The Gift of a Radio - Justin Webb ****

By Brian Clegg

This isn’t the kind of book I usually read, but it piqued my interest when someone told me about it – and it certainly was worth getting into. If you are a BBC Radio 4 listener (or subscribe to the Americast podcast) you will be familiar with Justin Webb’s soothing tones – this memoir of his childhood through to going to university gives a vivid picture of his bizarre upbringing.

Webb never met his father (who would become a reasonably well-known BBC reporter), being brought up by his mother and stepfather, each of whom had quite serious problems. His stepfather had a form of mental illness that included paranoia, while his mother was intensely snobbish, insisting on every little social divider that would put a gap between her upper-middle-class-on-hard-times position and anyone she considered socially inferior. 

Their home life seems to have consisted mostly of silence, though there was a strong bond between Webb and his mother, arguably an unhealthy one. He was then sent to a dire second-rate public school, run by Quakers who somehow ignored violence amongst the students, before finally escaping to the LSE and a job at the BBC (via one dramatic road trip disaster). It’s one of those stories where it’s almost impossible to prevent yourself from describing parts of his experience to anyone nearby in amazement.

One thing that comes across very strongly is how dire Webb considers the 1970s to have been I can’t help but feel that his intense dislike for the decade reflects his personal circumstances. I’m just a little older than Webb, but I loved the seventies, where I was experiencing my last years at a school I liked, time at two universities which I loved and starting a great job. Of course there were political and economic problems in the 70s, but I think the experience of being a child or teenager then has far more to do with what you were going through as an individual than a dark nature of the decade as a whole.

If you aren’t familiar with Webb’s work, you can hear him here, interviewing me for Radio 4′s Today Programme (somewhat ironically, given his admission to totally giving up on science at school):

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Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.