WHY IT’S NOT IN WEBB’S NATURE TO ACT LIKE A MAN
Robert Webb is one half of the comedy duo Mitchell and Webb, best known for a series of sketch shows and the brilliant long-running Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show.
This, his first book, is a very frank and compelling memoir about his childhood and adolescence.
Webb grew up in a village in eastern England and was not, according to the prevailing notions of masculinity, very boyish; not much of a ‘lad’. He hated football, worshipped Michael Jackson, had a fairly advanced knowledge of the oeuvre of Elkie Brooks and read Shakespeare for fun. As a teenager, he was desperate for a girlfriend but was also sexually attracted to male friends.
His adored mother died of cancer when he was 17, sending him into a tailspin in which he battled suicidal thoughts. His problems did not disappear, as he had hoped, when he made it to Cambridge (which he saw as a way into comedy, via the esteemed Footlights drama club) and eventually he sought counselling. His post-university years and his career are skated over in fairly perfunctory fashion and we must hope there will be another book.
The key theme of this one is his critique of maleness and of the ‘man up’, ‘act like a man’ expectations we have of men and boys.
He is scathing about sexism, ‘gender conditioning’ and the ridiculous ways in which men feel they have to behave – but most of all he is scathing about Robert Webb. He does selfexamination to the point of self-flagellation, laying bare at length his ‘arrogant, insecure, minty dreadfulness’ and occasions when he has been a terrible colleague, boyfriend or, more latterly, husband.
That might make it sound grim – it’s not. ‘Laugh out loud funny’ is an overused and usually inaccurate description. It applies here. But How Not To Be A Boy is also, in parts, blinkback-tears sad. Why would I blink back tears rather than give full rein to the emotion? Well, Webb can explain.