Introduction
Robert Wringham (born Robert Westwood on 28 November 1982) is a British humorist, best known as the editor of New Escapologist magazine. His 2014 book, A Loose Egg, was shortlisted for the 2015 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour.
Work
Wringham's style of humour generally derives from his comic persona — a foppish urbanite, averse to hard work and suspicious of nature. He's described it as "English dandy meets hipster doofus." His essays often focus on incidents (or tall tales) from his purportedly indolent life.
He is the founder and editor of New Escapologist, an anti-lifestyle magazine advocating escape from the daily grind. It typically contains practical information and moral support for people who want to live unconventional lives. Notable features have included work by or interviews with Alain de Botton, Will Self, Richard Herring, Ewan Morrison, Tom Hodgkinson, Luke Rhinehart and Caitlin Doughty.
In 2012, Go Faster Stripe published Wringham's first non-fiction book You Are Nothing, a micro-history of Dadaesque comedy troupe Cluub Zarathustra, whose members included Stewart Lee, Simon Munnery, Kevin Eldon, Julian Barratt, Graham Linehan, Sally Phillips and Johnny Vegas. The book is written from Wringham's perspective, drawing on interviews with members of the cast and audience as well as collected press cuttings and fanzine material from the 1990s.
2014 saw the publication of A Loose Egg, a collection of comic essays about Wringham's childhood, bachelorhood and early married life. In 2015, it was longlisted and finally shortlisted for the Leacock Medal.
Wringham writes for Joshua Glenn's pop culture website HiLobrow, and for the Idler magazine. 2014 saw him extolling the pleasures of convalescence and napping for Playboy.
Escapology
In 2007, Wringham borrowed the word "escapology" to describe the willful escape from conventional commitments like going to work or keeping up with consumer fashions and technology. This is the central theme of his New Escapologist magazine. In 2015, Wringham crowdfunded a book on the subject with publisher Unbound and the resulting Escape Everything! was released in 2016. A German edition called Ich Bin Raus was published in the same year and attracted considerable media attention.
Books
Personal life
Originally from Dudley, Wringham moved to Glasgow in 2004. He is also a Resident of Canada. He married his long-term partner Samara, who appears as a foil in some of his writings, in 2014.
His pseudonym comes from James Hogg's Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, a Scottish gothic horror novel.