Robert Webb

Robert Patrick Webb was born on 29 September 1972 in Boston, Lincolnshire, and grew up in Woodhall Spa. His parents divorced when he was five years old, with his mother remarrying a year or so later. He has two older brothers and a younger half-sister. He grew up on a council estate, and was educated at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School in Horncastle. Having grown up watching the sitcoms The Young Ones, Blackadder, and Only Fools and Horses, he became interested in drama and poetry while in school, and began writing parodies. At the age of 13, partly because of resentment towards his father, he made a conscious effort to lose his native Lincolnshire accent and now speaks with a more neutral English accent. When he was 17 and in the lower sixth form preparing for his A-levels, his mother died of breast cancer, and he moved in with his father and re-sat his A-levels. In 1992, Webb attended Robinson College, Cambridge, where he studied English and became vice-president of the Footlights, where he met David Mitchell. The two met at an audition for a Footlights production of Cinderella in 1993.