Newman began his comedy career as an
impressionist in the late 1980s before gaining fame when he appeared alongside fellow Cambridge alumnus
David Baddiel,
Hugh Dennis and
Steve Punt in the
BBC radio and TV programme
The Mary Whitehouse Experience (1989–92). The title referred to the main campaigner for "moral decency" on television,
Mary Whitehouse. With
The Mary Whitehouse Experience Newman and Baddiel had become "unlikely pin-ups as, in the early 1990s, comedy was being fêted as 'the new
rock and roll'," leading to their series,
Newman and Baddiel in Pieces (1993). The partnership with Baddiel was widely reported as being fraught with tension. Unlike most double acts, their shows (both on TV and stage) were characterised by the two alternately delivering monologues, rarely appearing together except in sketches (most famously,
History Today). During the "Live and in Pieces" tour, relations deteriorated further and the
Wembley Arena show was their last appearance together. He covered the
anti-globalisation Seattle protests of 1999 for the UK's
Channel 4 News. His later work is characterised by a very strong political element. It parallels the work of contemporaries such as
Mark Thomas. In 2001, with actress
Emma Thompson, he called for a
boycott of the
Perrier Comedy Award, because
Perrier is owned by
Nestlé who market powdered baby milk in developing countries; an alternative competition called the Tap Water Awards was set up the following year. 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, sometimes as part of a double-bill where Newman was joined by Mark Thomas. The show was filmed at the
Hoxton Hall in
Hoxton, east London and shown on
More4 under the title
A History of Oil, with a later release on CD and DVD. 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. 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 2007, the BBC commissioned a six-part series,
The History of the World Backwards based on
No Planet B, for transmission on
BBC Four. The script of the stage version show is accessible on Newman's official website. In 2015, his BBC Radio 4 programme ''Robert Newman's Entirely Accurate Encyclopaedia of Evolution'' attempted to challenge some of the concepts of
Richard Dawkins's book
The Selfish Gene. It won the
Best Scripted Comedy with a Live Audience award at the 2017
BBC Audio Drama Awards. ==Writing==