Robert Webb: comedy, partnership and a voice of his own

Robert Webb’s best-known character, Jeremy “Jez” Usbourne in Peep Show, is a musician who drifts through life with more confidence than direction. The series made Webb and his comedy partner David Mitchell familiar to audiences across Britain, but it was one part of a career spanning sketch comedy, sitcom, stage, radio, presenting and books. Webb’s work with Mitchell has been central to that story; so have the roles and writing projects that took him beyond the duo.

From Lincolnshire to Cambridge

Webb was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, on 29 September 1972, and grew up in Woodhall Spa. He attended Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School in Horncastle. At school he became interested in drama and poetry and began writing parodies. The sitcoms he watched growing up included The Young Ones, Blackadder and Only Fools and Horses—a range of comic voices that formed part of his early frame of reference.

His route into performance took shape at Robinson College, Cambridge, where he studied English. He joined the university’s Footlights and became its vice-president. Webb met Mitchell at an audition for a Footlights production of Cinderella in 1993. They began working together soon afterwards: their first show, performed in January 1995, was titled Innocent Millions Dead or Dying – A Wry Look at the Post-Apocalyptic Age (With Songs). Webb later dismissed it in blunt terms, but the partnership it began would prove much more durable.

Before their best-known television work, the pair wrote for other performers and programmes, including Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller and the second series of Big Train. Their early screen appearances included The Jack Docherty Show and Comedy Nation. In 2000 they wrote and starred in the BBC sketch show Bruiser, an important early opportunity to establish their style as both writers and performers.

The double act and Peep Show

Mitchell and Webb’s first sketch series of their own, The Mitchell and Webb Situation, ran for six episodes in 2001. Their next major step came in 2003, when they began playing flatmates Mark Corrigan and Jeremy Usbourne in Channel 4’s Peep Show. Mitchell’s Mark is anxious and socially constrained; Webb’s Jez is a musician whose self-image often outruns his prospects. The characters’ friendship and rivalry supplied the sitcom with a distinctive engine.

Peep Show presented its characters’ thoughts through first-person inner monologues, giving viewers access to the gap between what they said and what they privately thought. The series ran for nine series, from 2003 to 2015, and became Channel 4’s longest-running sitcom. Webb and Mitchell shared the 2007 Royal Television Society award for Comedy Performance. Webb was also nominated for Best Television Comedy Actor at the British Comedy Awards in 2006 alongside Mitchell, and received an individual nomination in 2009.

The duo returned to sketch comedy on radio with That Mitchell and Webb Sound, which ran for five series, and on television with That Mitchell and Webb Look. The television series won the 2007 BAFTA for Best Comedy Programme or Series and received a further nomination in 2009. Their stage show, The Two Faces of Mitchell and Webb, toured from 2006 and was adapted from the pair’s sketch work. In 2007 they also appeared together in the film Magicians, with Webb playing modern magician Karl.

The partnership was not confined to scripted comedy. Webb and Mitchell appeared in the UK campaign for Apple’s “Get a Mac” adverts, a choice that drew criticism from some commentators who saw commercial work as inconsistent with their public comic identities. Webb’s response was straightforward: the adverts were paid work, and he did not accept the assumption that comedians should not advertise. The episode offered a glimpse of the practical choices behind a high-profile comedy career, as well as the audience expectations that accompany a familiar double act.

Roles outside the partnership

Webb’s work away from Mitchell began early. He appeared in the sketch show Bruiser and led the BBC Three sitcom The Smoking Room, which ran for two series in 2004 and 2005. In 2005 he played Bill Hathaway in the BBC One sitcom Blessed. Later television roles included Dan, a geology lecturer, in Fresh Meat, and Jedrington Secret-Past in The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff. From 2017 to 2021, he starred with Mitchell in the Channel 4 comedy-drama Back, also serving as an executive producer.

His film and stage work has taken him into different comic registers. In Confetti (2006), a film about a competition to stage the most original wedding, he appeared with Olivia Colman as part of a naturist couple. He played Karl in Magicians (2007) and Tim in The Wedding Video (2012). In 2008 he made his West End stage debut in the UK premiere of Neil LaBute’s play Fat Pig.

Webb has also been a regular presence on panel and entertainment programmes, including Have I Got News for You, Never Mind the Buzzcocks and QI. He won the first series of Let’s Dance for Comic Relief in 2009, performing a parody of the audition sequence from Flashdance. In 2010 he presented Robert’s Web, a Channel 4 series about online news. His presenting and narration work has included programmes such as Young, Dumb and Living Off Mum and 10 Things I Hate About.

In 2021 Webb joined the cast of Strictly Come Dancing, partnered with Dianne Buswell. He withdrew after three dances, saying that symptoms related to his heart condition had led him to consult his specialist, who advised him to leave the competition. The decision brought an abrupt end to his appearance, but reflected the importance of following medical advice rather than continuing for the sake of a television run.

Writing about masculinity and change

Writing has accompanied Webb’s performance career. With Mitchell, he published This Mitchell and Webb Book in 2009, a collection of comedy writing. Webb’s solo memoir, How Not to Be a Boy, appeared in 2017. It looks back on his upbringing in working-class Lincolnshire and examines expectations of masculinity. A spoken-word version, read by Webb, was featured as BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week around its publication.

In the memoir Webb disclosed that he is bisexual. The book also forms part of his public writing about the pressures men face to conceal emotion. Rather than treating that subject as separate from his comedy, Webb has described the harm he sees in the injunction to “keep a stiff upper lip”. His writing gives space to reflection that a comic performance, by its nature, may only touch on briefly.

Webb’s fiction has taken a different route. His first novel, Come Again, was published in 2020. Across memoir, fiction and comedy writing, he has moved between personal experience and invention, while continuing to work as an actor and performer.

Personal life and public work

In December 2006 Webb married comedian Abigail Burdess, with whom he had worked on The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff. Mitchell was best man at the wedding. Webb and Burdess have two daughters. In 2020 he underwent emergency heart surgery after being diagnosed with mitral valve prolapse during a routine medical check. He later said he had stopped drinking alcohol entirely, describing how his drinking had gradually become a dependency.

Webb has also taken part in public debate, including writing for the Daily Telegraph and expressing political views in interviews and public statements. Those views have sometimes attracted criticism, including comments about a charity supporting transgender children and their families. That controversy is part of the record of his public life, but it does not need to be treated as a measure of his comedy or writing. A balanced account can acknowledge that an entertainer’s public voice reaches beyond performance without turning disagreement into a substitute for describing the work.

Why Robert Webb deserves a place in British Legacy

Robert Webb’s place in British Legacy rests first on the breadth and staying power of his work in British comedy. Peep Show ran for nine series and became the longest-running sitcom in Channel 4’s history. Its use of inner monologue gave the audience an unusually direct route into the characters’ self-deception and private anxieties. Webb’s performance as Jez helped make that device more than a formal trick: the character’s confidence, evasions and dependence on Mark gave the series a human relationship at its centre. Webb and Mitchell’s work also crossed formats, from radio sketch comedy to television, stage and film, while That Mitchell and Webb Look earned a BAFTA for Best Comedy Programme or Series.

His individual work matters too. From The Smoking Room and Fresh Meat to Fat Pig, Webb has taken on roles beyond the best-known double act. His memoir, How Not to Be a Boy, brought questions about masculinity and emotional restraint into a personal account, while his novel Come Again showed a willingness to work in fiction as well as comedy. Together, those projects form a career with a specifically British foundation: shaped by Lincolnshire, Cambridge’s student comedy scene and a long run in British television, but not confined to a single character or format. Webb’s contribution is the range itself—the ability to move between comic performance, collaboration and reflective writing while remaining part of the country’s popular cultural life.

Sources

Robert Webb — Wikipedia revision 1379153463 · Robert Webb — Wikipedia

Adapted in part from Robert Webb by Wikipedia contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Text has been edited and combined with the existing article; this adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.