“Masculinity causes a lot of deeply unnecessary problems”

Robert Webb was ‘rubbish’ at being a boy in a working class Lincolnshire family. And he had even more difficulty being a man, he tells Janet Christie, at least when following the so-called tenets of manhood including Drink Beer and Don’t Talk About Feelin

Two young men emerge from the toilets at an Edinburgh Festival venue.

“Too many women in those men’s toilets, what’s that about?” says one.

“Can’t blame them, their queue takes ages,” says the other.

“But they’re our toilets. It’s not right.”

“Whatever. I don’t mind. What if toilets were just toilets, not men’s or women’s?”

“Some women might want womenonly toilets.” “Yeah. Dunno. Let’s get a pint.” And off they go back to safer ground. Debates like this are more common in these days of nonbinary gender fluidity, but back in 1980s Lincolnshire, things were much simpler. Men knew what was expected of them. Robert Webb, Peep

Show comedian and actor certainly did, but as he asks in his book, How

Nottobeaboy , are the Rules for Being a Man – “Don’t Cry, Love Sport, Play Rough, Drink Beer and Don’t Talk About Feelings” – actually any use to anyone?

Launched this week at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, his moving memoir provokes both laughter and tears, as his adult self takes a look back at his life and what made him the man he is, and isn’t.

In Edinburgh with his family to launch the book and watch his comedian wife Abigail Burdess in her fringe show Abigail’s Party – Comedy

Cabaret, is Webb pleased with the reaction so far? JK Rowling called it “brilliant”, Dawn French found it “a truly great read” and Ian Rankin said it was a “witty, honest, coming of age story with a subtext that tackles masculinity and manhood.”

“I’m delighted, because you do it on your own and send it out and think, what if it’s s**t?” He laughs.

Webb has been sitting in a tiny room at his publisher’s office signing 1,000 copies of his book in record time, yet despite this his handshake is firm, one might even say manly, if we weren’t talking to an author keen to explode such gender stereotyping. Not that he puts it like that.

“I don’t use terms like patriarchy, I want people to read the book!” he says and laughs. He’s unwilling to give his idea of mature masculinity “capital letters and make it a ‘thing’” for fear of sounding preachy.

“I mean f*** off baldy Peep Show dick,” is how he puts it in the book.

Webb’s way into the debate, to demonstrate how the expectations of gender complicate lives, is through his own story, explaining how a working class kid from Lincolnshire who loves The Young Ones, Fry and Laurie, French and Saunders, ends up at Cambridge with a career as a comedy actor and writer.

Now 44 and married to writer, actor and stand-up, Abigail Burdess, with two daughters Esme, eight and Dorie, six, he takes us back to his small town childhood where he discovers he can make people laugh. We meet his beloved mother who dies of breast cancer when he’s 17, his father, aka Darth Vader, step-father and brothers and sister, and the objects of his schoolboy crushes (female and male). Then it’s on to Cambridge, where he meets long-term comedy partner David Mitchell, a successful TV career, marriage and fatherhood.

In his checked shirt, jeans and trainers, with his clear blue eyes and short blond hair, 44-year-old Webb seems ageless, part serious writer who’s been co-authoring hit shows for 20 years, part boyish comedian who at one point leaps out of his seat to dance with laughter.

First off, we dispense with the question so many people have asked me to ask him, in these days of ghost written celeb memoirs; did he actually write it himself?

“Oh my God,” he says. “My motherin-law even asked me that! She’s seen me coming into the front room, grumpy from writing… ‘Did you write it?’, of course I f***ing wrote it.” He laughs. “Yes, for the record, the idea of having anyone else write anything with my name on it fills me