Robert Webb’s best-known television role is Jeremy “Jez” Usbourne in Channel 4’s Peep Show. The sitcom ran for nine series, using a point-of-view format that brought viewers close to the characters’ perceptions and private thoughts. Webb’s work with David Mitchell reached well beyond that programme: together they made sketch comedy for radio and television, performed on stage and appeared in film and drama. Webb has also built a career in his own right as an actor, presenter and writer, publishing a memoir and a novel.
Lincolnshire beginnings and Cambridge
Webb was born Robert Patrick Webb on 29 September 1972 in Boston, Lincolnshire, and grew up in Woodhall Spa. He attended Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School in Horncastle, where he became interested in drama and poetry and began writing parodies. His parents divorced when he was five. His mother later remarried; when she died of breast cancer, when Webb was 17, he moved in with his father and re-sat his A-levels. He has described growing up on a council estate.
In 1992, Webb went to Robinson College, Cambridge, to study English. He became vice-president of the Cambridge Footlights, the student comedy society, and met David Mitchell at an audition for a Footlights production of Cinderella in 1993. Their first joint show, Innocent Millions Dead or Dying – A Wry Look at the Post-Apocalyptic Age (With Songs), followed in January 1995. Webb later gave the production a withering assessment. Even so, it led to opportunities to write for Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller and for the sketch show Big Train.
Building Mitchell and Webb
Webb and Mitchell made their television acting debut together in the BBC sketch show Bruiser in 2000, which they also primarily wrote. Their own series, The Mitchell and Webb Situation, followed in 2001. They developed a lasting presence on radio with That Mitchell and Webb Sound, which ran for five series on BBC Radio 4. Its television counterpart, That Mitchell and Webb Look, brought their sketch work to the screen.
The partnership moved between formats. The duo toured with The Two Faces of Mitchell and Webb, made the 2007 film Magicians and appeared together in the short-lived 2013 series Ambassadors. Recognition followed: they shared the Royal Television Society award for comedy performance in 2007, and That Mitchell and Webb Look won the BAFTA for Best Comedy Programme or Series that year. Their radio sketch show also won a Sony Silver Award. Webb’s career is closely associated with Mitchell, but it has never been limited to their joint projects.
The long run of Peep Show
Peep Show began in 2003, with Webb playing Jeremy “Jez” Usbourne and Mitchell playing Mark Corrigan, flatmates whose friendship and ambitions repeatedly collide. The programme’s point-of-view approach lets the audience follow the characters’ subjective impressions and inner thoughts as well as their conversations. That formal choice gives the comedy its particular closeness: the viewer is drawn into the characters’ self-justifications, as well as the awkwardness of their shared life.
The series ran for nine series, making it Channel 4’s longest-running sitcom. Webb and Mitchell shared the 2007 Royal Television Society comedy performance award for their work on it, and Webb received an individual nomination for Best Television Comedy Actor at the 2009 British Comedy Awards. The show’s extended run made Jez one of Webb’s defining roles, but his screen work took him into other kinds of comedy too.
Roles on screen and stage
Webb headed the BBC Three sitcom The Smoking Room and appeared in Channel 4’s Fresh Meat as Dan, a geology lecturer. Other parts included Blessed and the Dickens parody The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff. From 2017 to 2021, he starred with Mitchell in the Channel 4 comedy-drama Back, on which he was also an executive producer. His film roles have included Confetti and Magicians. In 2008 he made his West End stage debut in the UK premiere of Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig.
He has also appeared regularly on panel shows, including Have I Got News for You, Never Mind the Buzzcocks and QI, and has hosted and narrated a range of programmes. In 2009, he won the first series of Let’s Dance for Comic Relief, parodying the audition sequence from Flashdance. In 2010 he presented Robert’s Web, a Channel 4 series about the week’s online news.
Webb joined Strictly Come Dancing in 2021, partnered with Dianne Buswell. After completing three dances, he withdrew on medical advice related to his heart condition. He had undergone emergency heart surgery in 2020 for mitral valve prolapse, diagnosed during a routine medical check. These experiences became part of the public account of his career, but the main thread of his work remains performance across different forms, from sitcoms and sketches to live entertainment and television presenting.
Writing beyond performance
Webb’s writing with Mitchell included This Mitchell and Webb Book, published in 2009. His solo memoir, How Not to Be a Boy, appeared in 2017. Reflecting on his upbringing in working-class Lincolnshire, it considers masculinity and personal experience; Webb read an adaptation for BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week. In the memoir, he also disclosed that he is bisexual. The book gives him a different way to address subjects that do not fit neatly within a comic character or sketch.
Webb has written newspaper commentary as well as books. Between 2009 and 2011 he contributed to the Telegraph’s comment pages, and he later wrote about his experience of writing for the paper. In 2020, he published his first novel, Come Again. Together, the memoir and novel show a writer working in forms distinct from the television comedy for which he is most widely known.
Why Robert Webb deserves a place in British Legacy
Webb’s place in British Legacy rests on specific work that has become part of the record of British television comedy. Peep Show ran for nine series and became Channel 4’s longest-running sitcom. Its point-of-view form made the audience’s access to its characters’ thoughts central to the comedy, while Webb’s performance as Jez gave the series one of its two defining presences. The programme’s longevity and the awards shared by Webb and Mitchell are concrete measures of its achievement, without needing claims about influence that the evidence cannot establish.
His partnership with Mitchell also demonstrates the reach of a sustained comedy collaboration. Their work travelled from early stage and television projects to BBC Radio 4, sketch television, film and later drama; That Mitchell and Webb Look received a BAFTA, and their radio work a Sony Silver Award. Webb’s individual projects extend that record: from The Smoking Room and Fresh Meat to the memoir How Not to Be a Boy and the novel Come Again, he has worked as actor, comic performer and writer. That combination of long-running television, collaborative craft and personal writing is his particular contribution to Britain’s contemporary cultural life.
Sources
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.
