Entertainment
‘I expect to be on a huge float paraded through Croydon!’ Robert Webb reflects on 20 years of Peep Show-Rachel Corcoran-Entertainment – Metro
Well, who doesn’t?
Robert Webb (Picture: Metro.co.uk/Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)
The actor, 50, on how a routine TV medical led to life-saving heart surgery, his new whodunnit and leaving Strictly.
You’re new to Whitstable Pearl. It’s a lovely detective drama to watch in winter…
I filmed my scenes in March and April so there were some very sunny days. My wife [Abigail Burdess] used to do stand-up so knew Kerry Godliman, who’s the lead character, Pearl. And Frances Barber is lovely. She’s in it.
People enjoy watching puzzles being solved and having order restored by the detective. My character is this low-maintenance new boyfriend of Pearl. It seemed like a nice part to take following all the excitement of Strictly Come Dancing.
Ah, yes. You had to quit on medical advice. Did you want to lie low after Strictly, then?
No, I wasn’t deliberately lying low. But it felt like an easy-going way back to work after my latest recovery. Doing a nice location acting job seemed well within my abilities.
You had a heart operation in 2019 after your medical for the sitcom Back…
Yes, just before we started filming the second series of Back I went in for the cast medical, which is normally a very perfunctory kind of affair.
Kerry Godliman plays the lead in Whitstable Pearl, alongside Howard Charles (Picture: Acorn TV)
They take your blood pressure and tell you to cough, for the insurance. But the doctor put the stethoscope on my heart, pulled a worrying look and said, ‘What are you doing about the heart murmur?’
I said, ‘What heart murmur?’ It turned out my mitral valve, one of the valves in your heart, had prolapsed. So instead of opening and closing properly, it was just flapping around uselessly. My body thought I was running uphill when I was asleep.
The doctor said, ‘I’m not saying you’re going to have a heart attack in the next fortnight but if this isn’t addressed over the next two to four months, this heart will fail’. That was a bit of a moment.
Robert with his wife Abigail Burdess (Picture: Dan Wooller/Shutterstock)
So the show saved your life?
It did. Just getting a doctor to stick his stethoscope on your heart doesn’t do any harm. I now run two to three times a week for about 9km and my most recent drink and cigarette was the week before the operation, November 2019.
Has the operation given you a new lease of life?
Well, the massive overcompensation with that was saying yes to doing Strictly. On paper, I was in very good shape. I talked to doctors about Strictly and they said, ‘Go for it’. But it was far too much too soon – open-heart surgery, it turns out, is quite a big deal, and two years isn’t long enough to recover from it.
I was so excited about having a new body that I raced around until the engine blew up. I was getting worrying symptoms and the cardiologist said, ‘This is just going to get worse, you need to stop’.
It must have been frustrating, especially considering how well you were doing…
Yeah, it was going quite well. My wife takes the p*** out of me because I say things like, ‘Having a big operation does certain things to you, and maybe your memory suffers’. And she says, ‘You’re just getting old!’
I did have a lot of trouble picking up the moves, which was frustrating for my dance partner Dianne Buswell. She’d teach me this stuff and it’d look great. Then at the beginning of the next day, it had all disappeared. So we’re very proud of those three dances we managed to do. It’s amazing I lasted that long.
More: Sixty Seconds
You’ve said you’re more focused on novel writing…
There’s an idea I’m circling for a second novel. It’s been three years since the first and I think I get a pass for the first year because of the heart operation plus lockdown. So there’s been two years of me circling an idea.
I have had other ideas but I need to do what normal writers do, which is start working on an idea you’re not particularly excited about and then keep working until it becomes exciting.
Robert’s autobiography was reviewed by Joanna Lumley and JK Rowling (Pictures: Shutterstock)
You had reviews from Joanna Lumley and JK Rowling for your autobiography, How Not To Be A Boy. How did you manage that?
I met JK Rowling because we’d been nattering on social media and she got in touch privately because she liked a couple of things I’d written. I was in a play in Edinburgh and I asked her would she like to come along – so she and her lovely husband, Neil, did, and we went for dinner. I met Joanna Lumley working on Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie.
Robert found fame with David Mitchell, their big break being Peep Show 20 years ago (Picture: Shutterstock)
It’s 20 years next year since Peep Show started…
I expect to be on a massive Peep Show float being paraded through Croydon! At the time it was one of various plates David Mitchell and I had spinning – we were always writing pilots and sketches for other people.
We were trying to break through and it didn’t feel like Peep Show was going to be the thing that happened. And then it did and it was wonderful to finally be ‘proper’. It was much easier to explain to my dad and grandparents what I was doing with my time.
Whitstable Pearl series two is streaming now on Acorn
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