EVERYONE loves a good prop, even one of the country’s most acclaimed comedians.

In fact for his latest show Rob Newman has a number of visual aids and it has to be said they’re all rather bizarre.

First there’s an Electroencephalograph, a kind of bulbous brain sensor which is worn as a hat and gives accurate readings of his mental states throughout the evening.

He’ll also be enlisting the help of a fake bobtail squid (you’ll have to see show to find out why) and, sometimes, a skull xylophone.

All of which make his train journeys around the country rather eventful.

Rob says: "Yes I've got a brace of oversized Hawaiian bobtail squid in my valise, then I also carry a massive ‘brain hat’ around in a djembe bag. Only the African drummers’ bag will hold this thing. I refer to it as 'the brain', and get funny looks when people overhear me say things like ‘I won’t need my brain in the first half tonight’ or ‘they won't let me take my brain on the escalator’."

The Brain Show follows on from Robert Newman’s New Theory of Evolution, which not only was a huge critical success but also led to the book, The Entirely Accurate Encyclopaedia of Evolution and is his Radio 4 series, in which he challenges the accepted notion of ‘survival of the fittest’, and Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, suggesting that it is co-operation, not competition, that has driven evolution.

For the Brain Show he has spent the year researching brain science, developing electronic props, and doing secret gigs to hone his material.

"What the show does is take a sceptical stance towards some of the grand claims advanced by neuroscience," says Rob, "so it's exploring everything from the neurobiology of romantic love to the thought-processes of stripy spiders.

“I did a lot of research, reading lots of unreadable books on neurology, partly because it’s easier than writing a show.

“I got overwhelmed by the intensity of my ignorance about everything. You get to page three and you’ve not understood anything. I thought to myself, maybe I’ll get lucky on page four. You never know when you’ll find the details out of which some comedy gold will happen. There is a comedy routine about how we can get to know the mind of spiders in the show. That’s about a very boring afternoon in the British Library spent thinking ‘Why am I reading about this Guyanan spider?

“I also talk about Stonehenge, robot co-workers, the right hemisphere of Paul Weller, the evolutionary origins of smiles and laughter. There's also a tricky, insinuating character called Brian Scanlon, and my doomed attempts to impress a neuroscientist called Natasha."

For the most part the show asks, and tries to answer: Can brain scans read our minds? Are we our brains? How can you map the mind?

After a few years in the spotlight alongside David Baddiel on shows like the Mary Whitehouse Experience, Rob vanished almost overnight, returning instead to his first passion, writing.

Since the mid-nineties he has written four novels. In 2010 and 2011 he took a break from stand-up comedy to be primary carer of his daughter while his wife worked but it seems that, for all his desire to learn and delve deep into a subject, the lure of the stage and making people laugh will never go away.

"Stand-up is addictive,” he admits. “Right after a gig I start counting the days and hours until the next one.

"I have never seen another comic get anywhere near as wound up as I do before a gig. Other comedians are often alarmed by how intense and heavy I get, by how I look like someone in grief or mourning, how I am sick with adrenaline even before a new material night in a room above a pub.

"And then, the moment I get out in front of the audience I feel entirely happy and at ease. Performing is a great release.

"One of the strengths of the radio show is its mix of stand-up and sketch," Rob continues. "Most stand-ups can’t write sketches, while most sketch/character comics can’t do stand-up.

“The radio show does both, and in a way, so does The Brain Show, as I think my stand-up is influenced by my years of writing sketches and characters.

“All my life I’d write a joke and had no idea how it had happened. I thought ‘Well it’s the last one I’ll ever do because I don’t know how it’s done. But the last two shows are some of the best stuff I’ve ever done. I think you learn, to spot dead ends. I get types of laughs I couldn’t before.”

• Rob Newman: The Brain Show Colchester Arts Centre, Church Street, Colchester.

December 6. Doors 7.30pm, show 8pm.

£15, £12 concessions. 01206 5009000.

www.colchesterartscentre.com