AFTER volunteering for a brain-imaging experiment meant to locate the part that lights up when you’re in love, comedian Rob Newman has emerged with more questions than answers.

Can brain scans read our minds? Are we our brains? How can you map the mind? If each brain has more connections than there are atoms in the universe, then how big will a map of the brain have to be?

Newman will address all these questions and more besides at Selby Town Hall on December 12 in a show featuring a specially constructed MRI hat that will record Newman’s real-time brain activity during the 8pm performance.

Seeking myriad answers, The Brain Show explores everything from the thought processes of stripy spiders to the neurobiology of romantic love, from Alan Turing in a fortune-teller's tent to Isaac Newton having a meltdown at a county fair.

"I’m delighted we've got Nineties' comedy pin-up megastar turned campaigning, intellectual comic extraordinaire Rob Newman at the town hall," says Chris Jones, Selby Town Council's arts officer. "Rob is back with, by all accounts, some utterly brilliant and very, very smart material. Everyone I’ve spoken to who has seen his new stuff has raved about it in a way I haven’t heard anyone rave about a comic before."

York Press: Robert Newman

In tune with science: comedian Rob Newman

Newman's tour ties in with the release of his new book and BBC Radio 4 show, The Entirely Accurate Encyclopedia Of Evolution, in which he is the guide on a journey through a unique A to Z of nature. Newman's travels take in everything from altruistic amoebae, caring, sharing vampire bats and intelligent slime mould to dancing squid, pacifist baboons and the invisibility cloak of the Hawaiian bobtail squid.

Newman's radio show also considers Francis "DNA" Crick’s belief that life on Earth began with alien spaceships and finds Richard Dawkins wrestling naked with a postal worker. His witty, fact-packed series mixes stand-up and sketches, challenging notions of survival of the fittest and the selfish gene with an enlightening, humorous new theory.

Piecing these fragments together allows Newman to correct major distortions of Darwinism, as well as to rejig the theory of natural selection in the light of what we now know about epigenetics, mirror neurons and The Flintstones.

“If you want to be utterly blown away by possibly the smartest comedy you’ll ever hear, then The Brain Show is an absolute must-see,” says Chris. "Rob was always a cut above, but even by his own high standards his new work is really on a different level. It’s like Life On Earth meets QI. Just brilliant stuff!”

Newman first rose to prominence alongside Hugh Dennis, Steve Punt and David Baddiel in The Mary Whitehouse Experience on BBC radio and television. The duo of Newman and Baddiel became unlikely pin-ups in the early 90s when comedy was being feted as ‘the new rock'n'roll’. They fronted their own BBC2 series, Newman And Baddiel In Pieces, and were the first comedians to perform at Wembley Arena, selling out the 12,000-seat London venue.

Newman has since focused on scientific and social issues with four books to his name, such as the anti-globalisation novel The Fountain At The Centre Of The World, while also making the BBC2 mockumentary show The History Of The World Backwards and his aforementioned latest Radio 4 series.

Next year, Newman will play a week of Yorkshire shows at Sheffield Leadmill on February 16; The Wardrobe, Leeds, February 17; The Duchess, York, February 18; Fruit Market, Hull, February 19, and Square Chapel, Halifax, February 20.

Newman believes The Brain Show represents a creative high point for him after earlier producing comedic, academic shows on evolutionary theory and the history of oil. “I’m psyched by the fact that nobody anywhere in the world is doing a show like this right now. But the biggest buzz comes from the fact that in 25 years I have never written comedy as good as this," he says.

"What the show does is take a sceptical stance towards some of the grand claims advanced by neuroscience, so it's exploring everything from the neurobiology of romantic love to the thought-processes of stripy spiders. I talk about Stonehenge; robot co-workers; the right hemisphere of Paul Weller; the evolutionary origins of smiles and laughter. There's also a tricky, insinuating character called Brian Scanlon, and my doomed attempts to impress a neuroscientist called Natasha."

Newman's principal prop will be an electroencephalograph: the aforementioned MRI hat cum bulbous brain sensor that will give accurate readings of his mental state each show. Look out too for a fake bobtail squid and a skull xylophone, items that make his train journeys around the country somewhat eventful.

"Yes for starters I've got a brace of oversized Hawaiian bobtail squid in my valise; then I also carry a massive ‘brain hat’ around in a djembe bag," he says. "Only the African drummers’ bag will hold this thing. I refer to it as 'the brain', and get funny looks when people overhear me say things like: ‘I won’t need my brain in the first half tonight.’ Or ‘They won't let me take my brain on the escalator'."

Analysing why he stands out from the comedy crowd, Newman decides: "Most stand-ups can’t write sketches, while most sketch/character comics can’t do stand-up. My Radio 4 show does both, and in a way, so does The Brain Show, as I think my stand-up is influenced by my years of writing sketches and characters."
Engage brain now for Newman, new show, new science, new conclusions.

Tickets for Rob Newman: The Brain Show on December 12 cost £15, concessions £12, on 01757 708449, at selbytownhall.co.uk or on the door from 7.30pm.