Robert Newman has brainwave to put science to the comedy test in York, Leeds and Hull

Was he still funny? Did his somewhat scientific material on the theme of the Theory of Evolution work as comedy? And did he still want to do stand-up, some 20 years after he and David Baddiel became the first British comedy act to play an arena when filling the 12,000-seat Wembley Arena?

"All three of those questions were answered 'No' but I carried on anyway," says Londoner Robert, who will play five Yorkshire gigs in a row from Tuesday in his latest union of science and comedy, The Brain Show, after The Theory Of Evolution and History Of Oil. The Duchess in York awaits on Thursday.

"I guess there might be some people who know, just by looking at their words on a piece of paper, that something is funny, but I always have to try it out in front of the audience, and if it doesn't work, you can still see their ears prick up andyou think there's something there."

There was a charming vulnerability to that underground York show, where Newman would break away from the microphone to jot down notes on how a routine was received or would finish a long spiel with a rueful "that still needs a punchline".

By way of contrast, by the time The Brain Show arrives in Yorkshire next week, the new Newman show is in the groove. "You hope it will go right most of the time, though sometimes it goes more spectacularly than other nights," he says.

"This show has been doing well on the road and I've just done a two-week run in the West End [at the Soho Theatre], and it's really nice that it's now motoring along with the engine ticking over just right and running really smoothly."

His days in a double act with Baddiel, his fellow former member of The Mary Whitehouse Experience, are long gone. Robert – formerly Rob, but more serious now at 51 – has branched out into fatherhood, political activism and writing novels and investigative books, such as last October's popular science tome The Entirely Accurate Encyclopaedia Of Evolution.

His latest creation, The Brain Show, flies against the convention of observational humour that dominates so many comedy bills. Instead, armed with electronic props and a skull xylophone, he takes a sceptical approach to some grand claims made by neuroscience as he combines proper scientific argument with flights of comedic fantasy.

He will even wear an electroencephalograph – a bulbous brain sensor worn as a hat – that gives the audience a read-out of his fluctuating mental state during the show, mapping out how his brain is processing his thoughts.

Robert Newman and his skull xylophone

"I think I sort of don't know what a lot of comics are talking about and I would struggle with what they do, though there are some comedians around who do shows with a theme, like Dave Gorman or Bridget Christie," says Robert.

"The American comic Sam Kinison once said, 'you have to have your own colour of the rainbow..."

...And what's yours, Robert? "Mine is brown and beige," he says, with undue self-deprecation, when he is surely more colourful than that; maybe purple or red?

"Comedy is one of the last bastions of free speech and that's great. People might say, 'how do you make it funny when you talk about the brain?', but I say, 'how do you make it funny to tell the 257th jokes about The X Factor or The Great British Bake Off?'. If you don't talk about things that reflect who you are or interest you, then you end up in flippancy," he suggests.

Flippancy will not be found in The Brain Show, where Newman seeks answers to a heap of questions after volunteering for a brain-imaging experiment designed to locate the part of the brain that lights up when you are in love.

"Can brain scans read our minds? Are we our brains? How can you map the mind?" asks Rob, who will explore everything from the thought processes of stripy spiders to the neurobiology of romantic love.

"I'll talk about Stonehenge, robot co-workers, the right hemisphere of Paul Weller, the evolutionary origins of smiles and laughter. There'll also be a tricky, insinuating character called Brian Scanlon, where your misery is his delight, and my doomed attempts to impress a neuroscientist called Natasha."

Robert "likes ideas and how they can be both fascinating and funny". "Part of my interest in ideas is to debunk things when scientific claims are being made and it's 'oh, look at the kings of kings' and all that chin stroking," he says.

"A lot of the cleverest people do unwise things, and a lot of those things are nutty, but funny as well, because it's funny how seriously people take such palpable nonsense.

"Lots of things that are claimed as science or Darwinism are not science at all; instead it just comes from philosophical thought. When scientists talk about the brain, they start losing their mind and start saying spectacularly unscientific stuff."

Here is where the chance for a comedic response lies. "Comedy will not let you approach something straight; you have to approach it side on, as it won't allow you to be simplistic. That's usually why something is funny; it's not random," says Robert.

"It's the job of a comedian to cheer up people. In this case, it's a very sad idea that the brain is just a computer, when, from what I've read, I think it all points in the opposite direction, showing that the brain performs unpredictably."

Robert Newman presents The Brain Show at The Wardrobe, Leeds, on February 17, 8pm; The Duchess, York, February 18, 8pm; Fruit, Hull, February 19, 7.30pm. Box office: Leeds, 0113 383 8800 or thewardrobe.co.uk; York, 01904 641413 or theduchessyork.co.uk; Hull, hullboxoffice.co.uk