From the floor-to-ceiling panoramic windows of Robbie Williams’s plush apartment, the gaudy lights of Las Vegas are spread like cheap diamanté glittering against the falling dusk.
It turns out to be the perfect backdrop for this native of Stoke-on-Trent, who is sprawled, one leg over the arm of an easy chair, within the beige and cream luxury of this vast suite 30 floors above a Vegas casino.
At 45, Williams is preparing to take the biggest gamble of his career. He is no longer content to be Robbie Williams, pop star, British national treasure. He is no longer happy to hide behind a tabloid image of madcap Robbie, the celebrity eccentric who chases after aliens, winds up his Led Zeppelin legend neighbour Jimmy Page and hires shrinks to treat his depressed turtle.
At 45, Robbie Williams (above) is preparing to take the biggest gamble of his career. He is no longer content to be just a pop star, British national treasure and celebrity eccentric
‘I want more,’ he says, elongating those flat Midlands vowels. ‘I don’t want to be infamous for not being famous in America. I want to be famous in America. And I want to build my own empire of TV franchises all around the world. Like Simon Cowell, just with a bit more style. And you know what? I’m bloody well going to do it.
‘Most people have this idea of me as mad Robbie or Robbie the crazy addict, but that is so far from reality. I’m driven, I work hard. I have been sober for 18 years and drug-free for 17-and-a-half years. I even quit smoking in January because the wife told me to. The only vice I have left is sugar, and I watch that.’
The former Take That star is now growing old gracefully and focused on doing big business. He leans forward and laughs, tapping at my notebook, because Williams has always understood that ‘showbiz’ is a game, and even bad press can sometimes be useful.
‘Maybe I shouldn’t be saying this. Maybe I’m ruining my image. Maybe it’s best for people to still think of me as bonkers Robbie – it’s always a much better story, that’s the one everyone wants to hear. People don’t want the truth because the truth is often boring. What do you think?’
He looks at me, then glances at his manager, Michael, who is working away on a laptop 30ft away and grins. ‘Do people want to hear that I’m actually very together?’
‘Ayda didn’t save me. I was OK when I met her. I was sober. I was drug-free. But she did change me. For the better.’ Williams says of his wife of almost nine years, Ayda Field (together, above)
He sits up and tells me that I have brought good energy into the room. I tell him I’ve just got off an 11-hour flight and am insanely jet lagged. ‘But good energy is good energy,’ he responds.
Right now, Williams is all about energy. Positive energy. He’s taken up boxing to rid himself of nervous energy and get himself fit. ‘He’s looking good, isn’t he?’ says his wife, the statuesque Ayda Field, who pads barefoot across the living room to say hello and have a quick chat before returning to a playroom area where their two children and new baby, Coco, are playing.
The idea of Robbie Williams as a go-getting businessman is completely at odds with a man whose very name is synonymous with car-crash behaviour. At 16, when we first met in a van outside a school where the barely known Take That were performing – to build up a teeny fan club – Williams was the cute cheeky kid who danced like a demon, dropped his pants at any opportunity and got the biggest screams.
By 20 he was in the most famous boy band in the world and, in classic rock ’n’ roll style, was soon snorting cocaine, collapsing at parties and juggling famous girlfriends including All Saints singer Nicole Appleton and actress Anna Friel.
By 21, he had quit the band and was hanging round at the Glastonbury festival with Oasis and Kate Moss, gate-crashing his way into the cool crowd, before launching a solo career in 1996 which no one (including himself) had any inkling would go stellar. Yet his debut album contained the multimillion-selling Angels, which would provide him with a £2 million-a-year pension for decades to come.
At 16, when Robbie and Louise first met outside a school where the barely known Take That (above in 1991) were performing, Williams was the cute cheeky kid who got the most screams
Until recently, Williams has never coped well with fame, fortune and success. He didn’t feel worthy of the acclaim and wrestled between the warring factions of a giant ego and chronic insecurity. In the early days, cocaine and alcohol helped him numb his problems and all those messy relationships, from his notorious feud with Gary Barlow to his bitter break-up with Appleton.
His mum Janet, who is also with him in Las Vegas, kept on forcing him to go to rehab. ‘The first time I was 21 and I was terrified. But she kept on nagging and nagging at me. Thank God for her nagging. Eventually it worked.’
His late 20s and 30s saw a tortured, confessional Williams alternately picking his personality apart or performing to vast stadiums of adoring fans all over Europe, Asia and Australia. ‘I’m brittle, over-sensitive, mentally ill and an addict and then I go on stage… but I’m scared all the time.’
Once in a hotel room in London – about ten years ago – he found a new way to introduce himself: ‘I’m Robbie and I’m a very successful mess.’ But today he has a new take: ‘Things are different because I’m different. I’ve changed the way I see myself.’
Williams has always been charming company, regardless of the drugs and the self-loathing. Aged 16 he would endearingly show off pages and pages of different autographs he was experimenting with, and he’s always been up front about his life, good, bad and ugly. ‘You know, it makes me a bit sad that it’s taken until now to sort myself out,’ he says. ‘I’m finally filling the shoes of a proper human being with everything in perspective. I’m a daddy with a wife. I feel solid and content.’ He pauses. ‘Once after doing a show it used to be cocaine and strippers, now it’s celery and houmous. Oh no… I’m going to sound very boring.’
By 20 he was in the most famous boy band in the world and, in classic rock ’n’ roll style, was soon snorting cocaine, collapsing at parties and juggling famous girlfriends
Hardly. There’s always a crazy Williams story to keep us entertained – like his five-year battle with his London neighbour Jimmy Page, who registered objections to the singer’s plans to extend his basement. According to the press, Williams loves to torment Page by dressing up as him and marching around the garden, blasting out music by Zeppelin rivals Deep Purple and Pink Floyd and – more recently – turning down an invitation to thrash out their differences over a cup of tea.
‘I love those stories,’ he says. ‘When I read them I think: “I should be doing that.” But sadly none of them is true. If you dig deeper you will find they are all from anonymous comments on the Kensington and Chelsea borough website. But I never complain because part of me loves the idea that people think that’s what I do.’
Williams is in a fine mood, fuelled by ecstatic reviews of his Vegas show, which has become the hottest ticket in town, with fans arriving every day by the planeload. True to form, the show has glitter, glitz, some of the smoothest dance moves since his Take That days, costume changes, glamour girls in martini glasses, and Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin swing songs mixed with Williams’s own hits.
It also has the singer telling jokes, bantering with the crowd and dragging ladies up to sing with him. And, because this is a man who has always worn his heart on his sleeve, it is an emotional rollercoaster, with duets with his dad, the former pub singer Pete Conway, who provides a shoulder for his son to weep onto and tears as the singer leaves the stage with the stamps and cheers of his audience ringing in his ears. As a calling card to America, it is gold-plated.
Until recently, Williams has never coped well with fame, fortune and success. But now he has overcome his crippling stage fright and is enjoying ecstatic reviews of his Vegas show (above)
‘I want Jennifer Aniston to know my name,’ he says adamantly.
Williams begins to explain how his life has been transformed in recent years. He has overcome his crippling stage fright and no longer wakes up in the night fearing someone will tell him he’s useless and needs to pack his bags, leave his mansions in LA and London and go back to his council house in Stoke-on-Trent.
I look towards Ayda and ask him if she is the reason why. In true Williams style, he shakes his head. ‘That’s too easy,’ he says. ‘The idea that the love of a good woman changes you. Well no, this has all come from me. Part of it is because I’m a daddy. But part of it is because I did The X Factor last year with Simon Cowell and that was a wake-up call.’
Ironically, he has announced he is no longer going to be a judge on The X Factor, but the experience of doing it has fuelled a determination to build his own empire.
‘It changed me,’ he says. ‘I’d spent years turning all those shows down. I used to love turning them down. I didn’t need the money and I’m expensive because I would ask for a lot. The X Factor couldn’t afford me. I charge more than Gary Barlow [an X Factor judge from 2011 to 2013]. Of course I do. But then they came up with the idea of Ayda doing it with me. And that I couldn’t turn down.’
Sir Alan Sugar recently asked Ayda if she was Williams’s carer. ‘She is,’ he says, pulling a face, ‘a very glamorous carer.’
He switches from cheeky Robbie back to reality. ‘No, I did it with her because we could be together with the kids and it made it fun. I loved doing it. It was a revelation. It made me realise something about myself, which was that I’d put myself in this box of being a guy whose job is driving to a venue, sitting worrying about going on stage, hoping it’s all going to be OK but terrified it won’t be, then going on stage performing, then getting in a car and repeating over and over.
Williams says he loved being an X-Factor judge alongside Ayda (both above with Dermot O’Leary, Louis Tomlinson and Simon Cowell) but now he’s determined to build his own empire
‘Doing X Factor broke that pattern. I enjoyed it. Television takes a lot of time. You are part of this process, you get involved with people, they sing, you speak, you make jokes, you bond with the acts, with each other, with the audience. The revelation for me is that it’s simply a process which you can work on and improve and make better. I used to go on stage panicking, thinking: “Is it all going to work tonight?”, thinking it was some sort of magic. X Factor made me look at myself and realise I was good at what I do. It gave me confidence and made me think I can do more. I’m going to break America. I’m going to do my own TV shows. I lost all my fear.’
His show in Hyde Park later this month is a sell-out and in Vegas tickets are selling fast. But other plans are afoot too. He is working on a TV format to compete with The X Factor, building on what he now realises are his strengths as an all-round performer.
‘As a kid I used to go round to my nan’s. She’d make me a crisp sandwich and I’d watch TV. Morecambe and Wise, Ted Rogers and Cannon and Ball. That was my happy place but that is also who I am. I’m an entertainer – that’s my job and I’m good at it. Why have I spent all these years worrying about it? I can stop being scared and just do what I want and do it well. This show in Vegas is something I’ve been wanting to do for 12 years and I made it happen. I’m not nervous, I’m not scared. I’ve worked on every aspect of it because I’m a perfectionist, so I know it’s good.’
Ayda has come back into the room. She listens to him talking with a smile. He looks at her. ‘Ayda didn’t save me,’ he says. ‘I was OK when I met her. I was sober. I was drug-free. But she did change me. For the better. She broke my greatest commandment, “Thou shall not wed”. I met her and I wanted to marry her. She wanted kids. I didn’t want kids because I didn’t think I’d be a good enough father. I was too much of a kid myself and I thought if we had kids all these people would start invading my space: family, children, invaders.
‘My second commandment was “Thou shalt not have kids”. And then we did. We had Teddy [his daughter, Theodora, who is now six] and I fell in love. Then we had Charlie [Charlton, now four] and it’s a cliché but I would think of the words in my song Feel when I sing: “I just wanna feel real love, feel the home that I live in”, and I knew I was now really feeling that. For the first time in my life. And then I said: “This is perfect. Now we stop.” Ayda wanted more but I said: “No, this is perfect.”’
Last year they announced towards the end of The X Factor run that they had conceived a child, Colette Josephine – or Coco for short – by surrogate. She is now sleeping in the next room. ‘I kept saying no because I thought I didn’t want to push things,’ he says. ‘And then I was in the car with Ayda. We stopped at a set of traffic lights and a woman walked past with a pram and I saw Ayda’s face crumple. That was it for me. I thought: “What am I doing? I love this woman. Why am I saying no?” So we started trying and then nothing worked. We tried everything but the only option left to us was surrogacy, which was something I never thought about, but the lady we chose is the most incredible human being. Coco is fully biologically ours and she’s a beautiful, special kid. Who knows, we may have more. There is still the chance of a Robbie Williams football team.’
His own relationship with his parents is good. Always has been. His father divorced his mum when Williams was three years old, but remained in his life. ‘My mum worried about me. My dad never did,’ he says. ‘I think he always knew I’d get there in the end.’
The rift between Williams and former arch-enemy Barlow (both above) has long since been healed and Barlow is now a regular visitor at Williams and Ayda’s house
The rift between Williams and former arch-enemy Barlow has long since been healed. Barlow was a shoulder to cry on when Ayda couldn’t conceive, and is a regular visitor at their house. When they both sit – vice-free – polishing their halos, whose shines brighter?
He pauses to think. ‘Gary’s,’ he says. ‘He’s the most solid person I know. If you want something doing excellently for ten minutes you come to me. If you want something thoughtful, consistent, long-lasting, you go to him. Gary is salt of the earth. A grown-up. A man.’
Both these working-class boys mix in very different circles and are both favourites of the Royals. The Queen personally asked Barlow to organise her anniversary celebrations in 2012. Fittingly, Williams is favoured by the more controversial Duchess of York. His daughter Teddy was a bridesmaid at Princess Eugenie’s wedding in October and Williams did a turn at the celebrations afterwards.
‘“The Duch” is a family friend. I’ve known her for years, we’ve been on family holidays together,’ he says. ‘I like her. She gets into trouble but she’s too kind for her own good.’
How does it feel to mix in regal circles? He looks suddenly serious. ‘Good,’ he says. ‘I am one generation away from an outside toilet and a tin bath. My gran had a bath hanging on a hook in the house. That’s how my dad grew up. That’s what I never forget.’ He gazes out of the window at the twinkling Vegas skyline. ‘And now we are all here. And it’s only going to get better.’
Robbie Williams headlines Barclaycard presents British Summer Time Hyde Park on July 14. He plays a string of dates in Las Vegas at the end of this month and throughout July