Rob Newman (comedian)

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Rob Newman

Robert (sometimes Rob) Newman (born July 7, 1964) is a British stand-up comedian, author and political activist. In 1993 he was the first comedian to sell out the 12,000-seat Wembley Arena in London with his then comedy partner David Baddiel. He was born to a Greek Cypriot father and British mother.

Newman's first speaking appearance was with Third World First (now known as People and Planet), the student political organisation.

Comedy career

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Newman's 2005 show Apocalypso Now

Newman read English at Cambridge University (Selwyn College). He began his comedy career as an impressionist in the late 1980s before gaining fame when he appeared alongside Baddiel, Hugh Dennis and Steve Punt (among others; this was the regular quartet, however, all of them ex-Cambridge) in the BBC radio and TV programme The Mary Whitehouse Experience (1989-92). The title was a jibe at the main campaigner for "moral decency" on television, Mary Whitehouse. He and Baddiel followed this up with their own series, Newman and Baddiel in Pieces (1993). Newman was often considered a heartthrob and could have been partly responsible for the notion that comedy was becoming the new rock 'n' roll in the early 1990s.

Newman's later solo work is marked by a clear social conscience, and anti-establishment view. He covered the anti-globalisation Seattle protests of 1999 for the UK's Channel 4 News. He has been politically active with Reclaim the Streets, the Liverpool Dockers, Indymedia and Peoples' Global Action.

His later work has a very clear political element, and parallels the work of contempories such as Mark Thomas. 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. Apocalypso Now toured nationally, somtimes as part of a double-bill where Newman was joined by Mark Thomas. It was turned into a television programme entitled A History of Oil for More4, which was filmed at the Hoxton Hall in Hoxton, east London, and was released on CD. 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. A lot of the data on peak oil presented by Newman is taken from Richard Heinberg's book The Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies.

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. In early 2007, the BBC commissioned a six-part series based on No Planet B for transmission on BBC Four. It is expected to be transmitted in Autumn 2007. The script of the stage version show is available from Newman's website [1].

Writing

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Newman's novel The Founatin at the Centre of the World

Newman co-authored The Mary Whitehouse Experience Encyclopedia in 1991. He is the author of three novels: Dependence Day (1994), Manners (1998) and The Fountain At The Center Of The World (2003). The Fountain at the Centre of the World is a novel that spans across Costa Rica, Mexico, London, and The 1999 WTO protests in Seattle. It deals primarily with the way in which people are connected through the omnipresent forces of globalism and capitalism. The process of writing the book was the subject of a BBC Two television documentary Scribbling. His books are sometimes linked to critical theorists in the Marxist tradition, such as Fredric Jameson.

Filmography / bibliography

The Mary Whitehouse Experience

• 1989 - The Mary Whitehouse Experience (radio series)
• 1990 - The Mary Whitehouse Experience (television series)
• 1990 - The Mary Whitehouse Experience Encyclopaedia (series companion book)

Newman and Baddiel

• 1991 - From the Mary Whitehouse Experience (live vhs release)
• 1992 - History Today (live vhs release)
• 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)
• 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 2cd release)
• 2005 - Apocalypso Now or, from P45 to AK47, how to Grow the Economy with the Use of War (live 2cd release)
• 2006 - A History of Oil (television special)
• 2007 - A History of Oil (live dvd release)
• 2007 - No Planet B (television series)

Trivia

• He is of Greek Cypriot, English, French and American descent.[2]
• He has worked as a farmhand, warehouse-man, house-painter, teacher, mail sorter, social worker, mover, and broadcaster.

External links

• Official website
• History of Oil Video
• It's capitalism or a habitable planet - you can't have both, The Guardian 2006