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The Prime Minister's new spinner-in-chief, Robbie Gibb, graduated from Royal Holloway and Bedford College in 1990, with a degree in Economics and Public Administration. He trained with the University of London third team at football, but only made one appearance - as a substitute. He also found time to be deputy chair of the Federation of Conservative Students.

He spent his first year after college freelancing for independent production companies, writing scripts for corporate videos. He then joined the BBC as a political researcher, on a short term contract and ended up working for the then Sunday lunchtime politics programme, On The Record. In 1995 Michael Gove gave Robbie and the BBC's Political Research Unit a credit in his biography of Michael Portillo.

For a time, he became 'chief-of-staff' to Francis Maude, but was blocked from Central Office after rows with Amanda Platell.  In 2001, he stood down from a job as deputy director of the Centre for Policy Studies to become part of Michael Portillo's Tory leadership campaign team, when he came third behind Ian Duncan-Smith and Kenneth Clark. Thus to Newsnight as deputy editor in 2002. In 2008 he was made editor of BBC’s Live Political Programmes which includes the Daily and Sunday Politics programmes and This Week.

Robbie lives in Ashford, Middlesex. His brother, Nick, is the Conservative MP for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton. Nick's partner is Michael Simmonds, chief executive of the Populus polling organisation.