Write Up - Quick Jump:
Rob's The One | Friends and Lovers | Gay or Not? | Clean & Sober | Humble Man (end)

Boy band renegade, cheeky chappie, entertainer. Call him what you want, but you can't deny that Robbie Williams has grown up and is here to stay...

Robbie Williams needs no introduction. Forget the fact that he was from Take That, no one wants to know his sordid boy band past when he's now established himself as a true blue pop star. Robbie has successfully shed his boy band past and has come out of his wild days alive and a huge hit.

Not content with selling millions of singles, albums (Life Thru A Lens, I've Been Expecting You, The Ego Has Landed, Sing When You're Winning), merchandise and concert tickets, The Robster recently released an autobiography, Somebody Someday, which chronicles his past year in showbiz. It's the closest you'll ever get to Robbie's life - he describes it as "inside my tour my head my pants" in the book's introduction - and there's details of his life on tour, his relationship with his band and crew and his confessions of how he feels about this whole pop star thing. And people obviously wanted to know all this too, as the book topped the charts in the UK the week it was released and outsold Victoria Beckham's autobiography, Learning to Fly, by three to one on Amazon.com....

One of the things that makes Robbie appealing to both men and women is that he actually seems like a normal lad who just wants to entertain. And this streak started ever since he entered himself in a talent competition in a holiday camp at the age of three, which he won, of course.

"I've never known that I haven't wanted to perform or wanted to sing or act," he says. "I can't remember a time that it came across me. It's just in my bones. It's always in my bones.

"I love getting applause. I think people by nature want people to say, 'You're good.' Everybody does. I'm no exception to that. I feel important when people clap. It's just basically making showing off a fine art. That's what I've done. I've made showing off a fine art."

But Robbie the entertainer and Robert Williams are two very different people, it seems.

"Me on stage and off stage are chalk and cheese. I'm a full-of-chrisma pop star on stage. Off stage I've got bugger all to say to anybody. I don't know how to speak to people. And that's been the case for as long as I can remember, apart from when I was growing up. When I was Robbie-lots-of-mates."

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You would think that it would be dead easy to make friends if you're a top pop star, but it seems the contrary is true in Robbie's case. Living in a world where everyone wants a piece of you, it does get hard to trust anyone. He admits that he only has a handful of real friends, his best friend being his housemate, Jonathan Wilkes, who he's known since they were kids.

Of course, being in the limelight brings the inevitable scrutiny of one's love life, which Rob has endured more than once. Everyone wants to know who you're going out with, which can be a hassle if you're trying to meet someone. But does he want to be in a relationship?

"Yeah, but I ain't rushing into it. And I haven't had a relationship with anybody as boyfriend and girlfriend for over two years now. The last person I walked out with was (UK TV host) Tanya Strecker. But we weren't going out with each other, we were friends. We never committed to a relationship. And yeah, the press want to believe that I'm going out with Geri (Halliwell, of Spice Girls) or believe I'm going out with whoever. I'm not with her. We're just really good friends."

And who would know Rob better than his best friend, who states his case for his mate.

"Rob's a great one," says Jonathan, "for finding a girl and being really keen on them for 24 hours. And he makes them feel so good they think they're the most special person in the world. Sometimes I pray for somebody to come down and fall in love with Rob. Because he'll make somebody the best husband one day; and the best dad. I know he will. But I don't think he's ready yet. And he admits that. Not for another good few years yet."

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While his sexuality has come under scrutiny more than a few times, Rob doesn't find this a hard question.

"It's only a difficult question if you deem being gay as something wrong. Or dirty, or derogatory. It's not to me."

Then again, it doesn't help that he keeps making comments to put us all in doubt once again, with tongue firmly in cheek, of course - "I don't know what I look for in a woman. I'm not looking. I'm sticking to men."

"I don't give a toss if people think I'm gay," he stresses. "I might try it. If I was attracted to a man then I'd do it, but as it stands I haven't been physically or emotionally attracted to a man to do anything sexual with them. That's how it stands at the minute."

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For now at least, we're darn sure of the man's sexuality, having heard about rampant sex tales during his wild days.

But the Robbie of today is a far cry from the mess of a man he became after he left Take That in 1995. Doomed as a boy band has-been, he indulged in a life of booze, drugs and sex and was notoriously known on the UK party scene. But he seems over it and now admits that he has a problem.

"There is this huge devil inside me. And it doesn't come out and act out against other people; it just wants me to destroy myself. I have a disease that talks to me in my own voice and tells me I haven't got it. And that's my dark side."

"When I took drugs, I'd end up every evening in the toilets trying to shag people. That's embarrassing. I just wanted to have sex, compulsive sex. That saddens me."

But, thankfully, this seems to be all in the past now.

"I went to a club in the South of France and it was amazing. I was sat in that club and I was looking round the dance floor for the glazed-eyed pillock that was nil by mouth, hanging outside the girls' toilets, and I couldn't find him, because there was only me.

"That evening there were a lot of pretty girls dancing and flirting. I went and chatted to a few and then it was time to go home. I was walking down the street thinking, that's surreal. I've always been intent on pulling somebody and now I just want to go home and be by myself.

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Rob has come to terms with his celebrity status, but doesn't for a minute pay attention to all the hype.

"I don't have tabloid newspapers in my house. Because it distorts my image of me. It distorts what I believe myself to be. Because they've got this person they are claiming I am and more often than not the person that they claim I am is conceited and needs to be brought down a peg or two. And if I read that I believe that I'm shit. I believe that I'm a megalomaniac, arrogant, a sex maniac, whatever they want to write. So I don't read it anymore and it's doing me the world of good."

While the whole world goes on about his million-selling status and all-round hype, Rob genuinely believes he's a normal bloke.

"You know... I write some records with the help of Guy (Chambers). I sing them and I perform them. I might bring a lot of joy and a lot of love into people's lives. I might touch them and if I do then that's wonderful, but I'm not saving lives. I'm not doing heart operations or finding bone marrow for people. They're the real heroes. I'm just very lucky... I've worked really damn hard... I'm a 27-year-old that comes from Stoke-on-Trent... Very average when I was a kid... Very, vert average and I'm very average now. I just have an extraordinary life. And to have something bestowed on me as King Rob or anything like that, a quarter of my ego quite likes it and the rest of me just pales away and goes, 'I don't want that. That's scary'."

Well, he may not have come to terms with him being famous, but one thing that he's sure dealt with is the demons that have plagued him and the different man that it made him.

"What if I'm drinking and taking drugs, I'm the last person on earth that I'd want my daughter to go out with. But hopefully the person that I will become will be somebody I'd let my daughter go out with."

He seems to be doing more than alright so far, and we sure are convinced that Robbie will succeed in becoming a Better Man soon.