Contemporary Authors

• How Not to Be a Boy ( memoir) Canongate Books (Edinburgh, Scotland), 2017

• Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Webb

  Robert Webb
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  Robert Webb
  Webbcropped.jpg
  Webb in 2007
  Born Robert Patrick Webb
  29 September 1972 (age 45)
  Boston, Lincolnshire, England
  Nationality British
  Education Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Horncastle
  Alma mater Robinson College, Cambridge
  Occupation
  Actor comedian writer
  Years active 1997–present
  Known for Peep Show
  Spouse(s) Abigail Burdess (m. 2006)
  Children 2
  Robert Patrick Webb (born 29 September 1972)[1] is an English comedian, actor and writer, and one half of the double act Mitchell and Webb, alongside David Mitchell. The two men are best known for starring in the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show and the sketch comedy programme That Mitchell and Webb Look, for which they then performed a stage adaption. Their first and only film to date, Magicians, was released in 2007. The duo also starred in the short-lived Ambassadors. Webb also headed the critically acclaimed sitcom The Smoking Room and was a performer in the sketch show Bruiser. He currently stars alongside Mitchell in the Channel 4 comedy-drama Back (2017-).

  Webb is also a regular comedy panelist, appearing in shows such as The Bubble, Have I Got News For You, Never Mind The Buzzcocks, QI, Mastermind and Argumental. He has also hosted and narrated several programmes. His other sitcom appearances include Blessed, The Bleak Old Shop Of Stuff and Fresh Meat.

  Contents
  1 Early life
  2 Career
  2.1 Mitchell and Webb
  2.2 Solo work
  3 Writing
  4 Personal life
  5 Filmography
  5.1 Film
  5.2 Television
  6 References
  7 External links
  Early life
  Born in Boston, Lincolnshire, Webb grew up in Woodhall Spa near Horncastle. His parents divorced when he was aged five, with his mother remarrying a year or so later.[2] He has two older brothers[3] and a younger half-sister.[4] He was educated at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School in Horncastle.[5] Having grown up watching The Young Ones and Blackadder, he became interested in drama and poetry while in school and began writing parodies.[6] While Webb was in the lower sixth form preparing for his A-levels, his mother died of breast cancer,[7] and he moved in with his father and re-sat his A-levels.

  At the age of 20, Webb attended Robinson College, Cambridge, where he studied English and became vice-president of the Footlights.[8] Webb and Mitchell met at an audition for a Footlights production of Cinderella in 1993.[3]

  Career
  Mitchell and Webb
  The two put together their first project, Innocent Millions Dead or Dying - A Wry Look at the Post-Apocalyptic Age (With Songs), in January 1995, a show about World War I.[9][10] Webb later described it as being "fucking terrible".[9]

  From this, the duo were given the chance to write for Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller and for series two of Big Train.[11] After minor work on The Jack Docherty Show and Comedy Nation, their first break into television acting was in 2000, on the short-lived BBC sketch show Bruiser, which they primarily wrote, and starred in.[12]

  In 2001, the duo was commissioned for a sketch show of their own, entitled The Mitchell and Webb Situation, which ran for six episodes on the now defunct channel Play UK.[11] Mitchell and Webb's next project came in 2003, with starring roles in the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show, as flatmates Mark Corrigan and Jeremy "Jez" Usbourne respectively.[13] The pair shared the 2007 Royal Television Society Award for "Comedy Performance",[14] and were jointly nominated for Best Television Comedy Actor at the 2006 British Comedy Awards.[15] Webb was nominated for the Best Television Comedy Actor award again, this time without Mitchell, in 2009.[16] Peep Show has aired nine series, making it the longest-running sitcom in Channel 4 history.[17]

  After the success of Peep Show Mitchell and Webb returned to sketch comedy with their BBC Radio 4 sketch show That Mitchell and Webb Sound, which ran for four series. The show was adapted for television and became That Mitchell and Webb Look, producer Gareth Edwards described it as "the shortest pitch (he had) ever written".[9] Towards the end of 2006 the pair made their first tour, with a show called The Two Faces of Mitchell and Webb. The tour was criticised as just "a succession of largely unrelated scenes" by The Guardian's Brian Logan, who gave it a rating of two stars.[18]

  That Mitchell and Webb Look won them the BAFTA for "Best Comedy Programme or Series" at the 2007 awards,[19] and they earned a further nomination for it in 2009.[20] It was nominated for two British Comedy awards in 2006: "Britain's Best New TV Comedy" and the "Highland Spring People's Choice".[15] Their stage tour The Two Faces of Mitchell and Webb was nominated for the British Comedy Award for "Best Stage Comedy",[15] and That Mitchell and Webb Sound won a Sony Silver Award.[21] Their first film, Magicians was released on 18 May 2007. It was directed by Andrew O'Connor and written by Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain.[22] Webb played the role of modern magician Karl.[23]

  They filmed Playing Shop, a comedy television pilot for BBC2 about two men who operate a business out of their shed, which they also wrote.[24] Although the BBC were happy with it, Mitchell and Webb scrapped it themselves, as they felt it was too similar to Peep Show. A new pilot had been commissioned,[25] but the plan was later shelved.[26]

  The duo fronted the campaign of the UK version of Apple Inc.'s Get a Mac adverts, with Mitchell playing a PC.[27] The adverts proved controversial. Writing in The Guardian, Charlie Brooker claimed that the use of Mitchell and Webb in the adverts was a curious choice. He compared the characters of PC and Mac in the adverts to those of Mark and Jeremy in Peep Show, stating that "when you see the ads, you think, 'PCs are a bit rubbish yet ultimately lovable, whereas Macs are just smug, preening tossers.'"[28] The British Sitcom Guide criticised the pair for "selling their souls".[29] One journalist called the adverts "worse than not funny", and accused Mitchell and Webb of "an act of grave betrayal" for taking corporate work.[30] In an interview with The Telegraph, Webb responded to the critics of the Apple adverts, stating that "when someone asks, 'Do you want to do some funny ads for not many days in the year and be paid more than you would be for an entire series of Peep Show?' the answer, obviously, is, 'Yeah, that's fine'".[30] In the same interview, Mitchell also said "I don't see what is morally inconsistent with a comedian doing an advert. It's alright to sell computers, isn't it? Unless you think that capitalism is evil – which I don't. It's not like we're helping to flog a baby-killing machine".[30]

  Solo work
  Webb has appeared in two series of the BBC Three sitcom The Smoking Room (2004) and the Radio 4 sketch show Concrete Cow. In 2005 he appeared in the Ben Elton-scripted BBC One sitcom Blessed as Ardal O'Hanlon's 'perfect' counterpart.[11]

  He and Olivia Colman also featured as a naturist couple in Confetti, a 2006 film about a competition for the most original wedding. Webb has since said that he believed that his genitals would be pixellated out but only discovered at the screening of the film that they were not.[31][32] Also in 2008, Webb made his West End stage debut in the UK premiere of Neil LaBute's Fat Pig.[33]

  Webb won the 2009 series Let's Dance for the charity Comic Relief, parodying the audition sequence from the film Flashdance.[34] He narrated the series Young, Dumb and Living Off Mum.[35] He hosted a 2010 Channel 4 series looking at the week's online news, Robert's Web.[17]

  He has appeared on several panel shows, including The Bubble, Have I Got News For You, Never Mind The Buzzcocks and QI. In January 2011, Webb appeared on a celebrity version of BBC quiz Mastermind,[36] answering nine questions correctly on his specialist subject (the novels of Ian McEwan) and 11 correctly on the general knowledge round.[37] In 2011 Webb played Dan, a geology lecturer, in the Channel 4 series Fresh Meat. Later that year, he was cast in the costume comedy The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff, a parody of Charles Dickens' works. Since 2011, Webb has replaced Rufus Hound as team captain on the BBC comedy panel show Argumental.[38]

  Webb was the narrator of Channel 5's anti-nostalgia series 10 Things I Hate About, which began on 16 April 2012. In each episode, Webb presented his opinion on the awful aspects of a particular year (1995, 1990, 1987, and 1999).[32]

  In 2011 Webb presented "Groundbreaking Gags" on BBC Three, in which he looked at the significant gags that the animated show Family Guy has been recognised for.[39]

  As of December 2012, Webb stars in adverts for comparethemarket.com, as its founder Maurice Wigglethorpe-Throom.[40]

  Writing
  Together with Mitchell, Webb published his first comedy book This Mitchell and Webb Book, which was released in the UK and the US in 2009 by HarperCollins imprint Fourth Estate.[41][42] An abridged edition of highlights from This Mitchell and Webb Book, entitled How to Cope with Mitchell and Webb, was released only in the UK on 1 October 2009.[43] The pair signed a two-book deal with Fourth Estate but, as of November 2013, a second book remains unpublished.[44]

  Prior to being fired, Webb wrote articles for the comments pages of the Telegraph newspaper between 2009 and 2011.[45] He criticised those who commented on the online versions of his articles in a New Statesman piece.[46][47] In a 2013 interview, Webb explained his experience with the publication:

  I wasn't particularly busy at the time, so what I should have been doing in three hours, I was taking a day and a half to do, while getting drunk. I'd sit in the garden, drinking and talking to myself, then go back upstairs, write another sentence, go, 'Oh, this isn't right.' I'd make such a meal of it. If I'd been more professional, I'd have just done it and got on with my life.[32]

  Webb thinks it is harmful for men to 'keep a stiff upper lip' and bottle up their feelings.[48]

  In 2015, Webb began writing his first solo memoir, How Not to be a Boy, on growing up in working man's Lincolnshire. The memoir was released in August 2017. A spoken-word adaptation, read by Webb, was featured as Radio 4's Book of the Week to coincide with the launch.[49]

  Personal life
  Webb married fellow comedy performer Abigail Burdess in 2006, after meeting her on the set of a radio sketch show. Mitchell was the best man at the wedding ceremony.[3] They live in Kilburn, London, and have two daughters.[32][50] Webb is openly bisexual.[51]

  Webb stated that he was a supporter of the Labour Party,[47] and rejoined the political party in 2013, in protest at Russell Brand's interview on Newsnight, in which he suggested people should not vote as a form of protest.[52]

  In a 2008 Independent piece, Webb explained that he was a "swaggering atheist" prior to the death of his mother, but that the loss led to him starting to pray. Upon reflection, however, Webb stated that his temporary departure from atheism was a coping mechanism for the loss, and after he learned to "co-exist" with his mother's death, he returned to atheism: "... I've returned to total non-belief. I don't know how long it'll last, but God, it's good to be back!"[7]

  Following the "sell-out" criticism both Webb and Mitchell received for appearing in an advertisement for Apple Inc.[7] Webb stated in 2008:

  I'm not a sell-out ... The problem is that that presupposes a set of principles we don't actually hold. We never said comedians shouldn't do ads, or that we somehow operate outside the mixed market economy ... really we're just doing a job.[7]

  In August 2014, Webb was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue.[53]

  In November 2015, he announced on Twitter that he was leaving the Labour Party, citing his lack of confidence in the party's leader, Jeremy Corbyn.[54] In a series of Twitter posts, he also expressed his disdain at the appointment of Guardian journalist Seumas Milne as Labour's press secretary. He was quoted as saying that paying his party subscription with Milne in post made him "feel sick".[55] However, in May 2017, Webb nevertheless endorsed the Labour Party in the 2017 UK general election.[56]

• Financial Times - https://www.ft.com/content/e9632932-4816-11e8-8ae9-4b5ddcca99b3

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  https://www.ft.com/content/e9632932-4816-11e8-8ae9-4b5ddcca99b3

  Comedian Robert Webb on masculinity, making jokes and getting lost
  On a tour of Hampstead Heath, The ‘Peep Show’ star talks about finding fame and his mission to change gender politics

  © Gabby Laurent
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  Hannah Beckerman APRIL 27, 2018 Print this page24
  As a child, Robert Webb had an ambivalent relationship with sport. He was, he says, “quite skinny”, and as he didn’t naturally fit the stereotype of a rambunctious, energetic boy, he preferred to play outdoors alone, with his imaginary friends “the Guy-Buys” for company.

  Now 45, the actor, comedian and writer still isn’t hugely keen on exercise. “I tried running for a bit but I found it a bit hard on the old knees,” he laughs. It was only when his comedy partner David Mitchell was prescribed walking for an hour a day to cure sciatica and lost two stone in the process that Webb realised it might be a good idea. “I thought, ‘Wow, you can keep yourself fit without hurting yourself and apparently lose two stone.’ Walking is the one form of exercise that I can sort of tolerate.”

  We meet at Kenwood House on Hampstead Heath — as an adoptive north Londoner, Webb says the Heath “has always been the main green space that I like the best” — and plan to walk to Parliament Hill and back. It’s a wet, grey day, the rain refusing to grant us any respite for the duration of our outing.

  Stomping across the Heath is how Webb solved some knotty narrative problems while writing his acclaimed memoir, How Not To Be a Boy. After making four series of That Mitchell and Webb Look — his sketch show with David Mitchell — from 2006-10, and starring in nine series of the award-winning Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show (2003-15), he published his book last year. Covering masculinity, alcoholism, grief and ambition, it became a bestseller and earned Webb a legion of celebrity fans, from JK Rowling to Stephen Fry.

  Webb walking across Hampstead Heath with Hannah Beckerman © Gabby Laurent
  As we head into the woods to escape the downpour, Webb tells me that his motivation to write came not from a burning ambition to share the story of his childhood, but from a political desire to discuss gender and masculinity. “The idea to approach it via a memoir came second, because it seems to me that that’s where [gender politics] starts — in childhood.

  “Obviously I want everyone to read this, but I was conscious I wanted men to read it. And, speaking as a man, I thought, ‘They’re not going to respond to a polemic, and they’re not going to respond to a bollocking.’ You can’t tell people off about these things — it just bounces off their pride. So my two ace cards were humour — because men think they invented it, so it’s kind of their language — and writing in a very intimate and personal way.”

  One aspect of Webb’s book that elevates it above the usual celebrity memoir is his frankness about the difficulties that beset his childhood. An older brother, Martin, died 10 months before Webb was born. “I was 10 or 11 when I did the maths. I remember family members telling each other off about saying I was a replacement or a substitute.”

  791

  Number of acres on Hampstead Heath

  His father was a functioning alcoholic whose unpredictable moods brought terror to Webb’s family home in Lincolnshire. “He certainly had a dependency and he certainly drank every single day. He scared the living daylights out of me when he came home from work after a pint.” Webb’s dad would physically punish his three sons if he thought they had misbehaved, although for Webb, the reason wasn’t always clear. “It was the arbitrary nature of it — the fact that you couldn’t get it right. That’s what I found particularly terrifying.”

  As we reach Parliament Hill and look out across the low cloud and heavy skies towards the murky London skyline, I ask Webb about his relationship with his mother, which he describes in the memoir with great tenderness. “She was always the fixed, kind person at the centre of the universe.” And yet Webb grew up with an instinctive sense that the relationship was somehow unacceptable. “I was aware that it was slightly shameful to be a mummy’s boy.”

  His parents divorced when Webb was five and his mother remarried. Webb saw his father rarely in the years that followed: “Most birthdays, most Christmases — four times a year, maximum. He was still frightening but he was much, much nicer to me after they stopped living together, though I can’t say I particularly missed him when he wasn’t around.”

  I would tell boys it’s OK to cry. It’s OK to prefer the company of your mother and to have female friends

  Robert Webb
  Then, when Webb was 17 years old, his mum was diagnosed with breast cancer and within a few months, she died. He moved back in with his dad briefly but their relationship continued to be complicated. “There was still a rebellion — still a defiance — going on in my early twenties. I wanted him to stop thinking about me, stop worrying about me, stop talking to me, just shut up. There was a lot of anger.”

  Robert Webb shelters from the rain outside Kenwood House in London © Gabby Laurent
  As we reach a fork in the path on the Heath, we realise neither of us knows exactly where we are. “You always forget how big the Heath is,” Webb laughs. Heading off in what we hope is the right direction, I ask him whether it would have been possible to write the memoir when his father — who died in 2013 — was still alive. “No,” admits Webb. “Firstly out of sheer cowardice, but secondly it would just be too mean. It would be cruel to confront him with that because it was so long ago — and what would be achieved?”

  I wonder if in writing the memoir, Webb finally felt he could articulate all the things he didn’t feel able to say when he was younger. “That’s the trouble with having children,” Webb smiles. “They will have the last word.”

  In 2007, he married actor and comedian Abigail Burdess, and the couple have two daughters — aged eight and six. “When you have your own children, it’s supposed to make you forgive your parents their flaws. It never felt like that with my dad. It’s the opposite. He suffers by comparison.”

  So does he think it’s possible to forgive an alcoholic parent? “It depends where you put your focus. If I imagine treating my daughters the way he treated me and my brothers, then I still want to hit him. But there again, if I think about him being a perfectly decent bloke and always being on my side and leaving me in absolutely no doubt that I was loved and appreciated, then I love him. That’s families, isn’t it?”

  In Webb’s memoir he confesses how, in the early years of parenthood, he began to follow in his father’s footsteps and drink heavily. Does he still have a problematic relationship to alcohol? “I don’t drink on my own during the day any more,” Webb says. “I’d say there’s room for improvement but it’s not as bad as it was. It’s partly not wanting to acknowledge what it is. It is a difficult subject.”

  Webb (right) with David Mitchell in Peep Show © Angus Young
  9

  Number of series of Peep Show on Channel 4, making it the network’s longest-running homegrown sitcom

  We are still tramping in the rain, now through sodden muddy woods. “I don’t mind getting lost,” confesses Webb. “In fact, I actively budget for getting lost. And then dicking around with my iPhone for at least 20 minutes to work out where I am.” Having employed the services of Google Maps, we head off in the direction of Kenwood House.

  Webb’s success as an actor and comedian is the result of steadfast ambition since his teenage years. After winning a place at the local grammar school, it was while taking part in lunchtime revues that he found a talent for, and love of, performing. “It was getting attention in a way that felt good, it felt OK — there was some legitimacy about being a show-off in that environment. Being on a stage gives you full licence to say, ‘Look at me, I can do stuff you can’t do. And you’re going to like me for it.’”

  Realising that many of his favourite comedians had performed in Cambridge University’s Footlights club, he set about winning a place there with dogged determination. He attended a university fair to meet a Cambridge admissions officer on the same day as his mother’s funeral and, later, having failed to achieve the necessary A-level grades, he returned to sixth form to resit his exams so he could meet the entry requirements. Once he’d begun an English literature course at Robinson College, he joined the Footlights, met Mitchell and began his career. For someone who was a shy child, he seems to have possessed enormous drive. “To me, making people laugh equals being famous. I’ve always had a sense that if I’m going to do this, I’ve got to do it in front of as many people as possible.”

  1993

  Year Robert Webb first met David Mitchell in the Cambridge Footlights, 10 years before the first episode of Peep Show was broadcast

  Webb spent much of his childhood and adolescence feeling that he was different from other boys. In his memoir, he discusses how men are not given the space to break out of narrowly defined expectations of masculinity. Given that women have been challenging female stereotypes for decades, I ask why he thinks men have been slow to take up their own cause. “I just don’t think they notice it. Few men — even liberal men on board with feminism — are ready to acknowledge that it happened to them too. They were told how to perform their gender as well. I think it doesn’t get talked about because the problem isn’t acknowledged as a problem.”

  So what would Webb’s manifesto for raising boys involve? “Tell them it’s OK to express pain, it’s OK to cry. It’s OK to prefer the company of your mother, and not be that interested in sports, and to have female friends. And also acknowledging that girls and women are — and I know this sounds patronisingly simple and ridiculous, but it’s amazing how few people really understand it — fully human and fully equal. And equal not because they’ve earned it, or because they’ve made it in a man’s world: equal because they were born equal.”

• Publishers Weekly - https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/profiles/article/76393-spotlight-on-robert-webb.html

  Spotlight on Robert Webb
  The British actor, comic, and writer offers a sensitive vision of masculinity in his timely memoir, which comes to the U.S. this June
  Mar 23, 2018
  Comments subscribe by the month

  Photo by Matt Crockett
  In 2009, Robert Webb, best known for the U.K. TV series Peep Show and Back (now on the Sundance channel) and the sketch show That Mitchell and Webb Look, performed on Let's Dance for Comic Relief, dancing to "What a Feeling" from the movie Flashdance dressed as a woman. The performance was watched live by more than seven million people and has since tallied another two million views on YouTube. Webb's touching and funny memoir, How Not to Be a Boy, opens with an imagined conversation between the adult Webb and his 15-year-old self, who, growing up in the conservative, working-class village of Woodhall Spa, in Lincolnshire, England, could never have imagined that performance in his wildest dreams or the long, difficult path his life would take to get there.

  Webb came of age in 1980s Lincolnshire. "The message I got loud and clear was that there was only one thing worse than being called a girl, and that was being called gay," Webb says. There were rigid rules for boys: don't talk about your feelings and don't ever cry; fight other boys; and love sports. But Webb was a sensitive kid who preferred poetry to sports. Webb's mother was loving and affectionate, but his father, a woodcutter, was a stern man who cast a shadow over the whole family.

  Webb's mother divorced his father when Webb was five—this was a relief, Webb says, because "I was very scared of him"—but when Webb was 17, she died. "My mother was the central influence on my childhood and her death marked its abrupt ending," he says. "She had a tough life and I think I got from her an admiration for stoicism and grace under pressure. There's an idea that being able to ‘keep your head when all around are losing theirs' is an exclusively male trait, and that's obviously ridiculous."

  How Not to Be a Boy is a powerful rebellion against old ideas about masculinity. Webb, who moved in with his father after his mother's death and before going to Cambridge, is starkly honest about this period of his life. "I think her death emboldened me," he says. "There was a kind of defiance going on, a kind of ‘Okay, universe, you did your worst, now watch this!' It was a romantic reaction to an unfathomable loss—healthier than self-destruction, though I had suicidal thoughts for the next three years, but flawed in its own way." Nonetheless, Webb, who is now married with two daughters, began to see that he could embrace who he really was.

  When asked what advice he'd give to boys today, Webb says, "It's okay to cry if you're in pain. It's okay to be not much interested in sports. It's okay to be a virgin. It's okay to dance. It's okay to be fully committed to friendship and love." Webb recalls his own teenage struggles with these issues in what is perhaps the most moving chapter in the book: "Boys Don't Fall in Love (with Other Boys)."

  Though Webb is encouraged by the changes in gender roles and expectations, he still thinks we have a long way to go. In "Act Two," the second half of his book, he debunks common myths—"Men Are Organized," "Men Don't Need Therapy," "Men Understand Women"—to pick apart the way society expects men to be. "If I say ‘doctor' or ‘judge,' what's the picture that flashes into your mind? Is it a woman?" Webb asks. "Men need to see women as fully human and fully equal," he continues. "That sounds simple, but it's depressingly rare. Not equal because they've earned it, or equal because they somehow made it in a man's world. Equal because they were born equal."

  And Webb's relationship with his father? Eventually, they found their way back to one another. After his Flashdance performance, Webb found a voice-mail message from his father. "Hello, boy, only Dad. I watched y'dance on the box. Bloody well done. You looked bloody marvelous, Have a pint for me. You know how I feel about you."

Print Marked Items
Robert Webb: The British actor, comic, and writer offers
a sensitive vision of masculinity in his timely memoir,
which comes to the U.S. this June
Publishers Weekly.
265.13 (Mar. 26, 2018): p5.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text: 
In 2009, Robert Webb, best known for the U.K. TV series Peep Show and Back (now on the Sundance channel) and the sketch show That
Mitchell and Webb Look, performed on Let's Dance for Comic Relief, dancing to "What a Feeling" from the movie Flashdance dressed as a
woman. The performance was watched live by more than seven million people and has since tallied h another two million views on YouTube,
Webb's touching and funny memoir, How Not to Be a Boy, opens with an imagined conversation between the adult Webb and his 15-year-old
self, who, growing up in the conservative, working-class village of Woodhall Spa, in Lincolnshire, England, could never have imagined that
performance in his wildest dreams or the long, difficult path his life would take to get there.
Webb came of age in 1980s Lincolnshire. "The message I got loud and clear was that there was only one thing worse than being called a girl, and
that was being called gay," Webb says. There were rigid rules for boys: don't talk I about your feelings and don't ever cry; fight other boys; and
love sports. But Webb was a sensitive kid who preferred poetry to sports. Webb's mother was loving and affectionate, but his father, a woodcutter,
was a stern man who cast a shadow over the whole family
Webb's mother divorced his father when Webb was five--this was a relief, Webb says, because "I was very scared of him"-but when Webb was 17,
she died. "My mother was the central influence on my childhood and her death marked its abrupt ending," he says. "She had a tough life and I
think I got from her an admiration for stoicism and grace under pressure, There's an idea that being able to 'keep your head when all around are
losing theirs' is an exclusively male trait, and that's obviously ridiculous."
How Not to Be a Boy is a powerful rebellion against old ideas about masculinity, Webb, who moved in with his father after his mother's death
and before going to Cambridge, is starkly honest about this period of his life, "I think her death emboldened me," he says. "There was a kind of
defiance going on, a kind of 'Okay, universe, you did your worst, now watch this!' It was a romantic reaction to an unfathomable loss--healthier
than self-destruction, though I had suicidal thoughts for the next three years, but flawed in its own way." Nonetheless, Webb, who is now married
with two daughters, began to see that he could embrace who he really was.
When asked what advice he'd give to boys today, Webb says, "It's okay to cry if you're in pain. It's okay to be not much interested in sports, It's
okay to be a virgin. It's okay to dance. It's okay to be fully committed to friendship and love." Webb recalls his own teenage struggles with these
issues in what is perhaps the most moving chapter in the book: "Boys Don't Fall in Love (with Other Boys)."
Though Webb is encouraged by the changes in gender roles and expectations, he still thinks we have a long way to go, In "Act Two," the second
half of his book, he debunks common myths--"Men Are Organized," "Men Don't Need Therapy," "Men Understand Women"--to pick apart the
way society expects men to be, "If I say 'doctor' or 'judge,' what's the picture that flashes into your mind? Is it a woman?" Webb asks, "Men need
to see women as fully human and fully equal," he continues. "That sounds simple, but it's depressingly rare, Not equal because they've earned it,
or equal because they somehow made it in a man's world, Equal because they were born equal."
And Webb's relationship with his father? Eventually, they found their way back to one another. After his Flashdance performance, Webb found a
voice-mail message from his father, "Hello, boy, only Dad. I watched y'dance on the box, Bloody well done. You looked bloody marvelous, Have
a pint for me, You know how I feel about you."
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Robert Webb: The British actor, comic, and writer offers a sensitive vision of masculinity in his timely memoir, which comes to the U.S. this
June." Publishers Weekly, 26 Mar. 2018, p. 5. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A532997079/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c7a3f623. Accessed 27 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A532997079
Webb, Robert: HOW NOT TO BE A BOY
Kirkus Reviews.
(Mar. 1, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text: 
Webb, Robert HOW NOT TO BE A BOY Canongate (Adult Nonfiction) $25.00 6, 5 ISBN: 978-1-78689-008-5
In this debut work of nonfiction, Webb leaves his performance stage to examine "general expectations of manhood" and tell the stories that have
made his life interesting.
This is more than a straightforward memoir, as the author delves into a variety of sociological issues, primarily those related to conceptions of
manhood. "Often," he writes, "when we tell a boy to 'act like a man,' we're effectively saying, 'Stop expressing those feelings.' And if the boy
hears that often enough, it actually starts to sound uncannily like, 'Stop feeling those feelings.' " Throughout the book, Webb explores the different
ways in which masculinity is perceived and enforced in culture, and he attempts to illustrate what happens when masculinity is challenged by a
male himself. "The great thing about refusing to feel feelings is that, once you've denied them, you don't have to take responsibility for them," he
writes. "Your feelings will be someone else's problem--your mother's problem, your girlfriend's problem, your wife's problem." In trying to
understand the consequences of a regimented male experience, Webb falls into consistent heteronormativity. It's unfortunate that in a work
focusing so incisively on understanding the male experience, the spectrum of masculinity is misrepresented. Interspersed through the comedy and
memoir are rather myopic explanations of what boys, teenagers, and men are expected to do in society--e.g., not cry, not be a teacher's pet, play
sports, have lots of sex. While intended to be humorous, these categorizations will feel exasperating for many readers. But Webb stays true to his
comedic self and provides comic relief amid situations of adolescent torpor: "I'm very proud of the fine sprinkling of pubic hairs I've managed to
grow, although that area in general looks like the head of a ninety-year-old woman recently returned from a perm too many at the hairdresser's."
Intermittently funny but ultimately a frustrating missed opportunity.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Webb, Robert: HOW NOT TO BE A BOY." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A528959960/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=cda7b58f. Accessed 27 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A528959960

• The Guardian
  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/01/how-not-to-be-a-boy-by-robert-webb-review
  Word count: 986

  The actor and comedian Robert Webb is seven years old when the penny drops about boys and their feelings. He is in his final year at infant school and is known for being quiet. “I wish they were all like you, Robert,” say the mums at birthday parties as the boys run noisily amok, while his mother tells his teachers, “He’s just a bit shy.” At the local golf club where his granddad works as a kitchen steward, Webb finds a bee on the gravel courtyard and, observing its laboured attempts at crawling, realises it is close to death. Rain is on its way so he builds a small circle of tiny stones around it for protection and, with tears in his eyes, leaves it to its fate.

  “I’m not going to tell anyone about this, not even Nan or [Aunty] Tru or Mum,” he decides. “They would be nice about it, of course, but I know the truth about my bee. I wasn’t supposed to look after it. I was supposed to stamp on it.”

  In this coming-of-age memoir, Webb, who was born in 1972, tells the story of his upbringing as the youngest son of a working-class woodcutter in the village of Woodhall Spa in Lincolnshire. He also examines, with enormous poignancy and insight, the damage that can be done when young boys are encouraged to behave in ways supposedly befitting their gender.

  In the late 1970s, certain rules had to be observed for a boy to fit in. These included: not crying, not discussing feelings, not being gay, hating girls, getting into fights, obsessing about sport and, when the occasion demanded it, stamping on bees. None of these things came easily to Webb, who was sensitive, had sticky-out ribs, liked poetry and hated sport. During football lessons he would “welcome the sight of the ball arching towards me in the same way that a quadriplegic nudist covered in jam welcomes the sight of a hornet”.

  Webb’s early portrait of himself as a hapless underdog navigating the boulder-strewn path of masculinity is vividly drawn and very funny. There are echoes of Adrian Mole in the way he seesaws between priggishness and melancholy (the young Webb also kept a diary). These years are rich in period detail, full of Anaglypta wallpaper, Raleigh bikes, Knight Rider, aniseed balls chain-smoking adults and singalongs to Rod Stewart’s “Sailing” in the car. His life, on paper, is close to idyllic, though, under the surface, anxiety, dread and confusion reside. Webb’s childhood was spent under the shadow of his father, Paul, who was admired in the village for his drinking and philandering, and feared at home for his explosive temper. For Webb and his two brothers, elbows on the tables would be dealt with by being “knocked clean from our chairs”. Once, while watching The Six Million Dollar Man, he recalls being lifted off his seat and thrashed around the legs with his own Woody Woodpecker-embroidered shorts. He never found out why.

  Eventually Webb’s mother left, taking her sons with her. A year later she married Derek, the “teetotal and mild” owner of an agricultural spare parts company, with whom they found a degree of stability. But at 17, Webb’s life was upended again when his mum was diagnosed with breast cancer and died shortly afterwards.

  It’s at this point, with his fate in the hands of two emotionally dysfunctional men, that his crisis began in earnest. What had started as self-doubt morphed into severe self-loathing that enveloped his years at Cambridge and his early forays into writing and acting, and manifested itself in arrogance, frequent drunkenness and treating his girlfriends badly.

  While Webb milks his most atrocious moments for laughs – there’s the time when, talking to his mother on her deathbed, he moans about still being a virgin, while at college he cheats on his girlfriend with two women in one night – he treats the underlying problems that have afflicted him and scores of other men with the utmost seriousness. It’s to his credit that he never loses sight of his privilege as a man, and the cost of that privilege to women. If at times his fear of a feminist roasting is palpable – “feminists aren’t out to get us,” he explains, rather unnecessarily. “They are out to get the patriarchy. They don’t hate men, they hate The Man” – he is clear and convincing in his argument that addressing the gender conditioning of men will improve life for all.

  It’s with a mixture of bafflement and frustration that he unpicks the semantics of masculinity and femininity, noting how many words “come pre-loaded with a steam tanker of gender manure from the last century”. He asks what it is to “act like a man”, why men struggle to maintain adult friendships and why they are more likely than women to kill themselves. “To put it childishly,” he says, “if you want a vision of masculinity, imagine Dr Frankenstein being constantly bum-raped by his own monster while shouting, “I’m fine, everyone! I’m absolutely fine!”

  These, then, are the themes that underpin Webb’s memoir, and are the prism through which he views his own life. Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman is referenced here in the title and the cover image, but this is less a righteous manifesto for the modern man than a highly personal story that might just resonate with others and give them confidence to talk, too.

  “Being male is terrific,” Webb says, “but comes with an extra load of baggage that is worth noticing. Because you might be carrying a load of stuff you don’t need. Stuff which is getting in your own – and other people’s – way.”

• New Statesman
  https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2017/09/robert-webbs-how-not-be-boy-bittersweet-picture-men-dealing-loss
  Word count: 1040

  Robert Webb’s autobiography is framed as an account of how he tried to escape the prison of masculinity. But How Not to Be a Boy, which began life as an article for the New Statesman in 2014, reads far better as a book about how to escape the valley of the shadow of death. Webb’s mother died when he was 17. She had already separated from his feckless “local character” of a dad and married a man who was equally feckless but less of a character. “Where does a mummy’s boy go when he’s got no mummy?” asks Webb. Back to Dad, of course.

  Webb achieved fame as a writer and performer of brilliantly funny sketches and he has the sketch writer’s gift for finding and recreating the telling moment. As his mum lies dying in one room, he has to listen to his father and stepfather discussing how much Josie from Woodhall would charge to come and do a bit of cleaning after Mum has gone. A stranger in a pub recognises him as the son of Paul Webb and tells him that Paul was the best man in the world for drinking and fucking. Webb tries to pass on the compliment to his dad.

  These excruciating moments build a picture of a group of men trying to move on from loss without ever talking about it directly. Dropping his son off at Cambridge University, Dad says, “Right then, boy. See you at Christmas. Try not to get VD.” It’s a story that comes to an unexpectedly sweet conclusion at Webb’s graduation. “I know you’d rather your mother was here but I’m proud of you anyway,” says Dad, and Webb realises that his father “knows he’s taking someone else’s place”.

  There’s an affectionate, insightful picture of growing up on the snakebite-and-black,snooker-at-the-conservative-club council estates of small-town Lincolnshire; of the neighbours who kept an eye out for you; of Nan and Grandad who work at the golf club. There’s a description of the mortifying day his big brother Mark gets his mate Larry to demonstrate his disco skills by making him dance to “Stool Pigeon” in the kitchen that will be anthologised for ever.

  At a particularly divisive moment in the the nation, it’s refreshing to read that small-town conservatives are “some of the most tolerant people I’ve ever met”. When Webb decides to tell his dad that he has had gay relationships in the past, his brother warns him it’ll break the old man’s heart but it makes no difference – “Go on, son. None of my business. Go on.” Family is family.

  Among its other virtues, this is a terrific book about how, far from stifling you, family can be the crucible in which tolerance and understanding are forged. I spend a lot of time visiting schools these days and often come away asking myself where working-class children ever see themselves represented in our culture as anything other than anthropological specimens or as ciphers in a political argument. When do they see themselves portrayed in colour?

  The autobiographies of comedians are among the few places where you can read about working-class people struggling with big ideas. I’m thinking of Johnny Vegas’s brilliant account of losing his faith in a seminary in his early teens; Alexei Sayle’s description of the weirdness and wonder of growing up communist; or John Bishop’s stories of growing up ambitious in Runcorn.

  Are you disorientated to find Robert Webb in this category? Webb’s career highlights include dressing up in a leotard, putting on a massive wig and performing the big number from Flashdance. I didn’t need a spoiler alert for the revelation that he had somehow broken free of narrow definitions of masculinity – but I was bloody surprised to find out that the definitive Bertie Wooster of his generation was from a council estate.

  This is also a book about ambition and fame. You lose your mother’s love; you set out to win the love of eight million viewers. Comedians usually stumble or fall into comedy. They’re bullied into being funny by their classmates or circumstances. Not Webb. He saw that Cambridge was the source of the comedy he admired, went to grammar school, read a lot and got there. When the death of his mother impacted on his A-level results, he swotted harder, said his prayers and did resits. He learned to love literature. There is a beautiful passage in this book about how Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” echoed in his heart. Nevertheless, as soon as he got to Cambridge, he dropped the books and threw himself into Footlights.

  Webb is hilariously precise about the mechanics of changing social class – how, having been a fey aesthete at home, you find it handy to release your inner yob at university, for instance. For all his pan­sexual metropolitan cool, this is in many ways a very old-fashioned journey involving grammar school and a change of accent.

  Maybe this is to do with coming from Lincolnshire. It’s all right to be an intellectual or a wit with a regional accent if the accent is from a city. If you’re from Woodhall, you probably have to work on your vowels. In the era of house-price insanity, geography is as strong a determinant of social status as class.

  In order to shake off the bonds of masculinity, Webb had to be more true to himself. To shake off the bonds of class and Lincolnshire, he had to leave something behind. One of the boys I met at a school in Liverpool memorably told me, “It was a shed­load easier to come out as gay than it was to come out as clever.”

  The thing that really lifts what is already a very funny and moving book is the grace and gratitude with which Webb remembers the goodwill of those who made him and those he left behind. Grief, as he says, is the echo of love.

• Chortle
  https://www.chortle.co.uk/books/2017/09/22/37958/how_not_to_be_a_boy_by_robert_webb
  Word count: 883

  Questions of gender conditioning have never been more pertinent… or more divisive. Some will probably even bristle at the phrase ‘gender conditioning’, asserting that boys will be boys and girls will be girls and let’s hear no more about it from the meddling liberals.

  So it’s timely for Robert Webb to offer a thought-provoking personal insight into the toxic masculinity that he was bought up with, and which he blames for both a troubled adolescence, and for the extended periods when he acted like such a shit as an adult, too.

  How Not To Be A Boy is not your traditional showbiz autobiography, then, given its focus on the sociological insights Webb has acquired. Although the book does cover his going to Cambridge, meeting David Mitchell and embarking on a comedy career that took off when Peep Show did, it is all seen through the prism of what was expected of him.

  Certainly, Cambridge was never predetermined for Webb. He came from a working-class family in rural Lincolnshire, where he was something of a misfit. He hated football and liked poetry… and possibly liked other boys, too. He saw comedy as an escape route from complying with his destiny and had heard of the Footlights, so set about winning a place at Cambridge (with varying degrees of application to his exams) for that reason alone.

  The dominant figure in his early life was his father, very much a legend of the local pub. ‘Famous for being a brawl-magnet, tit prospector and piss-artist,’ as Webb puts it. The same, admittedly, as almost every man in the village, but he was the best at being the worst.

  Dad is portrayed as something of an abusive figure, an unpleasant bully around the home. That was the template for masculinity Webb had, and since it didn’t suit him, the youngster became increasingly shy in the shadow of such a domineering figure.

  How Not To Be A Boy is no misery memoir, though, and there’s evocative nostalgia from his childhood as well as extracts from his overwrought teenage diaries, the older Webb watching in horror at how his younger self dealt with one self-inflicted emotional crisis after another. ‘Badly’ is the short answer.

  At home, his mum eventually kicked his feckless dad out, but new stepdad Derek was a different kind of useless father figure, lazy and placid.

  Putting loaded expressions like ‘man up’ under the microscope, Webb places much of the problems of the male existence at the door of repressed emotion – a destructive pattern passed down from father to son.

  Real feelings must be suppressed, that is what he was taught, even if he saw that pent-up frustrations would later erupt in anger. So when his mother died at 17, Webb bottled it up, just as he had learned. The hurt that decision caused he can only see in retrospect.

  The upshot at the time was that he became listless, jeopardising that Cambridge slot, while he treated a number of teenage girlfriends (and beyond) pretty badly, never really making any emotional connection. He has a boy-fling, too, though he doesn’t quite seem to know what that meant, and rather skirts over the soul-searching in this respect.

  Which is atypical, for while Webb’s writing is witty, the emphasis is definitely less on laughs and more on figuring out what’s wrong with all the bogus distinctions society makes in its expectations of men and women.

  He considers how many words ‘come pre-loaded with a steam tanker of gender manure from the last century’. And when talking to his own daughters – who were presumably a huge spur when it came to him addressing the skeletons in his own upbringing – he calls the patriarchy ‘The Trick’, an irrational code that drags men and women down equally – and which both genders play along with, despite it being to the detriment of both.

  His literary agent apparently told Webb to make the book ’15 per cent funnier’… perhaps that should have been applied again. But you can hear almost every paragraph in the actor’s voice. And there are some droll vignettes – such as meeting an Old Etonian at Cambridge who asked him who his father was, and was baffled not to know him.

  Over the pages of the book, Webb tells a personal story that started with him deeply embedded into the system of gender expectations and ends with him genuinely baffled why we treat boys and girls differently at all.

  His performing Flashdance in Let's Dance For Comic Relief in 2009 seems to be a watershed where his new understanding conquered his upbringing. He may have been dressed as Jennifer Beals from Flashdance, but no taunts could touch him now.

  Webb’s candid reminiscences of that journey might help further erode those artificial gender differences that are already being battered by the waves of progressive change. They might give food for thought for other people struggling to find their place. But primarily it’s an entertaining story, sometimes powerful and sometimes polemic, of a man trying to figure himself, and society, out.

• Express.co.uk
  https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/books/847199/How-Not-To-Be-A-Boy-Robert-Webb-book-review
  Word count: 439

  Throughout his memoir, Webb comments on the way gender roles impacted upon his life, although he didn’t realise it at the time.

  Webb’s father was a drunken bully but he did not physically abuse his son beyond the odd spanking. His mother died suddenly when he was 17. Despite the tragedy he went to Cambridge and on to TV stardom with David Mitchell in Peep Show and That Mitchell And Webb Look.

  From the start of the story, Webb hints that he will behave badly and let his family down after he becomes a father in his forties. When we reach the closing chapters, we find Webb drinking a bit too much and wasting his time on Twitter feuds instead of helping with the housework. Anyone hoping for humiliating meltdowns or debauchery may feel a sense of anticlimax.

  But he realises that the reason he feels unhappy is because being a new father reminds him of his own early childhood, filled with fear for failing to live up to society’s expectations of masculinity. In all, Webb’s story is fairly ordinary – and that is his point. He wants to show that many men went through what he did and that much of their suffering is entirely avoidable.

  He feels that he and his father were both victims of a society that tells men and boys to behave in a certain way: be like other men, show women who’s boss, don’t talk about your feelings. So inevitably when men suffer grief and rejection, those feelings turn into anger.

  Like Webb, I was a spindly, non-sporty boy, and I grinned and groaned with recognition at his memories of his “negative-space-triangulation” technique for finding the spot on a football pitch where the ball was least likely to go. He brings out the funny aspects of all this, but I was reminded that the shame of not being good at things boys are supposed to be good at is very real.

  The difficulty of living up to a prescribed template of masculinity, Webb suggests, may explain why the suicide rate is so much higher among young men than women. If he often mounts his soapbox, he does so with wit and style.

  I laughed innumerable times and cried twice – and the fact that I thought twice about admitting that shows how strongly the early training takes hold. Still, this book made for an effective stage in my ongoing deprogramming.

  You should give a copy to any young male you care about.

• Financial Times
  https://www.ft.com/content/cd29f288-93b1-11e7-83ab-f4624cccbabe
  Word count: 204

  Please use the sharing tools found via the email icon at the top of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour.
  https://www.ft.com/content/cd29f288-93b1-11e7-83ab-f4624cccbabe

  How Not To Be A Boy draws on autobiographical details to tell of the insidiousness of gender conditioning.

  Robert Webb is best known as co-star of the sitcom Peep Show, and the writing is entertaining. It is also unpretentious, self-aware and long on pathos. The author’s treatment of the men in his life — an abusive father, a limited stepfather and various incarnations of his younger self — is nuanced and unsparing. Ultimately their actions find explanation, if not justification, in the rigid expectations of masculinity imposed on them. The leading ladies are portrayed more sympathetically, but also more simplistically.

  Webb has written an engaging memoir that is a well-crafted rebuke to the orthodoxies of gender determinism.

• Gary Bainbridge
  https://garybainbridge.com/2017/08/30/review-how-not-to-be-a-boy-by-robert-webb/
  Word count: 532

  About three and a half years ago, my marriage broke up. I didn’t write about it at the time. I don’t imagine I ever will.

  But unless you knew me personally, you would never have known about it from my columns. Over that period I continued writing the sort of thing I usually do, pieces about small social embarrassments, designed to amuse.

  I drew a veil over it for two reasons. Firstly because break-ups are private and painful for all concerned, and the family of a writer should not necessarily be fodder for copy. Those relationships inform the work of the writer, but that doesn’t mean wholesale invasion of family members’ privacy is warranted.

  But the second reason is because it is so much easier to be the clown, it’s so much easier to be the one who gets into silly scrapes on the bus than it is to talk about feelings and being hurt and vulnerabilities. And, especially, about your own failings. It’s so much easier to expose yourself as an idiot than to expose your wounds. Especially if you’re a man.

  Robert Webb is braver than me. A clown of much greater note, in How Not To Be A Boy, he writes about his Lincolnshire childhood, and the two men who taught him what it was to be a man – his father and stepfather.

  These are two men trapped by patriarchy, emotionally stunted, like most men of their generation, and, I suppose, mine. These are two men who unquestionably love him, and who are almost incapable of expressing this love except through subtext.

  And he writes about his mother, a woman who appears romantic and practical and uncomplicatedly loving, and whose absence is felt on every page of the second half of this book.

  Webb is honest, sometimes almost to the point of cruelty, about his father’s and stepfather’s failings. But he is never as hard on them as he is on himself. He rips pages from adolescent diaries to show his self-centredness. He picks at scabs covering his crimes against kindness. He acknowledges his behaviour in the early years of his marriage.

  In part it is a difficult read, especially for the sort of man who doesn’t know how to repair his own white van. So many bells are rung it feels like a campanologist’s convention at times.

  And it is not perfect. It loses momentum in the second half of the book – we’ve read the Cambridge/Footlights memoirs a million times from previous alumni – and sometimes Webb goes for the gag when he knows he should hold back. Just like a man.

  But this feels like an important book. How Not To Be A Boy is heartbreaking in the right places, and Webb writes fluently and stylishly, with a light touch. And the central thesis is compellingly drawn – that patriarchy is an evil that limits men as well as women.

  Comedy is hard, honesty is harder. Robert Webb has managed to master both.

• Verbal Remedy
  http://www.verbalremedy.co.uk/how-not-to-be-a-boy-review/
  Word count: 971

  This is Robert Webb’s memoir, How Not To Be a Boy. The book is split into two acts – the first half explores Webb’s experiences throughout his childhood (with chapters titled after what boys should be or do) and the second is based on his life at university and adulthood (with chapters named after after what men should be or do).

  After an overture which narrates a day in Webb’s life where he is 15 years old and rehearsing a sketch for his school’s revue, ostentatiously to impress a girl he likes, whilst meandering off on relevant tangents which call forward to key moments in Webb’s life, Webb begins his memoir at early childhood.

  He recounts growing up in his family home where he learned to fear his abusive father. This is followed by Webb recounting how his mum eventually divorced and kicked out his dad and remarried and his experiences of being in junior school before getting in to a grammar school.

  The rest of Act One focuses on Webb’s growth through his secondary school career – the need for boys to only accidentally be good academically (for they can’t put in effort, that would be swottie); the need to have physical prowess and competency, Webb both coming to realisations about his sexuality and his desire to build a career and become famous from acting and comedy – before Webb’s mother, who was his hero, suddenly passes away from cancer.

  We should really start a How Not To Be a Boy drinking game where you take a sip of a tough guy’s drink like Bacardi and Coke every time you notice a male turning a negative emotion into anger.
  — p.168

  What followers is a shorter Act Two where Webb takes us through his application to university; his success within Footlights (and meeting David Mitchell); his accessing therapy and almost being kicked out of university; and a string of failed relationships before ending on how he came close to becoming the one thing he had spent his entire life trying to avoid becoming – his dad.

  Because, he explains:

  The great thing about refusing to feel feelings is once you’ve denied them, you don’t have to take responsibility for them. Your feelings will be someone else’s problem – your mother’s problem, your girlfriend’s problem, your wife’s problem. If it has to come out at all, let it come out as anger. You’re allowed to be angry. It’s boyish and man-like to be angry.

  He then goes on to explain how Abigail, his wife, managed to turn him around, so he could get to the point he is at now.

  Robert Webb artfully picks out key events and moments from the 43 years of his life covered in the book which are then told with dry wit and peppered with nerdy references (the book has 36 Star Wars references from beginning to end. Yes I counted).

  He allows the reader a very clear insight into exactly how he felt both in that moment and how he feels now, looking back, before, usually with the use of inversion or irony, deconstructing the events with a feminist commentary pointing out the masculinity in effect and the damage it caused and will cause.

  Even though a large amount of the first two chapters depict the unhealthy actions of Webb’s father towards him, his brothers and mother, it’s clear from the detailed and persistent analysis that Webb makes that he believes that, as is very often the case, his father was very much a product of strong masculine stereotypes and societal pressure, rather than a man acting on malice. This is an understanding that allows him to reconcile with his father during his early adulthood.

  Webb similarly draws out experiences of typical schoolyard behaviour, as well as examples from student life and from his graduate and married life and picks these apart, as well as his own behaviours and how they were influenced by expectations of masculinity.

  The feeling I experienced almost constantly from this book was how relatable it was for me – events like not being interested or good at football; getting into a grammar school; having low-key suicidal thoughts; or having to resit A-levels, getting into university; trying to impress girls; getting into comedy; realising I needed therapy; academic struggles; the demand to try to conform to what appears to be the societal rules and expectations of being male when you’re not that masculine a person anyway.

  There’s plenty of stuff that Webb experienced that I hadn’t, and that I’m sure other men have, and would find relatable – like having to deal with the grief of a parent’s death when you’re told grief isn’t a masculine emotion. The book very importantly takes each of these incidents and deconstructs them. Webb’s scathing attitude makes it very clear that the patriarchal expectations on men are dangerous and damaging.

  Much like how Laura Bates’ Everyday Sexism can help men struggling to recognise the effects of the patriarchy and ongoing societal sexist norms have on women, How Not To Be a Boy highlights with similar efficiency the way the patriarchy is as damaging to men in its pressure for us to adhere to toxic masculinity.

  As Webb himself points out: “[The patriarchy] is dangerous for girls. And if I’ve tried to say anything in this book, I’ve tried to say it’s dangerous for boys too. Feminism is not about men versus women; it’s about men and women versus [the patriarchy].”

• The Scotsman
  https://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/culture/edinburgh-festivals/book-review-how-not-to-be-a-boy-by-robert-webb-1-4543765
  Word count: 477

  Robert Webb makes people laugh. Along with David Mitchell, he formed one of the most successful English comedy double acts of recent times. The former Footlights member is best known for playing Jez, the likeable waster in the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show, and for the rather patchier sketch show That Mitchell And Webb Look. They remain in demand – a new sitcom written by the duo is expected to premiere later this year.

  As well as a glittering career as a performer, Webb has never shied away from voicing a political opinion. A committed Labour supporter, he was one of 200 celebrities who wrote an open letter calling on Scots to vote No in the 2014 independence referendum. He endorsed the party at this year’s general election despite his public misgivings on Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. In the same year as the indyref, Webb wrote a moving essay in the New Statesman, the favoured magazine of all North London Labour supporters, on his childhood in rural Lincolnshire and coping with the death of his mother. Under the headline “How not to be a boy”, Webb explained his belief that the concept of boys figuring out how to be men was “horseshit”, adding: “notions of gender pointlessly separate men from women but also mothers from daughters and fathers from sons”.

  Webb has now expanded his thoughts into a memoir of the same name. How Not To Be A Boy is part showbiz autobiography, part political essay. Not many celebrity books aimed at the Christmas market would be brave enough to include footnotes and references to Science magazine, but Webb wants us to know his arguments are empirically sound. “Other people have covered this ground much better than I could – what with being scientists,” he jokes. His personal convictions on gender identity are sound, however, and he nimbly demolishes the various social constructs the average teenage boy is expected to embrace – act tough, don’t talk about feelings, don’t cry etc.

  At its best, this book sparkles with emotional insight and good humour. It is impossible not to be moved when he discusses his mother’s death from breast cancer as Webb is preparing to leave school. But other sections – particularly the reminiscences about small town life and rough classmates – feel tediously familiar. Webb was a grammar school boy in one of the few local authority areas in England to retain a selective system.

  There remains a strong argument against such a policy, but the fact is such a system helped him to get a place at Cambridge and enter the elite world of professional drama. Some readers, many of whom will have survived far worse schools in more deprived parts of the country, would be justified in asking “So what?” when confronted with another tale of small town insularity.