Webb's savage response to critic

Robert Webb has used Twitter to launch a savage rebuttal to a Guardian critic who slammed him and his Peep Show co-star David Mitchell.

He launched a volley of brief updates in the early hours of Friday, ripping apart Zoe Williams’s radio review sentence-by-sentence.

Williams had specifically targeted Mitchell, claiming he was ruining much of Radio 4’s comedy output with his ubiquity, and dubbing him ‘the many-headed hydra of radio problems’.

Webb didn’t mince his words with the comeback, at one point railing: ‘Shut up Zoe Williiams you clueless, pointless, cloud-minded, mean, vacuous, tree-wasting, lazy, mistaken, complacent idiot.’

He further told his 8,500 followers: ‘As usual, the logic of her argument is impossible to follow because it’s irrational, cretinous and seems to be written by a child. Rather a dim child. What is her qualification for judging R4 comedy? It can’t be that she's done any. Might it be her wonderful prose style?’

He also quoted extracts from her ‘banal and semi-literate’ review with sarcastic commentary such as: ‘“This false sense of security buoys up all kinds of ill-fated formats and combinations.” Are you really happy with that sentence Zoe?’

And ‘“Genius [the Dave Gorman show] is just shaming” What shame, Zoe? Who’s ashamed? They’re making an entertainment show, aren’t they? Shame? Did you mean “shame”?’

Webb later admired he was ‘a bit pissed’ when he fired off the Tweets, and confessed to being ‘a bit sheepish’ the morning after.

Published: 29 Mar 2009