Interview: Robert Newman
Revolutionary Rob
After starting on radio, taking over TV, and so much more, Robert Newman has been leading the way in looking-under-stones-and-thinking in comedy. Victoria Nangle dug a little deeper about his new show on evolution.
How are you today?
“Very well thank you. Happy to talk to you, and very much looking forward to coming to Brighton Komedia.”
So, a new theory of evolution. That’s some challenging ideas. What first took you down the route of questioning the existing and currently popular theory of evolution?
“Which existing and currently popular theory of evolution did you have in mind? Astonishing new discoveries in epigenetics have knocked genetic determinism into a cocked hat. And it’s hard to imagine anything further from Selfish Gene theory, for example, than what Darwin writes in 1871: ‘Those communities which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best… and that would be natural selection’. But, hey, what did Darwin know?
Am I right?”
Your brain seems to be filled with insatiable curiosity. Your last show concerning oil in the Middle East and forgotten wars was most enlightening too. What is it that hooks you to start your research?
“With The Trade Secret, what hooked me was a lucky find in the British Library Rare Books room, when I stumbled upon the true story of the first Elizabethans to discover oil and coffee in Persia, and how a servant stole his master’s letters and sold them. That got me started.”
You’ve clearly followed the paths less travelled when researching. What’s the most unusual place you’ve discovered a pearl of hidden information?
“Man alive, ain’t that the truth. I reckon a good 90 per cent of the books with which I researched both the new stand-up show and my novel The Trade Secret are stamped on the title page with something like ‘Withdrawn from Public Library’, ‘Discarded from Stock’. My brain is the dustbin
of history.”
Your new novel, The Trade Secret, tackles oil again, but this time in Elizabethan times, providing a real adventure across lands. What period in history would you most like to be able to visit for a day?
“I’d like to be around when language began, to see how it happened and how lonely it was for the first human speaker if she was the only person who could string a sentence together – like a latecomer at a ketamine party in Whitehawk.”
What was the last thing that made you laugh so much you thought you’d fall off your chair?
“Laurel & Hardy in County Hospital.”
What was the last thing that made you stop and think so much you could question the reality of your chair?
“No, no, no. I’m not having any of that Frenchie philosophy. None of it. Not one jot. In fact, I fantasise about hitting Derrida and Sartre repeatedly around the head and neck with a wooden chair until they either: a) Admit the chair is real, or b) Fall to the ground in an obstinate display of consistency…whichever comes sooner. I’m happy either way. But the fact remains: it’s a chair.”
What’s your guilty secret?
“In the course of completing this Q&A I have scoffed the entire packet of chocolate rice cakes which I promised a three year old for when she wakes up, if she goes to bed now and lets me do Daddy’s Important Questionnaire. Hopefully she will have forgotten about the packet.”
You are also well known for living incredibly ethically – bike riding, low carbon footprint etc. You’ll be playing in Brighton, so the crowd will be pretty au fait with living ‘well’. Can you give us a little known tip of one way to improve our effect upon the world that you’ve discovered and utilise?
“I don’t live so ethically. And with a Bulgarian partner my air miles are off the chart bad. We did the train once, but it cost a bomb, and there’s relatives and all of that…
“What we need to do is bring back the see-saw hand-operated railway trolley as used by Laurel & Hardy, Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. The romance has gone from rail travel and this would bring it back. Even if you didn’t get to ride a pump action trolley yourself, just knowing it was out there plying the rails would increase the sum of human happiness, wouldn’t it? Just to be standing on the platform at Brighton Station and hearing the tannoy announcer say: ‘The next departure from platform 2 will be the 12.20 see-saw hand-operated railway trolley for London Victoria, calling at Three Bridges, Haywards Heath and then back again at twice the speed followed by a large steam locomotive’.
“Oh, it would be beautiful. Can you see it? Why not start with all those decommissioned lines that are being used as footpaths and bike lanes all across southern England. I think it should start in Brighton. After all, if not you, who?
“Now, as to tips for right living. I wonder if there’s been too much focus on ‘our’ effect on the world, i.e. too much about what consumers can do, and not what producers must be made to do. If you think about water, for example. Whenever a hose pipe ban comes in, the villain of the piece somehow becomes someone spraying the dozen dahlias in a back yard. There’s never a mention of, let us say, Cuadrilla’s gazillion-gallons of water earmarked for the frack.”
You haven’t aged discernibly at all in the last 20 years. And your curiosity doesn’t seem to abate. What’s the secret to your eternal youth?
“The secret is smearing a lot of Vaseline on the camera lens and waiting till it’s half dark before beginning the photoshoot, and then not letting the photographer come within 20 paces. Then throwing away 999 out of 1,000 pictures.”
Robert Newman’s New Theory of Evolution,
Komedia, 25 September 2013,
8pm, £12.50/10,
target=”_blank”>www.komedia.co.uk/brighton
