How did you get started?

I was orn in London, but brought up in a small Hertfordshire village of Codicote.

My Saturday job was working as a farmhand for the farmer who cut the field for the Knebworth pop festivals (the next village along ) I got in backstage to see everyone from Led Zepellin to the Rolling Stones.

None of these bands interested me in the slightest but I was fascinated by the audience.

From about 1987 I started doing open spots in rooms above pubs on the London comedy circuit/ I started out as an impressionist. My 80s’ set-list included (see me blush) Top Cat, Basil Brush, Rick Astley, Dirty Den and Tony Benn.

Tell us about the new show

The show is called Robert Newman’s New Theory of Evolution, the theory being that co-operation drives evolution more than competition.

This is your first show in seven years, why the wait?

I’ve been researching and writing The Trade Secret from 2006 to 2013.

I had a couple of operations on my back, then spent a year learning how to walk again by way of a calliper and walking stick. Happy to say, I need neither now.

Then I became someone's dad. Then I spent nine months researching, writing and workshop-ing this new stand up show, a process which has involved lots of work in progress gigs and lots of rehearsal.

What drew you to the subject matter of the show?

I try to dispel the gloom caused by the narrow, pessimistic idea that genes are us, or that we are born selfish.

The Neo Darwinists have reintroduced the demoralising idea of Original Sin, and by doing so, have given people what I call ‘Anthropophobia’ – a fear of our own humanity, a depressing sense that deep down we are rotten.

So I want to tear a few holes in this gloomy canvas. The show tells the story of a 150 year struggle to save Darwin and Wallace’s original theory from being hijacked by ideologues.

Tell us about your new book

The Trade Secret Based on a true story about the first Elizabethans to stumble upon coffee and oil, it is set in Persia, Venice and England in the years 1599-1606.

I’ve never worked so hard on anything ever in my whole life.

Describe your top three dinner party guests past and present, and why?

Everyone always cancels at the last minute and so I never give dinner parties anymore.

But if I had a choice of who to be stood up by, it would include: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the man who saved the world. Joseph Grimaldi the music hall comedian – he seems to have been a force of nature.

I can’t imagine that anyone ever could have been funnier than Chaplin, Laurel or Hardy, but he must have been very funny indeed. Mary Wollstonecraft – early feminist who saw through the sexism of the French Revolution while in Paris and stuck in the middle of it.

Oh, and she is Frankenstein’s gran, since her daughter was Mary Shelley.

What’s next after the tour?

The TV producer who made History of Oil is keen to do the same with this show.

I hope it comes off.

History of Oil was a worldwide hit, the only thing I ever did that was truly global.

The nearest I came to it with anything else was with my last novel The Fountain At The Centre of The World.

It was way more successful in the United States than here, but History of Oil has been screened all over the world.

So it would be great to film New Theory of Evolution for broadcast.

Hey, maybe we’ll film the live TV recording in your town.

Yes, I like it. Everything fits!