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Robert Webb: ‘I was never very good at being a boy’

In this extract from his new memoir, the comedian and actor revisits a village childhood overshadowed by the violent temper of his father and the premature death of his mother. Below, he talks to Alex Clark

My first home was a house called Slieve Moyne in the village of Woodhall Spa, in Lincolnshire. In later years I would think of the place as Tatooine, the planet Luke Skywalker imagines to be furthest from the bright centre of the universe. But for now, it was the universe and one with which I was perfectly content. There was just one problem. When we first meet Luke on Tatooine, he has an issue with his mysteriously absent father. My father, on the other hand, was all too present. And his name might as well have been Darth Vader. Actually it was Paul. It’s a silly comparison of course. Dark Lords of the Sith aren’t constantly wasted.

It’s the mid-1970s and I live with Mum, Darth Vader and my two older brothers, Mark and Andrew.

Imagine a child’s drawing of a house. This one would show three bedrooms upstairs, the little one with Rupert the Bear wallpaper for me, the middle one for the grownups and the one at the other end containing Mark and Andrew wearing denim waistcoats and walloping each other with skateboards (because that’s what Big Brothers do). There is smoke coming out of the chimney, as it should in all drawings of this kind; in this case provided by Darth holding double pages of the Daily Mail against the fireplace to encourage the flames. Sometimes he gets distracted while doing this because he’s shouting at James Callaghan on TV, and the paper catches fire. He has to throw the lot into the fireplace, which, of course, sets fire to the chimney.

He has laid the fire using the logs and sticks that he chopped up with the chainsaw left leaning against the back door, the one he uses for his job as a woodsman on the local estate (my Daddy is a woodcutter). The Mummy will be in the tiny kitchen, standing over an electric hob (because that’s what Mummies do) and stirring Burdall’s Gravy Salt into a saucepan of brown liquid.

It’s a static picture, of course, so we can’t see that the Mummy’s hands are shaking because she knows that the Daddy has spent all afternoon in the pub and has come home in one of his “tempers” (because that’s what Daddies do). If, during tea, one of the Big Brothers speaks with his mouth full or puts his elbows on the table, the Daddy has been known to knock him clean off his chair. The Mummy will start shouting at the Daddy about this but, of course, she can’t shout as loud as the Daddy. No one can shout as loud as the Daddy or is as strong as the Daddy, which is why the Daddy is in charge. The Little Brother will start crying at this point and will most likely be told to shut up by the Big Brothers who are themselves trying not to cry because that’s another thing that they’ve learned doesn’t go down well with the Daddy.

I remember the summer’s day when I was watching the Six Million Dollar Man battling with Sasquatch and the following moment I was being lifted an impossible number of feet into the air and thrashed several times around the legs with a pair of my own shorts that had been found conveniently nearby. Dropped back on the settee, I looked at those navy-blue shorts with a baffled sense of betrayal. They were my shorts. My navy-blue shorts with the picture of Woody Woodpecker on the pocket. And he’s just hit me with them. Maybe in the seconds before I was watching Steve Austin, I’d spilt something or broken something. Maybe I’d got too close to the fire or the chainsaw. Who knows? Actually telling a child why he was being physically punished was somehow beneath the dignity of Paul’s parenting style.

There are happy early memories from Slieve Moyne too, of course. Singing along with Mum whenever her beloved Berni Flint appeared on Opportunity Knocks ; the thrilling day the household acquired its first Continental Quilt (a duvet), which my brothers and I immediately used as a fabric toboggan to slide down the purple stairs; playing in the snow, playing in the garden – all the sunlit childhood fun you’d expect from times when Dad was out.

Best of all was sitting on the back seat of the car, Mum driving us between the golf club where my grandparents (and Auntie Trudy) work in the kitchen and our new bungalow in the next village. It’s a journey we made many times a week and the tap of her wedding ring on the gearstick is one of the happiest sounds of childhood. It means that I’m alone with Mum.

“Quiet boy”, “painfully shy”, “you never know he’s there”: these are some of the phrases I catch grownups using when they talk about me. But not here, not in the car with Mum. And definitely not when Sailing by Rod Stewart comes crackling over the MW radio. The gusto of our sing-a-long is matched only by the cheerful lousiness of my mother’s driving.

“We are SAAAAILING” (tap, second gear), “we are SAAAAILING” (tap, into third), “cross the WAAAATER, tooo the SEEEA” (tap, stall, as she tries to take a left turn), “we are sail –” (tap, handbrake, ignition), “we are s –” (tap, ignition, choke, window-wipers), “to be NEEEAR you” (triumphant restart, cancel window-wipers, tap, crunch into first), “to be FREEE!”

I like it here. There are no men, and there are no other boys. I don’t seem to be very good at being a boy and I’m afraid of men.

One man in particular.

To be fair, there were moments when he was affectionate. For example, if he was in a good mood he might crouch down in front of me, put his massive fist under my nose and say in a joke-threatening way, “Smell that and tremble, boy!” For years I wasn’t quite sure what this phrase meant – “smellthatandtremble” – it was just a friendly noise that my dad made when he was trying to make me laugh. Oh, and I laughed all right. I mean, you would, wouldn’t you?

But in general, I’m afraid my memories of those first five years in that house tend towards the nature of a bad dream. To avoid real bad dreams, the trick was to make sure there was a gap in my bedroom curtains where the light could come in. But the real problem was not avoiding the night-time imaginings but the daytime reality. Not the Phantom, but the Menace. And he was unavoidable.

A classic of this sci-fi/horror genre was the episode called “Do an eight, do a two”. This family favourite has me, aged five, sat in the living room with a pencil and paper, being yelled at by Dad to “DO AN EIGHT! DO A TWO!” It had come to his attention that I wasn’t doing very well in my first year at primary school and that, in particular, I was unable to write the numbers 8 or 2. Actually, I could write an 8, but I did it by drawing two circles, a habit which Mrs Morse of St Andrew’s Church of England Primary School found to be lacking calligraphic rigour. Anyway, the rough transcript of “Do an eight, do a two” goes like this:

Dad: DO AN EIGHT! DO A TWO!

Mum: He’s trying! There’s no point shouting!

Dad: JUST DO AN EIGHT!

(Five-year-old, sobbing, does an eight with two circles)

Dad: NOT LIKE THAT! DO A PROPER ONE!

(Five-year-old dribbles snot on to the paper and does some kind of weird triangle)

Dad: WHAT’S THAT MEANT TO BE? DO AN EIGHT!

Mark: Or a two!

(Eleven-year-old Mark, desperate for any rare sign of approval from Dad, has joined in)

Dad: WHY CAN’T YOU DO ONE? JUST DO AN EIGHT!

Mark: Or a two if you like, Robbie! Why not do a two, probably?

(Mum takes five-year-old on her lap. Five-year-old thinks it’s over)

(Comedy pause, titters from the studio audience)

Mum: Try and do a two, darling.

(Five-year-old freaks out. Then somehow manages a wobbly two)

Dad: DO A TWO!

Mum: HE’S DONE A BLOODY TWO!

Dad: DO ANOTHER ONE!

Mark: Or an eight!

You might be thinking “this is nothing” compared to your own experiences with a domestic hardcase. Or maybe you’re wondering how my mother put up with it for an instant. The truth is, we were all terribly afraid of him. In any case, Mum was probably just biding her time at that point. She had already made her plans. Before the end of that first school year, she divorced him and he moved out.

**************

I started keeping a diary after my 17th birthday. Early in March 1990 I wrote:

“My concern for Mum deepens. I’m quite ashamed to realise that this is the first reference in this diary to worrying about anyone but myself. Mum has been in hospital since last Friday with what was supposed to be a chest infection. In fact she has a few cancerous cells on her lung. She might have to have chemotherapy. Jesus Christ I’m so worried – I love her so much. I must resolve to be less selfish, to talk to her about things more often. Life without her is unthinkable. Literally unthinkable.”

And then, at the end of an entry a few weeks later:

“Found out for sure, the week before last, on Wednesday March 21st, that Mum definitely isn’t going to recover. She has about four months. I don’t want to talk about it. Even to you.”

That day, I had arrived home from school and felt a sudden tightness in my chest. Dad’s van was parked neatly outside the bungalow.

Dad is at the kitchen table with Derek, Mum’s second husband. He starts talking and the world ends.

“Y’mum’s poorly, boy. It’s terminal.”

You can get quite a lot of juice out of that word “terminal”, if you speak with a Lincolnshire accent and are quite drunk. The way he says it, the “er” sound is dug from the very depths of his diaphragm.

I look across at Derek, who is leaning an elbow on the table with a hand covering his mouth. He nods a tiny confirmation. Incredibly, somewhere in the room, Dad is still talking. “It’s ’orrible, boy, but that’s life. Now, I don’t know if you want to come and live with me or … ” he looks around the kitchen, “I mean, you’re probably going to need a cleaner, Derek, because … well, it’s hard keeping a place clean.” Derek nods. “Josie, who cleans my house, she could probably come and do a couple of hours a week.”

Derek says, “What does she charge, like?”

“Well, I give her a fiver, mate.” Derek is alarmed by the prospect of paying Josie £5 and he’s about to haggle, but stops because he’s noticed I’m crying.

“I know, boy,” Dad says, “it’s ’orrible.”

Here I am then, with Mum about to vanish, stuck here in the kitchen with the Idiot Brothers talking about Dad’s cleaner.

When Dad leaves, I notice that on the side of the van is painted the name of his business, which today looks less like an advertisement than like a rare flash of self-awareness: Paul Webb, Ltd.

I’m next to Mum on her bed, later that day. With effort, she draws herself up on her stack of pillows. “I’m sorry, darling, that wasn’t a very nice way to find out. I should have told you myself.”

I make an ineffectual gesture to help with the pillows but I’m scared of getting in her way. She’s got Dallas on the portable telly with the sound turned low. Bobby Ewing is having a long meeting with assorted oil barons.

“Don’t worry about me,” I say. Her skin is a yellow-grey now and at the top of each breath there’s a distant gurgle which gets closer by the week. All the signs that I chose not to see suddenly reveal themselves with pathetic eloquence. She’s obviously dying.

She says, “Now then, is there anything you want to ask me? Or is there anything you want to say to me?” I feel a thousand future selves lean in to listen with interest. I rack my brain: there is no question up to the task and no statement either, apart from “I love you”, but I don’t trust myself to say that without losing it. I don’t want to do that; I’m her son and I want to be strong. So I say the thing that bothers me most about being 17 and me.

“I suppose … I mean, this isn’t important.”

“I’m a virgin.”

She starts to smile, but doesn’t want to look like she’s taking the piss. Also, smiling takes effort and she’s working hard to talk. She says, “I won’t say I’m surprised; I won’t say I’m not surprised. But you’ll catch up.”

“All my mates have got girlfriends.”

“You’ll overtake them. In everything.”

This emboldens me, so I try a promise. “I’m going to get three As and go to Cambridge, Mum.”

She’s ready for this one. “I know you’ll be happy wherever you end up, Rob. I’m proud of you already, so don’t worry.”

What are we saying to a boy told to “man up” or to “act like a man”?

Often, we’re saying, “Stop expressing those feelings.” And if a boy hears that enough, it actually starts to sound uncannily like, “Stop feeling those feelings.”

It sounds like this: “Pain, guilt, grief, fear, anxiety: these are not appropriate emotions for a boy because they will be unacceptable emotions for a man. Your feelings will become 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.”

When people saw Dad walking down the street in Woodhall Spa, they did not think: “Ah, there goes Paul Webb, a walking powder-keg of repressed grief.” Paul’s public face was beloved by more or less the entire village. Generous with his time, charismatic, cheeky, and straightforwardly kind. Everyone adored him. But then, they didn’t have to live with him.

Mark drives me directly to school from my mum’s funeral. My Queen Elizabeth Grammar School sixth-form blazer and tie are both black and so, this morning, I had an off-the-peg funeral costume so long as I unpicked the gold badge from the blazer.

I had the badge in my back pocket during the funeral. I sew it back on in the car, quickly and about as well as you’d expect for someone who would normally have asked his mum to do it.

There’s a lower sixth form trip to Nottingham, to a university fair. It’s a sort of open day where many university admissions officers will be gathered in a big hall to hand out prospectuses and have a chat. I don’t want to miss it.

In Nottingham, the university reps are seated behind desks around the sides of a huge hall to talk to A-level students from far and wide. The longest queues are to see the guys from Nottingham or Leicester Polytechnics (they become universities a year later), followed by a medium number for big civic universities like Leeds and Manchester, a shy smattering for Bristol and Durham and then … I peer into the far corner – ah yes. A grey-haired lady with a Cambridge sign on her desk is sitting completely alone.

I start walking towards her, wondering who the hell I think I am.

I hover awkwardly next to the empty seat across from her. She looks up suddenly and says “Please!”, gesturing to the chair.

I take the seat, saying, “I … I just thought I’d … say hello.”

“I’m glad you did.” She gives me a conspiratorial smile and waits. I don’t have a thought in my head. “Well, I’m doing my A-levels … ” Oh, you dick. Every fucker in the room is doing their A-levels. “ … and erm … ” I go completely dry.

“And you have an interest in applying to Cambridge,” she offers.

“Yes!” I almost shout with relief and embarrassment. I’m actually blushing. This was a terrible idea. Just keep talking. “I’m only at a grammar school… ” “Which one?”

“Er, it’s in a market town in Lincolnshire. I mean, it’s only … ”

“Queen Elizabeth’s. In Horncastle.”

I stare at her. “Yeah. You’ve heard of us, then.”

“We’ve heard of everyone.”

Oh my God. She’s going to recruit me as a spy! Do I want to be a spy?! No, not really! I’m still looking at her, dumbfounded.

“And is there a particular subject you’re interested in studying at Cambridge?”

I wish she would stop saying Cambridge. People will hear. “English.”

“My own subject. And a particular college?”

“My own college! Well, now!” If this were a first date, it would be going quite well.

“The thing is … I only got four As and four Bs for my GCSEs. So, y’know, nothing to write home about.”

She gives a little chuckle. “But nothing to be ashamed of. I assume one of your As was in English?”

“And you’re doing English at A-level.”

“And you expect to get an A in that.”

“ … Yeah, I do actually.”

“And you could manage one more A grade? Another A and a B, possibly?”

My confidence evaporates and suddenly this is ridiculous.

AAB? I haven’t finished an essay in five weeks.

“Well, that might be … it’s been a bit tricky lately. It’s sometimes hard to get started, what with … I mean, like this morning, it’s not as if … ” I can hear my voice start to wobble.

She’s frowning in concern and puts her palms flat on the table. “What was it about this morning? Sometimes if we can identify a particular barrier to … ”

“Well, this morning doesn’t really count because it was my mum’s funeral. But generally, I’ve just found it … ”

“I’m sorry, did you say that this morning was your mother’s funeral?”

“This morning?”

“That’s right. So it’s all gone a bit … I feel stupid for even thinking about … your … university.” She’s looking at me with a level of compassion that makes me want to tell her to cheer the fuck up. I blink at the wall behind her, feeling dizzy, and put a hand on my edge of the table to steady myself, even though I’m sitting down.

She says, “I’m very sorry to hear that news. May I at least offer you some reassurance, erm … ?”

“Let me at least say this, Robert. I’m Catherine, by the way. You’re sitting in the right chair, talking to the right person. It’s not stupid in the slightest for you to think of us.”

Catherine talks briefly about open days and how I ought to come and have a look around at least two colleges. Then she reaches across and gives my hand a quick squeeze. “Good luck.”

Back at school, I wait till no one else is in the form room and ask my English teacher Mrs Slater if it’s ridiculous for me to think of Cambridge. “No, not ridiculous,” she says quickly, and then, “We’ve certainly sent dimmer people than you there.” This is encouraging. “Although,” she adds thoughtfully, “not for quite a while.”

“Dad, can we have a quick word?” This is the first time I’ve actually asked to talk to him about anything. I got the offer of a place from Robinson College, Cambridge. But then my A-level grades didn’t cut it.

“Erm, you know you said that I could come and live with you if … ”

“Well, if the offer’s still open … ”

“Oh, YES mate! Good old boy! You don’t need to ask, bo – Rob. It’s your home, Rob. Good!”

“It’s just I’ve got to retake these exams and … ”

“You can have your old room, mate. Now, it’s mucky as hell at the minute because I’m propagating marigolds in it, but I know exactly where to put them. When are you thinking of moving in?”

“Well, I need to tell Derek. It’s really only for a few months, what with these exams and … ”

“Derek been driving you up the wall. And little Anna-Beth, bless ’er. It’s not what you NEED, is it, boy? You need some bloody PEACE, mate. For your exams!”

“Now my lady-friend Delia comes to stay with us a few days a week, but we won’t mind her. You remember Delia, boy?” Ah yes, Mum used to call her Delilah.

“She’ll not bother you, mate, you do your own thing.”

I say, “So I’ll tell Derek tonight and p’haps move in at the weekend.”

“Righto, boy.”

I break the news to Derek that night and he makes it easier for me by saying all the wrong things. “Well, y’poor old mum wanted you to stay here with us.”

This is how he’s been referring to Mum for the last 16 months – “y’poor old mum”. I suppose it’s meant with love, but the condescension of it drives me nuts. In my memory, she’s alive and well, not poor and old.

“Anna-Beth’s gonna miss yer.” I take another breath. I feel terrible about my little sister. It doesn’t occur to me that when he says she’s going to miss me, he’s actually saying that he’s going to miss me. If he liked me that much, why had he been so annoying? In fact why is he being so annoying now?

The priority now in the masculine mind of the boy who claims he doesn’t like masculinity is to become angry with Derek. Obviously I’m still heartbroken about Mum, so I’m angry with Derek. I feel guilty about abandoning Anna-Beth, so I’m angry with Derek. I feel sorry for Derek, so I’m angry with Derek. There again, even if I noticed any of this, I wouldn’t share it with Derek because I’m obviously afraid of upsetting Derek, which itself makes me angry with Derek.

Now that I am a man, I have graduated to an advanced level of blaming other people for unwanted feelings.

I say, “I just need a change of scene.”

After another stretch of consistently failing to do any revision, and then pulling out of my November resits, I go home to tell Dad that I’m going to be living with him for another seven months. I’ll do my “straight-talking” – short, concise sentences, fairly loud. He appreciates that.

“Dad, I haven’t been very honest with you about the amount of work I’ve been doing.”

“I’ve actually done nothing.”

“I’ve found it really hard to concentrate. I don’t know why – maybe I … ”

“Y’mum just died, mate.” He says it like it’s the most obvious reason in the world, which it suddenly is. So much for my straight-talking. I wasn’t expecting this.

I say, quietly, “Yeah, but that was over a year ago.”

“It was yesterday, boy. Might as well have been yesterday.”

He’s still grieving too. I had no idea.

“It’s ’ard, Rob, what you’re doing. I couldn’t do it. I was a dead loss at school.”

“Beaker says it’s curtains for Cambridge.”

He looks up. “What does that wally know?”

“Well … he knows quite a lot, but … we’ll see.”

“We will see, boy. We will. ‘Curtains’,” he says. Bugger Beaker.”

Next year Dad is driving his Vauxhall Cavalier with Mark in the passenger seat. I’m crammed in the back, along with a massive suitcase and a new but artfully battered rucksack. Normal service has been resumed: Dad completely lost it trying to take the front wheel off my bike before stuffing both parts into the boot.

“What do you think the bird situation will be like at Cambridge then, Bobs?”

Luckily, I’ve never called them birds out loud, so I won’t have to adjust that bit of vocabulary. I’ve been practising for years talking the way I think a Cambridge student talks, but only to a selected audience – Carole, Heather Slater and a couple of other teachers.

I’m currently under the impression that it’s all to do with irony and detachment. I think that whatever they say, clever people don’t mean it. I expect in the next hour to be in the exclusive company of people who would never dream of calling a spade a spade. The very idea! Surely, it’s all going to be rather camp. And by the time we pass Huntingdon, my accent is finally in line with the geography of England. It was a good four years ago that I started to say “carstle” instead of “caastle” and “ahp” instead of “oop”. All the affectations are coming home, I think. To the place where they won’t be affectations any more. No more pretending.

We find my room at Robinson College and Mark and Dad nearly piss themselves when they see a note on the bed, reading “YOUR BEDMAKER’S NAME IS ALISON”. Finally, Little Lord Fauntleroy has staff.

I walk them back to the car. Mark now has business cards and he gives one to me. On the back, he’s written, “Whatever the time, day or night, if you need me, give me a call.” It occurs to me for the very first time that he’s worried about me being here on my own in this new place where he can’t keep an eye out for me. I thank him, even though the guilty truth is that I’ve been at Robinson for 10 minutes and haven’t felt safer or more at home since Mum died.

“Right then, boy,” Dad says. “See you at Christmas. Try not to get VD. Good luck with it all, me old beauty.” He’s looking emotional too, but mainly he’s already annoyed about the drive home, as is poor Mark. We shake hands. They get in the Cavalier and I wave them off until the car is out of sight.

It’s a pity I’m wearing trainers because I have no heel to turn on. I turn anyway, put my hands in my pockets and saunter up the brick walkway of the main college gate. I didn’t give Darth much of a battle. This will be different. I can stop worrying about how to be a boy. I can stop showing off about how not to be a boy. I’ll just be myself. That shouldn’t be too difficult, should it?

The above is an edited extract from How Not To Be a Boy, published 29 August by Canongate (£16.99). To order a copy for £12.74 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99

Click here for information on Robert Webb’s event dates, including Edinburgh International Book Festival, go to canongate.co.uk.

Webb’s new sitcom, Back, also starring David Mitchell, begins on Channel 4 this autumn.

Q&A with Robert Webb

You evoke growing up in a small town very vividly. How much do you think it has stayed with you? That thing about it being closed in: when it all started to go well for me and David [Mitchell], and I got a little bit of profile and a tiny bit famous, it was very familiar, because it was just like living in Woodhall. That sense of surveillance was not new. You’d come home and Dad would say, “So-and-so says you were in the bakery today, getting a ham roll. Because we’ve got some ham in the fridge, so I wondered why…”. Everybody sees everything.

Did you find that unbearable? I didn’t like it.

One of your responses to it, as a child and adolescent, was to withdraw into silence… Yes, I was acutely aware that I was shy. What is the thing about Robert? Robert is shy, it’s his defining characteristic. It started to feed into the gender thing. I thought that boys were supposed to be boisterous, to be cheeky and cajoling.

But at the same time you also wanted to perform from a very early age, didn’t you? Yes, it was ever so important because, having said that I was shy, what I could do was do impressions of teachers. And I could make up silly songs. It really helped; I became less frightened, and it helped with having some friends. I was never bullied because I amused a little gang of boys.

So it was a kind of protection? By the time I got to university it was so important I wore it like a suit of armour.

You’re fearless about revisiting your childhood diaries, however painful or mortifying they are… Apart from the Mum entries about finding out that she was ill, there’s so much embarrassing stuff about fancying girls that I didn’t have to repeat anything. What I would say to that young man now would be: don’t worry, there really is a lot of time for this. It’s fine. Don’t worry about your virginity. Seventeen is not particularly old. And also, instead of blaming these girls for not fancying you, you know that school blazer you’ve been wearing five days a week for three summers? Why don’t you get that dry-cleaned, or ask Mum how to get it washed? Or why don’t you have a bath more than once or twice a week? Maybe pop a mint in your mouth after lunch. And maybe don’t wear a tie to parties.

You’re also very open about more recent times – finding fatherhood hard, drinking too much, and so on… I drink a lot less than I used to, but I haven’t given up altogether. And I do a lot more work in the house than I used to, but it’s still not equal to Abbie’s contribution. I still get angry when actually I’m feeling embarrassed, or when I’m feeling anxiety or fear. I catch myself much more often. Abbie and I don’t have big rows any more because I’m being less of a dickhead. So it’s all going in the right direction, but I couldn’t possibly pretend that everything’s perfect now. I don’t think anyone would believe me.

You suffered a huge loss with the premature death of your mother, but you also explore your fractured relationship with your father… It was always going to be a bit of a struggle. And I wouldn’t say we got there but there were moments where we were definitely on the same team. And he was just always on your side. You were his son, and that was that.

And what was it like to write about your mum? I was spending time with her again. This might sound ghoulish but you’re sort of reanimating these characters from your life. You’re turning a person into a character, but there she is, walking around and talking.

You portray yourself as a young man desperate for fame. Do you feel, now, that you’re famous enough? Yes I do. I really do. I’m not going to grumble about it but it does come with some downsides, not least what it does to your head. It’s not normal to walk down the street and have people randomly grin at you.

They might grin again once your new project with David Mitchell hits the screens. What’s it about? It’s called Back . I love my new character, who’s nothing like Jeremy [from Peep Show ], so that’s enjoyable, because Andrew is clever, charming, and probably a needy people-pleaser, possibly with a huge streak of malice, who comes back into David’s life potentially just to make him incredibly miserable, and David’s very good at playing miserable.

Anything else on the horizon? I’m going to write a novel. It’s two paragraphs long. So there’s an idea. A good idea.

Interview by Alex Clark

• Autobiography and memoir
• The Observer
• Robert Webb
• Biography books

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HOW NOT TO BE A BOY

by Robert Webb ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 5, 2018

Intermittently funny but ultimately a frustrating missed opportunity.

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.”

Pub Date: June 5, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-78689-008-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Canongate

Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY

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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen

by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal

by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel

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WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...

A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.

Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”

Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6

Page Count: 248

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015

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Book review: How Not to Be a Boy by Robert Webb

M asculinity has never been a good fit for the actor and comedian Robert Webb. As an adolescent, he was bad at football, moved by poetry and harboured feelings for other boys. His working-class father, meanwhile, was lauded in their Lincolnshire village precisely because he was a “brawl-magnet, tit-prospector and piss-artist”. It doesn’t take a psychologist to foresee that after Webb’s mother died when he was 17 a crisis was imminent.

This book is Webb’s candid account of how he channelled his grief into anger and shabby behaviour. Its aim is to show the damage that restrictive gender roles cause. The strongest part is the straightforward coming-of-age memoir. Webb, best known as a co-star in the sitcom Peep Show, has a knack for wry social observation.

Related articles

New Release Book Review: Come Again by Robert Webb

Author: Robert Webb

Published:  March 17th   2020

Publisher:  Allen & Unwin

Genres:   Fiction, Contemporary

RRP:  $29.99

Rating:  3 stars

The debut novel – a time-travelling story of love and adventure – from the number one bestselling author of  How Not To Be a Boy  and star of  Peep Show.

Kate’s husband Luke – the man she loved from the moment she met him twenty-eight years ago – died suddenly. Since then she has pushed away her friends, lost her job and everything is starting to fall apart.

One day, she wakes up in the wrong room and in the wrong body. She is eighteen again but remembers everything. This is her college room in 1992. This is the first day of Freshers Week. And this was the day she first met Luke.

‘There. Standing in the doorway, politely letting someone out, running a careless hand though his dark hair. Luke Fairbright, nineteen years old, come again.’

British author Robert Webb is both a Sony and BAFTA award winner. He has one book, an autobiography under his belt, but Come Again is Webb’s first adult fiction offering. A story of love, grief, hope, grand adventure and change, Come Again offers an entertaining read for contemporary fiction readers.

In this sliding doors type scenario, Come Again looks at the possibility of falling in love for the first time again thanks to a magical possibility. In the present day, forty-something Kate is nursing a broken heart and a whole lot of grief following the loss of her husband Luke to a brain tumour. Kate has loved Luke for almost three decades and his loss has left a huge hole in her life. Unable to focus on her job, life or friends, Kate is inconsolable. When Kate reaches breaking point, wakes up in the past. Kate has been transported back to the pivotal moment in time when she first met Luke, her college years. Kate realises she has the opportunity to recreate the moment that she first fell in love with Luke. Kate also sees this leap back in time as a chance to change the future, can Kate save Luke? But when Kate messes with time and circumstance, the results may cause further complications for this grieving widow.

I am not familiar with the author of this novel, Robert Webb, so Come Again was my first taste of his work. A popular screen star and columnist, Webb ventures into the fiction world in his new release. Come Again is one of a spate of books that I have read recently that seem to have a strong visual and screen quality. I think my immediate impression of this book is that it would work far better on the small or big screen, especially as a great British rom com. The author’s background in the screen industry has influenced the style and direction of this novel.

Come Again is segregated into three distinct parts. When the story begins, we meet Kate, who is desperately grieving over the loss of her husband less than a year earlier to a brain tumour. Webb offers some insight into the world of grief and pain following such a tragic loss, which I appreciated.

‘Grief though . . . grief is the opposite of meaning; grief is where the present can’t breathe; where the past is everywhere you look; where every new moment is dead on arrival. Grief is Groundhog Day.’

I also sympathised with Kate and her situation. I had great hope that Kate would be able to pull herself through the grief process and come out the other side. In part two we are placed in a time warp situation as Kate is miraculously transported back to her youth, her college days, where she meets her husband Luke again. It took me awhile to get my head around this idea and as I have come to realise with time travel novels I had questions about the whole mechanics of the time travel situation. Anyway, I did see this as more a sliding doors situation, a what if. Imagine if you had the chance to recapture the moment you fell in love for the first time again, it is quite a romantic notion.  However, the complication to this narrative is that Kate is a forty plus widow and the Luke she falls in love with again is immature. Luke clearly needs much more time to grow. I did like how Kate saw the time leap as a lifeline as such, Kate has the power to change to course of Luke’s life and to warn him of his early death from a brain tumour. This aspect of the novel was interesting. However, there were some far fetched, almost ludicrous moments in Come Again , where Kate encounters gangsters, spies and karate chops her way through the road blocks she faces. It was all a bit silly to be honest and it steered me away from my full enjoyment of Robert Webb’s novel. Some may find it funny, but for me it just seemed absurd!

In the third and final part of the novel, Kate is thrown back into the present day after her sojourn in the past. We learn of the results of her tinkering with Luke’s life and the results were surprising. On reflection, this one didn’t really work for me, there were some glimmers of interest, which came from Kate’s emotional recovery process, along with some of the sequences in the past that enabled Webb to throw in some 90s nostalgia. I also genuinely wanted Kate to save Luke from his brain tumour, so I did care for these characters.

It would be a little remiss of me to say this one would be an easygoing read for those who want some escapism from reality, especially as Come Again deals with overwhelming grief and devastating loss. However, Come Again was a quick read and there are some witty moments that may appeal to those who are familiar with Webb’s work.

Come Again by Robert Webb was published on 17th March 2020 by Allen & Unwin. Details on how to purchase the book can be found here.

*Thanks extended to Allen & Unwin for providing a free copy of this book for review purposes .

*Book #6 of the 2020 International Male Author Challenge.

New Release Book Review: The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner

POPSUGAR READING CHALLENGE 2020: Midwife on the Orient Express by Fiona McArthur

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Books on the 7:47

Book review blog / author interviews / all things bookish, review: come again by robert webb.

• by Jen | Books on the 7:47
• Posted on April 21, 2020 April 18, 2020

Opening sentence: “She woke with her mouth forming a single word. ‘You'”.

If you’re looking for a book where you will never- ever second guess what’s going to happen next, then actor and comedian Robert Webb’s debut novel, Come Again , is the one for you. I don’t think I’ve read a book that takes me down so many genre paths in 300 pages!

And how to describe the genres? Well, we have a delicate and emotional story of a grieving, depressed widow that then takes a time-travelling twist, segues into an espionage thriller and has an ending that leaves you pondering.

So what’s the story?

When 45-year-old Kate Marsden looses her husband, Luke, her whole world crumbles. She is planning her suicide when she suddenly finds herself transported back in time to the exact moment she first met her husband. She is being given an opportunity to rewrite the course of her life – but will she? And that’s only half the story…

This was Fresher’s Week, October 1992. This wasn’t Day 10,000. This was Day 1.

Kate’s intriguing job at an online reputation management company (‘ Her job was to rewrite history. ‘) gives a great opportunity for Webb to make cutting references about today’s digital fake culture and the rich, privileged people who think they can dictate their own narrative of events (loved the sly Prince Andrew reference too!). Kate’s job also provides the high-octane second half to the narrative when she discovers some seriously shady happenings by her boss and has to do something about it.

Come Again is wonderfully written. It has some lovely turn of phrase, ( ‘the twenty-eight-year conversation was a few hours old’ ) which makes it a delight to read and clever repetition draws the story threads together, such as a version of the opening sentence that appears later: ‘She woke with her mouth forming a single word. ‘Shit.”

The Celebrity Novelist

It’s always interesting when celebrities write books – are they just jumping on a bandwagon or are they a great novelist too, alongside their day job? With Robert Webb, it’s very much the latter. If I read fiction by a celebrity, it is 100% swayed by if I like them as a person. Hence why I’ve read novels by Graham Norton and Ruth Jones and why I picked up this book.

Robert Webb’s memoir, How Not to be a Boy , is one of my favourite celeb bios, his unique tone of voice comes across loud and clear throughout and I could hear that same voice in Come Again ‘s story. This immediately endeared me to the book. From his political views to his thoughts on gender identity (that he explored in his memoir) it felt like there were a lot of autobiographical points in Come Again , which made it even more enjoyable for me.

Exciting, clever, funny and with a lot of insightful observations, Come Again is not the book I thought it was going to be. But I mean that in the best way possible. Kate is a great character, we go through so much with her and she feels so real. I’d happily read the next instalment of Kate’s life. And while, yes, the narrative does mean you have to suspend your disbelief at points, just go with the flow; let yourself get swept up in the story and you’ll finish feeling both heart-warmed and exhilarated.

• Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC;
• Published by  Canongate 23rd April 2020;

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How Not To Be a Boy

Robert Webb / Memoir / Non-Fiction

Buy the book

UK Publisher

Canongate Books

Date Published

August 29th, 2017

Translations

Host (Czech)

Dramatic Rights

THE NUMBER ONE  SUNDAY TIMES  BESTSELLER

RULES FOR BEING A MAN Don’t Cry;  Love Sport;  Play Rough;  Drink Beer;  Don’t Talk About Feelings But Robert Webb has been wondering for some time now: are those rules actually any use? To anyone?

Looking back over his life, from schoolboy crushes (on girls and boys) to discovering the power of making people laugh (in the Cambridge Footlights with David Mitchell), and from losing his beloved mother to becoming a husband and father, Robert Webb considers the absurd expectations boys and men have thrust upon them at every stage of life.

Hilarious and heartbreaking,  How Not To Be a Boy  explores the relationships that made Robert who he is as a man, the lessons we learn as sons and daughters, and the understanding that sometimes you aren’t the Luke Skywalker of your life – you’re actually Darth Vader.

Quite simply brilliant. I (genuinely) cried. I (genuinely) laughed out loud. It's profound, touching, personal yet universal . . . I loved it.

- JK Rowling

Takes us deftly from hilarity to heart-stopping hurt . . . A truly great read, full of heart.

- Dawn French

A witty, honest coming-of-age story with a subtext that tackles masculinity and manhood. Webb has a storytelling skill many would kill for.

- Ian Rankin

A much-needed contribution to the vital conversation about the damage gender can do.

- Juno Dawson

Frank and compelling . . . Laugh-out-loud funny . . . also, in parts, blink-back-tears sad. Why would I blink back tears rather than give full rein to the emotion? Well, Webb can explain.

- Mail on Sunday

Written with wit and clarity, How Not To Be a Boy is a funny, rueful, truthful book. I enjoyed every page.

- Stephen Fry

A brilliant telling of a sad story, it is also a manifesto for a change in attitudes . . . I laughed innumerable times and cried twice . . . You should give a copy to any young male you care about.

- S Magazine, Sunday Express

Funny, poignant, revealing.

- Daily Telegraph

Simply brilliant.

- Joanna Lumley

A brilliant, brave book.

- Matt Lucas

If you have ever loved, liked or known a man, please read this book.

- Katy Brand

Very funny and wise on the perils of masculinity.

- Matt Haig

An amazing book: How Not To Be a Boy is brave, assured, immensely clever, funny and unsparing.

- Marina Hyde

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Come Again Paperback – July 14, 2020

Purchase options and add-ons.

• Print length 304 pages
• Language English
• Publication date July 14, 2020
• Dimensions 5.5 x 0.76 x 8.25 inches
• ISBN-10 0316500283
• ISBN-13 978-0316500289
• See all details

Editorial Reviews

About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Back Bay Books (July 14, 2020)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0316500283
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0316500289
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.8 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.76 x 8.25 inches
• #16,500 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books)
• #38,322 in Romantic Comedy (Books)
• #84,627 in Women's Literature & Fiction

About the author

Robert webb.

Robert Webb is a writer/performer usually involved in the business of making people laugh. He was the Webb half of the Bafta-winning That Mitchell and Webb Look on BBC2 and played Jeremy in the similarly Bafta-winning Peep Show for nine series on Channel 4. Other critically acclaimed TV credits include Back, Ambassadors and The Smoking Room. Robert occasionally has opinions and has worked as a columnist for various publications, notably The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. He is the author of the number one best-selling memoir How Not To Be a Boy and his debut novel, Come Again is out now.

Come Again is a genre novel. It is the first fully realised instance of the Grief-Stricken Time-Travelling Romcom Adventure genre. It may or may not be the last.

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In Memoriam

Robert K. Webb (1922–2012)

Sandra Herbert | Nov 1, 2012

Historian of Britain, Editor of the American Historical Review

Robert Kiefer Webb, professor emeritus of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, was born in Toledo, Ohio, on November 23, 1922, and died in Washington, D.C., on February 15, 2012. * In a long life he contributed in major ways not only to his own field of British history but also to the integrity and vigor of the academic profession as a whole.

Recognized from his youth for his academic brilliance, Bob Webb enrolled as an undergraduate at Oberlin College. As for so many young men of his generation, his studies were interrupted by war. Bob served in the U.S. Army Artillery from 1943 to 1946, rising to the rank of master sergeant. He said later that he learned in the army that he was good at deploying people and resources. In May 1945 while stationed in the Philippines, he wrote to Howard Robinson at Oberlin College contemplating his own future as an historian, speculating that, while he then knew U.S. history best, he might end up at Harvard studying 19th-century Great Britain, possibly something to do with church history. At war's end Bob returned to Oberlin and took his AB summa cum laude in 1947. For graduate school, he chose Columbia over Harvard, prompting his Oberlin professor Frederick Artz, a Harvard alumnus, to quip that "I feel like a Baptist preacher whose daughter has gone on the stage." (It is worth noting that Bob's family background was Baptist.) Bob Webb received his PhD from Columbia in 1951, having spent two years at the University of London partly assisted by a Fulbright Fellowship.

Robert Webb concentrated on British history from the 1780s through the end of the 19th century. One overriding problem that engaged him was explaining the relative stability of the British state during a period of revolutions in France. In his first book, The British Working Class Reader, 1790–1848: Literacy and Social Tension (1955), Webb sought to understand "the challenge which a literate working class presented to its betters."

In Webb's subsequent work he explored the British tradition of religious dissent. He was interested in studying the British non-conformists on their own terms. He also saw their movement as providing a safety valve for releasing social tensions. In this Webb's work was congruent with that of the French historian Élie Halévy. As an indication of his high regard for Halévy, Webb translated his Era of Tyrannies: Essays on Socialism and War into English (1966). Among the English nonconformists Bob Webb settled on the Unitarians for his own work. He was drawn to them by a shared sense of the value of rational enquiry and because he noted the prominence of Unitarians among social reformers in 19th-century Britain, as, for example, in the Martineau family.

Webb's biography of one of the members of that family is still a standard work on the subject: Harriet Martineau: A Radical Victorian (1960). Over the course of the next 40 years, Bob published extensively on the English Unitarians, including numerous individual contributions to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Bob's last public lecture, again touching on the Unitarians, was a talk he gave in 2010 entitled "The Very Long Eighteenth Century: An Experiment in the History of Religion." Bob's contributions to the field of British history were honored in 1992 by the volume Religion and Irreligion in Victorian Society: Essays in Honor of R. K. Webb edited by R. W. Davis and R. J. Helmstadter.

In 1968 Webb published Modern England , which became the standard textbook for a generation of students. In 1980, with his former Columbia University colleague Peter Gay, Bob published Modern Europe Since 1815 , a thoughtful and elegantly written survey of the subject.

Webb served as an instructor of history at Wesleyan University from 1951 to 1953. He then moved to Columbia University where he remained for 17 years, during some of that time chairing the university's famed Contemporary Civilization Program. From 1968 to 1975 Webb was editor of the American Historical Review , then still published at the AHA's headquarters in Washington, D.C. (Bob's work on AHA projects continued; in 1995 he contributed the section on "Britain and Ireland Since 1760" to The American Historical Association's Guide to Historical Literature .) From 1975 to 1992 Bob Webb was professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and served in a number of critical administrative positions, including chair of the history department and, for a time, acting vice chancellor for academic affairs. During his career, Bob received two Guggenheim fellowships, and was for many years a member of the Educational Advisory Board of the Guggenheim Foundation. During his career Bob was also active in the national leadership of the American Association of University Professors.

UMBC was a young school, founded in 1966, and most of its history faculty were then in their thirties. Bob was half a generation older than the majority of his peers. Somewhat to our initial surprise, Bob took up his new position with zeal, investing his considerable energies in promoting the history department and the university. Bob traded off chairing responsibilities with Jim Mohr, and then passed the leadership torch to John Jeffries and Jim Grubb. Intellectually he was a ready resource to all of us. "Bob Webb taught the faculty," as Victor Wexler once put it. Bob was a loyal and generous colleague who could be counted on for a letter of reference, a witty anecdote, or a word of encouragement or consolation, as the occasion required. Throughout his career Bob aided other scholars in their work, most recently Linda Lear as she was writing her biography of Beatrix Potter. To the end of his life Bob was regarded with admiration and his affection by his colleagues. Bob is survived by his wife Patty Webb, their daughters Emily Martin and Margaret Pressler, and six grandchildren. Memorial contributions may be sent to UMBC to support its annual "Robert K. Webb Lecture" which is part of a Humanities Forum series open to the public.

—Sandra Herbert University of Maryland, Baltimore County

*We regret that the print version of this article had the wrong date.

Tags: In Memoriam

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