Rob Newman’s brain doesn’t work like a normal mind. In fact, I’m not sure the two are even related. Quite how he came up with the preposterously brilliant The History of the World Backwards (BBC Four, Tuesday, 10pm) is beyond me. Now, don’t read that title as time in reverse, but rather, the story of how everything happened with the start at the end and the end at the start… but with time running in the same direction as it is now… I think. No. If you read history as ‘the story of the world’, then that is running backwards… no… hang on…

To understand this fabulous, clever and funny show, you really have to watch it. I was going to avoid review because it is so difficult to convey what the whole thing is about. I toyed with the idea of merely using a list of superlatives… but that would be lazy. The RT said “there’s nothing here that will prompt more than a tepid titter” which, to be proves only that those at the RadioTimes are all thick.

On the surface, this show looked like a slightly bewildering sketch show. I feel for those who switched on and couldn’t grasp what was happening. Not that the whole thing is clever-clever. As is always the case with Rob Newman, he can throw something puerile into the mix for kicks. With electrical goods now obsolete, Galileo, Kepler and the Duchess of Padua sift through old junk in an attempt to determine what they are… notably, some hair straighteners and a George Forman grill. However, with electricity a thing of the past, they cannot bring their investigations to fruition. However, Kepler keeps secret his re-discovery of how to make electricity and ultilises it to straighten his locks, switch on a smoke machine and dance to ‘Ain’t No Stopping us Now’. Jesus. That doesn’t read like something funny at all. Maybe you had to be there.

Next week, we get to see Alexander Graham Bell making the world’s last ever premium rate telephone call (watch a clip here). You see… it’s a warp where the world moves in reverse, but time still flows forwards… the jokes can be self contained whilst simultaneously dazzlingly clever. I’m getting nowhere here. All I’ll say is that I probably won’t review this again, as the idea is quite obviously above what I can relay to you in print, but I will watch this show religiously and generally bumble around marveling at it all, advising everyone I ever meet to watch it. It’s so mind-frying that it works… and on many levels too. My mind is melting at the thought of Rob Newman creating a BBC Four -1 channel in which to show this as a repeat an hour later…