WHAT is real? Who are we? Where did this baby come from?

Magniloquent London comic Russell Brand will wrestle with these questions and more besides while unravelling the matrix of modern media, politics, sex, fatherhood and death in his new tour show, Re:Birth, at the York Barbican on October 12.

On tour in Britain and Ireland on and off from April 2017 to November 2018, the 41-year-old polymath will try to figure out life having just made a new one. "How do we make sense of the madness of our lives once we become parents?" he will ask. "What am I going to tell my daughter about conformity and responsibility? What happens if she grows up to be like me or, worse, date someone like me?"

Brand road-tested his new stand-up material in a series of sold-out previews last November and December and his travels in 2017 and 2018 will take the comedian, broadcaster, actor, author, podcaster, columnist, political commentator and mental health and drug rehabilitation activist to assorted Yorkshire locations. This year, he will play Harrogate Royal Hall on April 12, York Barbican on October 12 and Leeds Town Hall on October 17; next year, Hull City Hall awaits on June 6.

Brand's past stand-up tours have included Shame in 2006; Only Joking in 2007; Scandalous in 2009 and Messiah Complex in 2013-2014, when he last played the York Barbican in March 2014.

The Press reviewer Kate Liptrot wrote of that night: "Brand’s show focuses on 'the pantheon of celebrity' and discusses his heroes – Jesus Christ, Che Guevara, Gandhi and Malcolm X – and how in a Godless world, we look to other people to fill the void, but they will always be flawed. Brand related each, and not necessarily favourably, to himself.

"At points it felt Brand really had something to say but had to revert to his traditional material about drug abuse and sexual exploits to keep the crowd.

Serious points are punctuated with pelvic thrusts and sexual content, a lot of which can’t be repeated in a family newspaper, with a particularly crude scenario imagining David Cameron and George Osborne and ‘an Eton Mess’."

What lies in store in Re:Birth? Babies and the madness of our lives, apparently. Tickets for the Re:Birth tour go on sale at 10am tomorrow, including York seats at £30.50 at yorkbarbican.co.uk, on 0844 854 2757 or in person from the Barbican box office; Harrogate, 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk; Leeds, 0113 376 0318 or leeds.gov.uk/townhall/; Hull, 01482 300306.