Rob Newman

Stand-up comedian Robert Newman gets to grips with the wars and politics of the last hundred years, from WWI through to the 2003 invasion of Iraq; but rather than adhering to the history we were fed at school, this show places oil centre stage as the cause of all commotion. This innovative history programme is based around Robert Newman's stand-up act and supported by resourceful archive sequences and stills with satirical impersonations of historical figures from Mayan priests to Archduke Ferdinand.

Recorded live at the sold-out 2003 Paramount Comedy Festival in Brighton, stand-up comedian Robert Newman performs From Caliban To The Taliban - 500 Years of Humanitarian Intervention; a painstakingly researched tale of capitalist expansion and America’s global terror campaign waged “with goodwill to all.” Few stand-ups have attempted to create causal links between a 1609 Bermuda shipwreck and US adventures in Guatemala, via Shakespeare and Sir Francis Bacon. Hardly a laugh a minute you might think, but Newman has managed to pepper this unlikely comic dish with the endearing gags that made him famous.

In 1976 the British Government put an end to the special category status of prisoners from the Provisional Irish Republican Army, no longer treating them as prisoners of war, but as common criminals. Mairéad Farrell - on whose life much of the film seems to be loosely based - was the first woman Republican to be refused political status in 1976. By 1980, when the film is set, Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister and doggedly resolute: “There can be no question of political status for someone who is serving a sentence for crime. Crime is crime is crime.” Silent Grace seeks to capture the struggle for the restoration of political status that was at the heart of prison protests in Northern Ireland - not just by the more celebrated male prisoners - but by a smaller number of women prisoners, led by Farrell, at the Armagh Women’s Prison.

David Baddiel and Rob Newman present their popular 'History Today' sketches which include live concert footage from the 1992 Edinburgh Festival.