![]() It’s part of the deal, as with many comedians – you get the truth as long as it’s bubble-wrapped in humour. “Yeah,” he shrugs, “I’m a compulsive oversharer.” When I make that point in earnest, though, he brushes it off. It’s rare to hear men talk so personally now, let alone in the 2000s, but Robbie has always been frank about his struggles with addiction, mental health and body image. “I always find that, after I’ve done this, I feel much better. It’s replaced feeling sad,” Robbie explains. Get out, be at nature, try to outdo myself, have purpose. This” – he gestures around the golf course – “makes a lot of sense for me. But it’s alright, I’ve got an incredible life. “So when you don’t have the crutch anymore, because you fucked it, you realise that you were socially phobic anyway – being famous just compounds it. ![]() “When you stop drinking and doing drugs you realise what you’re covering up, and what I was covering up was social phobia,” he says, matter-of-factly. ‘Aww, that must’ve been awful’ – you’re the ones who burgled the fucking house!” “The tabloids will burgle you and then ask you how you feel about it a week later. “You can spend an entire promotional tour answering questions about things that were completely made up,” he says, sounding baffled more than anything. It’s something he’s done at every gig for the last 20 years “because people laugh”, but in this instance it became ‘Robbie Williams hates the general public’. I like being funny, or trying to be, and people purposely take the fun out of it and report it as ‘Robbie Williams did this today, isn’t he mad’.” Here he brings up the viral footage from his New Year’s Eve performance at Westminster’s Central Hall, where he uses hand-sanitiser after high fiving people in the front row. It’s like, OK, we’re going to take that ‘why did the chicken cross the road’ and say ‘Robbie Williams has gone mad! He’s talking about chickens crossing the road!’” though he’d probably just told a joke. “There’s a wilful misrepresentation of what you’ve said nearly every fucking day. His drug and alcohol dependency hasn’t been documented as much as it’s been made a spectacle of, with the tabloids spinning a narrative – as they often do – of chaos and a lack of control that underscores news stories about him even now. You can typically find his name in headlines near the words “Gary Barlow”, “courted controversy” or “damaging bender”, followed by a story that’s either masking a genuine health problem or based on a joke that’s been taken too seriously (remember all the stuff with the aliens?). ‘Aww, that must’ve been awful’ – you’re the ones who burgled the fucking house!”Īfter auditioning for Take That while he was still at school in Stoke-on-Trent (he found out he made the band on GCSE results day, when he collected his flurry of Fs and a D in English), Robbie’s career from 1989 until now has been a wild and sometimes painfully public ride. I did not expect to end up at his house for several hours afterwards, meeting his entire family and texting my dad from the bathroom to say “having a wee in Robbie Williams’ toilet lol.” The only man who could hold a candle to him in this country is Liam Gallagher, which is presumably why they keep trying to fight each other (later in the day he leans into me after looking deviously at his phone for a while and says “Dare me to send this?”, and it’s an Instagram DM he’s drafted to Liam containing two words: ‘Fancy it?’).įor whatever reason that appeal is rarely communicated in the press beyond praise for his live performances, so when it came to interviewing him about his forthcoming album The Christmas Present – two discs worth of festive covers and originals with guest appearances from Rod Stewart, Jamie Cullum, Tyson Fury and his dad, Pete Conway – I expected it to be a ‘go in, pot a few balls, go home’ sort of deal. Pop star, rock star, old school crooner a gobby regular from your local pub saddled with the talent of a Rat Pack member. Robbie Williams is a 360-degree performer. As someone who’s been through the wringer a few times himself, it’s not surprising that the concept of happiness – subcategory: the search for – pops up during most of our conversations.įor anyone who has never received a fist bump from England’s greatest living pop culture legend: it’s a great feeling, like the Eucharist of live entertainment. ![]() He verifies this with a fist bump and a genuinely chuffed “fuck yeah”. Our interview runs from 10AM until 4PM, so he basically puts in a full shift as a life coach until I leave with a to-do list for every quadrant except my relationship, which, after an appropriate grilling (Do we get along? Does he make me laugh? Do I like, love him, trust him?) we establish is going quite well.
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