UPDATES

I'm afraid the site has been rather neglected over the past few months due to various unfortunate life & death matters. Hopefully things will be back and running smoothly in the near future. We appreciate your patience. Thanks to Nicky from the official site we have a long list of new live dates for the tour with Mark Thomas listed at the bottom of the page. Unfortunately our new host has been having significant difficulties with their Real Server so we are still without media files. We should have them back up and running in the next few weeks, provided our hard drive doesn't give out before then. From Chortle: David Baddiel has revealed that he only became an author to compete with Robert Newman. The comic confessed that he started writing his first novel, Time For Bed, simply because he was envious of the interest his double-act partner was getting for his literary efforts. The duo famously didn't get on in the last days of their comic partnership, and Baddiel pretended that he, too, was working on a book to impress journalists.Speaking at the Edinburgh book festival, Baddiel said: The reason I started writing novels was because a long time ago - and this seems like talking about the war now - I used to work with someone called Robert Newman, who had written a novel. When we toured, journalists would ask me if I was writing a novel too, so I said, "yes". From Nicky at robnewman.com: A 90 minute live DVD of Robert's From Caliban to the Taliban set will be released on August 27th and is available through the official website. Recorded at Robert's sell-out gigs at the Brighton Corn Exchange theatre, during last year's Paramount Comedy Festival, the DVD is £12.00 including UK postage and packing (£14.00 including airmail shipping to anywhere else in the world). If you'd like to pre-order your copy so it can be mailed to you on the day of release, please send a cheque or PO for £12.00 made payable to Nicky Fijalkowska to: Robnewman.com, PO Box 4458, Worthing, BN11 2WL UK £ sterling cheques only, thanks! Or visit www.robnewman.com for further details, PayPal payments, dvd stills and an opportunity to download the CIA's Freedom Fighters' Manual as featured in Robert's set.Verso books will be releasing the UK paperback editon of Robert's novel The Fountain at the Centre of the World on August 20th, priced £7.99. The artwork and press advert are up on the website too. Another review of Robert's latest novel, The Fountain at the Centre of the World, has been added to the site. The review from The News Tribune in Tacoma, along those from Salon, Citypages and The New York Times, can be found here on the book reviews page along with Slate's round-up of the current reviews. A short interview The Village Voice conducted with Robert can be found here. The American Prospect Online has published an article/review/interview about Robert and the novel, which you can read on the articles page. This is how Soft Skull is describing Robert to a new American audience: Robert Newman is a novelist and political comedian whose last show From Caliban to Taliban—500 Years of Humanitarian Intervention enjoyed a fourth month sell-out run at the Soho Theater in London. His reading will include excerpt from the new novel, comedy with bite and even a little ukulele! Fountain at the Center of the World is an epic novel, a family saga that spans two continents and an ocean of economic, political and class chasms. Set in set in the United States, Britain, Mexico, the story takes us, via container crate and conference suite, from refugee detention center and trawler boat to the streets of Seattle amid a hail of tear gas and rubber bullets. It traces the path of Evan Hatch, a British corporate PR executive and adopted child, who learns he is dying of “chagas,” a disease endemic to Latin America. Traveling to Mexico in search of his long lost brother and a bone-marrow tissue match, Hatch finds himself standing on the fuse of the neo-liberal powder keg set to ignite the region. His brother is a fugitive. And a mysterious fourteen year old named Daniel—who arrives in Tonalacapan armed only with questions—may hold the only answers. The writing of Fountain at the Center of the World took Robert Newman across Mexico and Costa Rica. He spent a week on a Spanish trawler researching the book and covered the WTO in Seattle—the setting of some explosive scenes—for Channel 4. The writing of Fountain at the Center of the World is the subject of a BBC film, Scribbling. It is in its second printing one month after being published in the UK. Robert's new novel, The Fountain at the Centre of the World, is now available in the UK. The US release is scheduled for January 2004 and Robert will tour there in early 2004 to promote the book (dates below). For those of you here in Australia you can pay a fortune for an import copy of the book at Collins Booksellers or Dymocks Online (both $54.91 plus postage). The conversion for an Amazon UK copy comes out at about $21.22 plus postage. Thanks to Nicky and Alicia you can see the promotional bookmark for the novel here. Here's the full synopsis of the new novel: Everyone is looking for Chano Salgado... High-flying corporate PR executive Evan Hatch is dying. Dying not of a rich man's disease, but of chagas, a beetle-born disease endemic to Latin America. Desperate for a cure, Evan leaves travels to Mexico in search of the bone-marrow tissue-match that only the brother he has never met can provide. Reclusive young widower and political apostate, Chano Salgado's work sterilizing bottles in a tiny, smoky shack comes to an end when he is persuaded to blow up the pipelines of Ethylclad, a toxic-waste plant sucking the local groundwater dry. Police and soldiers across Tamaulipas, Mexico's northeasternmost state, are hunting Chano Salgado the terrorist saboteur; while teenager Daniel Salgado, boards a Costa Rican fishing-smack knowing only the name of the Mexican village where he was born. An epic novel about loss and hope, identity and belief, the story takes us, via container-crate and conference-suite, assassination and passport-theft, from refugee detention centre and Rio Bravo to the Seattle WTO protests. And here on the streets of Seattle, amid tear gas and rubber bullets, the destinies of Chano, Evan and Daniel are changed forever. As the old guestbook appears to have reached full capacity and has been rejecting newer entries we have decided to launch a brand new guestbook. We invite you to view the new guestbook or sign the new guestbook. You can still view entries in the old guestbook here. Thanks to those who have tried & failed to add messages to the old guestbook over the past few months, we apologise for the inconvenience. Thanks to Robert, Nicky & Alicia for solving the mystery of the music used in Scribbling: 300% Dynamite anthology - track used: Toots & The Laytals 'Broadway Jungle' Dub Trilogy - King Tubby, Lee 'The Upsetter' Perry, Scientist, Prince Jammy and Crazy Mad Professor Louis Armstrong - 'Hot Fives and Sevens', track used: 'Struttin' With Barbecue' George Formby - 'Emperor of Lancashire' from Forty Formby Favourites Mina Galera - Manu Chao Clandestino

UPCOMING LIVE APPEARANCES

ROBERT NEWMAN
From Caliban to the Taliban- 500 Years of Humanitarian Intervention

This is the story of a five hundred year global terror campaign waged with goodwill to all.
It starts with a 1609 Bermuda shipwreck and takes us past Wordsworth in the Quantocks followed by government spies, to Russia's Archangel and Filipino vampires. The story's happy ending is the United States' good work in Vietnam, Guetemala, El Salvador, Somalia, Chile, Afganistan and Iraq.

'The finest political comedian of our generation' - Jeremy Hardy
'The finest political comedian of our generation, except me' - Mark Thomas
'He deftly weaves running gags in and out of seemingly wild digressions and his casual nattering
is craftily shot through with splendidly eloquent turns of phrase.'- The Independent
'Fans of Mark Thomas will relish this show' The Metro
'His is comedy that cares about something - and it has passion, intelligence and charm.' The Scotsman

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