Robert Webb

Born in Lincolnshire in 1972, he studied English at Cambridge, where he joined Footlights and met David Mitchell, forming the comedy partnership Mitchell and Webb. They went on to make five series of their Sony Award-winning BBC Radio 4 sketch show, That Mitchell and Webb Sound, and for television, four series of the Bafta-winning That Mitchell and Webb Look for BBC2.    

As an actor, Webb is best known for playing Jeremy Usborne in Peep Show, which ran for nine series, making it Channel 4’s longest-running sitcom. The programme won two Baftas, two British Comedy awards and in 2004 was awarded the prestigious Rose D’Or for Best Comedy.

In the theatre, Webb has played numerous roles in London’s West End, most notably in the Olivier Award-winning Jeeves and Wooster: Perfect Nonsense, in which he gave a performance described by the critic Frank Cottrell-Boyce as ‘the definitive Bertie Wooster of his generation’.     

Webb’s documentary My Life In Verse focussed on the work of T S Eliot and featured Andrew Motion and Clive James, among others. His 2017 memoir How Not To Be a Boy entered the Sunday Times non-fiction chart at number one, was serialised in the Guardian and was abridged for Radio 4’s Book of the Week. The audiobook, narrated by Webb himself, was Audible’s bestselling memoir of 2017. His debut novel Come Again was published in 2020, with the audiobook read by Olivia Colman.    

He has written a weekly column for the Daily Telegraph, been an occasional contributor to the New Statesman and judged the BBC Young Writers’ Award. He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Lincoln.