoroughly enjoyed falling.'
Dave Gorman, September 2006
