Destroy Powerpoint

Hmm. With a title like this I was expecting a comic polemic bemoaning the stifling insipidness and omnipresence of PowerPoint. That might be worth a quick look, don’t you think? Who knows, it might even be insightful, cleverly written and blisteringly funny. At least it’s not ANOTHER show about the credit crunch/the recession/Facebook etc. It sounds refreshingly new. Let’s go and see it! No. Destroy PowerPoint is in fact the apogee of tedium. The entire show (billed at an hour long) consists of just one man, David Gaffney, standing on the stage in front of a screen and beside – you’ve guessed it – a laptop with PowerPoint running. Not quite the image I had in mind for a show with a title as patently anti-PowerPoint as this. Anyway, Gaffney tells short stories, about 8 in total, that all revolve around the software in some way. Yes, you did read that correctly. There’s a thunderously dull story in which someone called Bob and someone called Tanya do something unremarkable and there’s a pointless little tale about PowerPoint being used in some presentation or other to the nuclear industry. The others were just as interesting. One little yarn involved a man who ran his own small company from his shed having to give himself a PowerPoint presentation to comply with health and safety regulation. It was riveting, so riveting in fact that I was very nearly roused from my torpor. The main problem was that there was nothing in the characters that I could warm to or come to loathe and consequently I didn’t give a toss when they did anything or something happened to them. There simply wasn’t enough time to develop them and so no connection was made. It’s like passing a stranger in the street. He could walk into a lamppost and because you don’t know him you shrug and laugh. The whole show was also very much an in-joke for those who work in an office, but it was nothing like The Office. Even people who had been on a factory floor their entire lives could relate to that because we all know someone as painfully awkward as David Brent and as zealously loyal as Gareth. This, however, had none of that programme’s wit and unconventional charm. It was just boring. Boring. Boring. Boring. Mercifully, it ended 15 minutes earlier than had been advertised and that is perhaps the saving grace. Gaffney himself seemed very friendly and good natured. He smiled a lot, he laughed and he seemed like someone with whom you could happily share a pint but his show and its concept were dire. And he charges for this. Maybe it’s just me but if you, like Bob, are the “King of PowerPoint” you might enjoy this and disagree with everything I say. That’s up to you, but I advise those of readers who reside on this normal plain to give this show a wide berth.