Some stand-ups write shows based around reaching a milestone birthday, or how their life changed with children.

Not Robert Newman though – who has followed up his cult hit A History Of Oil with a show expounding a new theory of evolution.

And don’t expect this to be a frivolous topic – there will be jokes, but the former Mary Whitehouse Experience founder has done his reading.

“Researching is easier than writing,” he admits, having spent the past six years putting together his novel The Trade Secret based around explorers discovering oil, coffee and carrier pigeons in Elizabethan-era Persia.

“It can be a clever way of avoiding trying to think about a story. It’s more enjoyable to think about the type of paraffin lamp they might have had in Venice in 1602 before you do anything else!”

The central thesis of his new show is that co-operation drives evolution as much as competition.

“Darwinian evolution has quite a violent reputation,” he says. “The new science of epigenetics suggests it might be less depressing than the standard dog-eat-dog version of science we are getting all the time.”

He was inspired to write the show after reading the 19th-century anarchist Prince Kropotkin, and a biography, The Price Of Altruism, written by Oren Harman.

“It’s the true story of this brilliant if slightly hare-brained evolutionary theorist George Price, who committed suicide in 1974,” says Newman. “He was part of this big squatting movement to keep social housing in central London, not office blocks – but his evolutionary theories have become quite influential.

“At the time I wasn’t even sure if I was going to go back into stand-up – but I had lots of random thoughts about evolution that seemed to knit a show together.”

Having spent hours in the British Library searching out dates for his novel, it was no great feat to turn his attention to a slightly more scientific subject matter.

“It’s fun to be talking about bugs and beetles rather than the balance of exchange payments as I have been in some of my other shows,” admits Newman.

“There are questions about what Neanderthal behaviour would have been like – I wonder how aggressive we were back then. We were quite clearly co-operating in quite adverse circumstances.

“There is an ancient 4,000-year-old burial site in Man Bac, Vietnam, where they found a 30-year-old skeleton of a man who had Klippel-Feil Syndrome. He wouldn’t have been able to use his hands or feet after puberty, but he is buried in a residential community where he must have lived for 15 to 20 years being cared for with the condition.

“It’s proof we weren’t all just hitting each other on the head with clubs – I wonder even if we have everything upside down and that is what we really are. I may be wrong, but that’s the sort of idea which are good to explore.”

He is the first to admit he is not a specialist in the field, and is currently doing open comedy spots to add extra sections to the show, including delving more into George Price’s story.

The next chapter

Newman has produced a reading list on his website for anyone interested in finding out more.

“I want to reassure readers coming to the Komedia show that it isn’t compulsory – we won’t be checking up on people, or refusing entry to anyone who doesn’t have a thorough knowledge of the things I will be talking about!

“A couple of people had asked about where they could find out more – so I’ve mentioned a couple of books I really liked that probably say it much clearer than I do. Everyone likes to share books they have really loved.”

Having already created a stand-up show exploring the history of oil, Newman took the opportunity to visit Balcombe’s fracking protest camp last month – and was encouraged by what he saw.

“I found it incredibly inspiring and moving,” he says. “It was so well organised, with a play area for kids that was better than most theme parks, and running water. I kept looking at the standpipe and thought about the big danger of fracking – that it could suck the South Downs aquifers totally dry, as they can use up to eight million gallons of water to frack a well.

“My partner is a lawyer and she was very impressed with the legal defence team and the legal tent.

“The atmosphere was very good – it was inspiring to see everyone from pensioners to young people working together.”

As Newman’s theory of evolution suggests that co-operation could be carrying on a tradition of thousands of years.