The Gift of a Radio: My Childhood and other Train Wrecks

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I had him boxed off as posh and privileged because he has what was once the only kind of accent we heard on the BBC. (Nowadays, thankfully, they let in people with regional accents, although they’re still in the minority). Webb grew up in Bath, went to boarding school, and his maternal grandad was Leonard Crocombe, a distinguished journalist chosen by Lord Reith to be the first editor of the Radio Times. So far, so upper middle class. Even though he couldn’t speak frankly to his mother, he was also incredibly intimate with her. He recalls once telling her that his dream holiday would be one he could spend in bed with her. When she told him to smoke weeds from the hedgerow, he inhaled. When she gave him a “Legalise Cannabis” t-shirt, he wore it. And when she bought him a radio, he fell in love with it. The first thing he heard on his little set was Harry Nillson’s song Without You: “I can’t live, if living is without you/ I can’t give, I can’t give any more…”

She also turned to the Quakers and decided to send her son to Sidcot School, a boarding school run by them about 40 minutes from the Webb family home. The conditions were harsh (no hot water) and Webb says several times that the staff didn’t much care about actually educating their pupils. For instance, he was allowed to give up science. With thoughtful concision, Webb works out how this “wan” nuclear family came to be. He explains that Gloria Crocombe was born in 1924 and raised in comfort in Walton-on-Thames. Her father was a “big noise in magazines” and a friend of Lord Reith. He employed a cook, a maid and a driver to take the family for picnics on the Sussex Downs and wait in the car while they ate.Candid, unsparing and darkly funny, Justin Webb's memoir is as much a portrait of a troubled era as it is the story of a dysfunctional childhood, shaping the urbane and successful radio presenter we know and love now.

If you were brought up without your real father, but knew his name and that he was alive, would you seek him out? Reading this autobiography was like taking a brisk walk in a favourite cardigan. So interesting to reflect on the attitudes towards and about mental illness in the 60s and 70s, which in conjunction with post war cultural values, created the fabric that clothed my childhood and adolescence too. He may have one of the bestknown voices in Britain as the longest-serving presenter of Radio 4's Today programme, but it turns out he is a wonderful writer, too. Moving and frank ... A story of a childhood defined by loneliness, the absence of a father and the grim experience of a Quaker boarding school. It is also one of the most perceptive accounts of Britain in the 1970s.'- Misha Glenny

In this last episode, as Jenny's own results land in her inbox, she hears how at home DNA tests have brought family secrets - once thought long buried - out into the light. No wonder growing up in such an atmosphere gives Justin Webb a very depressed view of the decade in which he grew up – the 70’s. There are paragraphs on what he perceives to be the dismal state of Britain during that time – industrial strife, the three days week, the oil crisis etc.. There is nothing of the TV programmes, the music, the culture, the arrival of foreign holidays, the growing consumerism and affluence that children of his age were enjoying and realising that they’d really never had it so good. Between his mother's un-diagnosed psychological problems, and his step-father's untreated ones, life at home was dysfunctional at best. But with gun-wielding school masters and sub-standard living conditions, Quaker boarding school wasn't much better. A beautiful account of the universal love affair between mothers and sons. Justin Webb's acute observation of his eccentric, emotionally-repressed mum is full of love and generosity and will give hope to parents' everywhere. Justine Roberts, Founder and CEO, Mumsnet Justin Webb's vivid childhood memoir reads like a collection of scenes from cherished sitcoms of his youth. A life spent under the spell of eccentric "ineffably snobbish" mother Gloria and "stark staring mad" stepfather Charles is part Keeping Up Appearances and part Reggie Perrin. Webb writes about it all with wit and fondness but beneath the surface lurks a great deal of heartbreak ... Webb has always seemed unflappable on the airwaves. These entertaining soul-searching memoirs help to explain his ability to keep calm and carry on. Allan Hunter, Daily Express

He and I are about the same age, and I can identify with some of his experiences including, uncannily, a trip he made to Athens around the same time as me in the early eighties. He went with the Magic Bus company, I went with a similar operator but Greek – Theo Consolas. The fare was dirt cheap, you travelled more or less non stop with just a few minutes’ stop at emerging service stations, travelling across Europe including behind the Iron curtain into what was then Yugoslavia, arriving in Athens about four days later. Justin Webb’s memory of the drivers is something I share which has never left me and often relate to others. There were two coach drivers. When they changed shifts they didn’t stop the bus. As Justin Webb masterfully describes, “Grizzled driver would get the coach into fourth gear and lurch suddenly out of his seat while keeping one hand on the wheel. The coach was coasting along with no ability to brake. Fat Man would ease himself into the seat and grab the wheel, slightly correcting a course that was taking us into the middle of the road....the drivers did not sleep and did not eat.” I can vouch for every word because that’s exactly what happened on Theo Consolas’ coach. What didn’t happen to my coach is the incident Justin Webb goes on to describe and which I won’t reveal here, as it’s for you to discover if you read his book. All I will say isThis is very, very good. It is not only a vivid portrait of Justin Webb's young life but, deftly, of those times as well. He has a light touch but writes with great sensitivity, insight, and wit. It is touchingly self-revelatory but never mawkish. The absurd snobberies of the class into which he was born and reared are brilliantly illuminated. The portrait of his mother is painful and touching, tender and anguished. He is never self-pitying or self-regarding but there is much raw pain as well as candour in what he writes. A very fine memoir indeed. Jonathan Dimbleby Critically acclaimed, candid, unsparing, surprising and darkly funny, this memoir of a 1970s upbringing by the much-loved broadcaster Justin Webb is as much a portrait of that strange decade as it is of his dysfunctional childhood.