Robert Newman
Newman at a reading and signing for his novel The Trade Secret in 2013
Born (1964-07-07) 7 July 1964
Occupation(s)Comedian
Author
Actor
Known forPolitical activism
Websitewww.robnewman.com

Robert Newman (born 7 July 1964) is an English comedian, author and political activist. Newman found mainstream fame with The Mary Whitehouse Experience before forming a successful partnership with one of the programme's other comedians, David Baddiel, in the early 1990s.

In 1993, Newman and Baddiel, supported by Sean Lock, became the first comedians to play and sell out the 12,000-seat Wembley Arena in London. Newman's first speaking appearance was with Third World First (now known as People and Planet), the student political organisation.

Early life and education

Newman was adopted into a working-class family who lived in a Hertfordshire village. His adoptive father died when he was nine. Newman attended a comprehensive school, received poor A-level grades and was not offered a place at university until two years later, when he was admitted to Selwyn College, Cambridge, to read English on the strength of an essay about T. S. Eliot.[1][2]

Newman has worked as a farmhand, warehouse-man, house-painter, teacher, mail-sorter, social worker and mover.[3]

Comedy career

Newman began his comedy career as an impressionist in the late 1980s before gaining fame when he appeared alongside fellow Cambridge alumni David Baddiel, Hugh Dennis and Steve Punt in the BBC radio and TV programme The Mary Whitehouse Experience (1989–92).[4] The title referred to the main campaigner for "moral decency" on television, Mary Whitehouse. With The Mary Whitehouse Experience Newman and Baddiel had become "unlikely pin-ups as, in the early 1990s, comedy was being fêted as 'the new rock and roll'," leading to their own series, Newman and Baddiel in Pieces (1993).[5]

The partnership with Baddiel was widely reported as being fraught with tension. Unlike most double acts, their shows (both on TV and stage) were characterised by the two alternately delivering monologues, rarely appearing together except in sketches (most famously, History Today). During the "Live and in Pieces" tour, relations deteriorated further and the Wembley Arena show was their last appearance together.

After the break-up, the two men took wildly differing career paths. While Baddiel became part of the "new lad" phenomenon of the mid-1990s, fronting shows like Fantasy Football League, Newman largely disappeared from public life, reappearing with solo work marked by a clear social conscience and anti-establishment views.[6] He covered the anti-globalisation Seattle protests of 1999 for the UK's Channel 4 News.[4] He has been politically active with Reclaim the Streets, the Liverpool Dockers, Indymedia and People's Global Action.[3][7][8]

His later work is characterised by a very strong political element and parallels the work of contemporaries such as Mark Thomas.[9] In 2001, with actress Emma Thompson, he called for a boycott of the Perrier Comedy Award, because Perrier is owned by Nestlé who market powdered baby milk in developing countries;[10] an alternative competition called the Tap Water Awards was set up the following year.[11] In 2003, Newman toured with From Caliban to the Taliban, which was released on CD and DVD. In 2005, the show Apocalypso Now or, from P45 to AK47, How to Grow the Economy with the Use of War debuted at the Bongo Club during the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.[12] Apocalypso Now toured nationally, sometimes as part of a double-bill where Newman was joined by Mark Thomas. The show was filmed at the Hoxton Hall in Hoxton, east London and shown on More4 under the title A History of Oil, with a later release on CD and DVD. A mixture of stand-up comedy and introductory lecture on geopolitics and peak oil, in Apocalypso Now Newman argues that twentieth-century Western foreign policy, including World War I, should be seen as a continuous struggle by the West to control Middle Eastern oil.[13][9] Newman draws from Richard Heinberg's book The Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies as source material for portions of the show dealing with peak oil.[14]

In 2006, Newman performed a new show, No Planet B or, The History of the World Backwards, at the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, north-west London.[15] In 2007, the BBC commissioned a six-part series, The History of the World Backwards based on No Planet B, for transmission on BBC Four.[16][17] The script of the stage version show is accessible on Newman's official website.[18]

In 2015, his BBC Radio 4 programme Robert Newman's Entirely Accurate Encyclopaedia of Evolution attempted to challenge some of the concepts of Richard Dawkins's book The Selfish Gene. It won the Best Scripted Comedy with a Live Audience award at the 2017 BBC Audio Drama Awards.[19]

Writing

Newman co-wrote The Mary Whitehouse Experience Encyclopedia (1991), with David Baddiel, Hugh Dennis, and Steve Punt.

He has written four novels: Dependence Day (1994); Manners (1998); The Fountain at the Centre of the World (2003); and The Trade Secret (2013).

In 2015 his book The Entirely Accurate Encyclopaedia of Evolution, based on his stand-up show "Robert Newman's New Theory of Evolution", was published by Freight Books.[20]

In April 2017 his book Neuropolis is published by HarperCollins.[21]

The Fountain at the Centre of the World

Dwight Garner, an editor of The New York Times Book Review, reviewed The Fountain at the Centre of the World favourably, saying "I wouldn't be surprised, in fact, if [it] became the talismanic Catch-22 of the anti-globalisation protest movement, the fictional complement to Naomi Klein's influential exposé No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies".[22]

Newman's process of writing the book was the subject of a 2008 BBC Two television documentary entitled Scribbling.[23][24]

Filmography and bibliography

The Mary Whitehouse Experience

  • 1989 – The Mary Whitehouse Experience (radio series).
  • 1990 – The Mary Whitehouse Experience (television series).
  • 1991 – The Mary Whitehouse Experience Encyclopedia (series companion book) (Co-authored with David Baddiel, Hugh Dennis, and Steve Punt.)

Newman and Baddiel

  • 1991 – From the Mary Whitehouse Experience (live VHS release).
  • 1992 – History Today (live VHS release).
  • 1993 – Newman and Baddiel in Pieces (television series).
  • 1993 – Live and in Pieces (live VHS release).

Solo career

  • 1994 – Dependence Day (novel).
  • 1994 – The Dependence Day Video (live VHS release).
  • 1998 – Manners (novel).
  • 2001 – Resistance is Fertile (live VHS release).
  • 2003 – Scribbling (television special).
  • 2003 – The Fountain at the Centre of the World (novel). ISBN 1-85984-573-8 (10).
  • 2004 – From Caliban to the Taliban: 500 Years of Humanitarian Intervention (live DVD release).
  • 2004 – From Caliban to the Taliban: 500 Years of Humanitarian Intervention (live limited edition handmade 2 cd release).
  • 2005 – Apocalypso Now or, from P45 to AK47, how to Grow the Economy with the Use of War (live 2 cd release).
  • 2006 – A History of Oil (television special).
  • 2007 – A History of Oil (live DVD release).
  • 2007 – The History of the World Backwards (television series).
  • 2013 – The Trade Secret (novel) ISBN 1-90888-517-3 (10)
  • 2017 – Neuropolis (radio series)
  • 2018 – Rob Newman's Total Eclipse of Descartes (radio series)
  • 2020 – Rob Newman's Half-Full Philosophy Hour (radio series)
  • 2022 – Rob Newman On Air (radio series)

See also

References

  1. ↑ Smith, Giles (5 December 1993). "Filthy, rich, going to pieces: Much to the surprise of their detractors, Robert Newman and David Baddiel have become the hottest property in British comedy. Unfortunately, they seem to have fallen out in the process". The Independent.
  2. ↑ "My Secret Life: Rob Newman, comedian & writer". The Independent. 29 December 2007.
  3. 1 2 "Biography". Robert Newman official website. Archived from the original on 9 May 2008. Retrieved 19 November 2008.
  4. 1 2 "Rob Newman: My Secret Life". The Independent. 29 December 2007. Archived from the original on 1 July 2009. Retrieved 19 November 2008.
  5. ↑ "Comedy Guide: Newman and Baddiel in Pieces". BBC. Archived from the original on 12 December 2008. Retrieved 19 November 2008.
  6. ↑ Hughes, Graham (23 November 2005). "Review: Mark Thomas and Rob Newman Live". BBC. Archived from the original on 12 April 2008. Retrieved 19 November 2008.
  7. ↑ Charlé, Suzanne (8 March 2004). "Write On". The American Prospect. Archived from the original on 30 June 2009. Retrieved 19 November 2008.
  8. ↑ Lougher, Sharon (6 July 2006). "Robert Newman". Metro. Archived from the original on 22 May 2011. Retrieved 19 November 2008.
  9. 1 2 Jeffries, Stuart (3 August 2005). "No laughing matter". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 7 December 2008. Retrieved 19 November 2008.
  10. ↑ Scott, Kirsty (27 August 2001). "Spoof horror writer wins £5,000 Perrier award: Fringe comedy contest soured by baby milk protests". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 June 2007.
  11. ↑ "The Tap Water Awards". Retrieved 11 June 2007.
  12. ↑ Awle, Nick. "Reviews: Robert Newman: Apocalypso Now". The Stage. Archived from the original on 19 November 2008. Retrieved 19 November 2008.
  13. ↑ Greenwell, Michael. "History of Oil – Rob Newman". SpinWatch. Archived from the original on 17 April 2009. Retrieved 19 November 2008.
  14. ↑ Hamilos, Paul (31 March 2006). "There's No Planet B: Interview: Robert Newman". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 20 July 2008. Retrieved 19 November 2008.
  15. ↑ Spencer, Charles (7 May 2006). "History boy needs more jokes". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 10 August 2017. Retrieved 19 November 2008.
  16. ↑ "BBC Four Programmes: The History of the World Backwards". BBC. 10 December 2007. Archived from the original on 19 November 2008. Retrieved 19 November 2008.
  17. ↑ "Robert Newman's The History of the World Backwards". Robert Newman official website. Archived from the original on 13 May 2008. Retrieved 19 November 2008.
  18. ↑ "No Planet B – The History of the World Backwards". Robert Newman official website. July 2006. Archived from the original on 5 July 2008. Retrieved 19 November 2008.
  19. ↑ "BBC Audio Drama Awards 2017". Retrieved 4 March 2017.
  20. ↑ "The Entirely Accurate Encyclopaedia of Evolution by Robert Newman – Freight Books". freightbooks.co.uk. Retrieved 28 January 2016.
  21. ↑ "Neuropolis by Robert Newman – HarperCollins". harpercollins.co.uk. Retrieved 4 March 2017.
  22. ↑ Garner, Dwight (1 February 2004). "The Battle of Seattle". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 21 January 2012. Retrieved 19 November 2008.
  23. ↑ "Scribbling". Wall to Wall. Archived from the original on 1 July 2009. Retrieved 19 November 2008.
  24. ↑ "ANSWER THE QUESTIONS! Robert Newman – Writing? It's the lack of heavy". Independent on Sunday. 11 May 2003. Archived from the original on 10 August 2017. Retrieved 19 November 2008.

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