Bad boy back from the edge

Robbie Williams stretches out on the hotel sofa, folds his hands behind his head and rests his Nike trainers on the armrest."Is this too intimate?" he suddenly worries.
His pretty boy face looks pale under his short, dark hair and a slick of expertly applied mascara accentuates his green eyes. "Does it? Oh, thank you," he says. His fingernails are bitten almost to the bone and his eagerness to please is embarrassing. When I can't find my cigarettes, he politely offers one of his own before thinking of something better."Hey," he says."Shall I get you a whole packet?"
He stretches out again and regards his body with professional detachment."It's been four months since I was in rehab, and if was only two years ago that I was really fit. My body remembered that, so it wasn't too hard to get into shape again. I do some kind of exercise every day, so I've got a six-pack and some pecs again."
Excuse me?
"A six-pack, a six-pack," he explains, lifting up his T-shirt to show me his stomach muscles. "And my pecs," he says, proudly bending an elbow and looking pleased when his upper arm inflates like Popeye's. Then he catches sight of something which peeves him mightly.
"I woke up this morning and I swore I wouldn't do it. And I did," he moans."I did the turn-up thing. I have really let myself down a big way." He raises his leg and gazes in mock dismay at the three inches of turned-up denim on the bottom of his expensive Japanese jeans. "It's such a trendy, stupid thing to do.Turn-ups are so in at the moment. I wish I wasn't wearing them. I wish I hadn't bought them. What is wrong with me?"
Two years ago, when Robbie was still a member of Take That, it was a question of many people were asking. The five-strong group was the pop sensation of the first half of this decade, selling millions of records over a five-year period and reducing its screaming, girly fans to puddles of damp, adolescent veneration both here and in America.
Their antecedents couldbe found in ye anciient tradition of manufactured popsters such as the Bay City Rollers; Take That's appeal, like theirs, was ferociously clean-cut and wholesome. Their music was sweetly unthreatening and their personalities were branded in a marketing precedent which the Spice Girls would later adopt and exaggerate. Mark was Cute One, Howard was The Body, Gary was the Clever One, Jason was The Hippy and Robbie, of course, was the Naughty One.
He joined the group in 1990 when he was only 16, learning that he had passed the audience on the same day that he found out he'd failed al his GCSE's."I really wanted to be somebody. And when I heard, I ran upstairs to my bedroom window, threw it open and shouted: 'I am going to be famous!'"
And he was, but in ways he could not have imagined at the time.
At first, Take That was predictably fabulous for a Midlands boy - his mother was a publican, his father a club comedian who won New Faces in 1973 - whose life prospects up until then had begun and ended with a job in a car factory.
"But, in the group, I was introduced to things like sushi! F***ing hell. I'd never have got sushi in Stoke - On - Trent. And I have been to Japan. I have been to America more than seven times. I have spoken to world leaders. I have been in the presence of Joshya Nkomo and Tony Blair. But, after a while, it began to...well, as a kid you always want the best BMX bike. Then once you get it, there is no pleasure in it any more. I would put a cigarette in my mouth, and seven people would try to light it for me. It began to get really... tiresome."
Despite the fact that a small fortune was piling up in his bank account, Williams began to to rebel against the strictures laid down by Take That management. It had insisted on a ban on drinking, drugs and girls - although, privately, he was indulging in large amounts of all three.
"Once I became a media celebrity, I couldn't stop myself. I was out of my head all the time," he says, disarmingly. "It was drink, more than anything. I took cocaine only because it enabled me to drink more."
And the groupies? "I was a kid with hormones and I didn't care whether it was wrong or not. It did give me a warped idea about sex, because it was always there on a plate. I was 19 and I could s*** anything I wanted to. It was really sad."
So Robbie, mixed up, vulnerable and developing a voracious drink problem, he began to unravel. He was a fixture at music business parties, always the last and the drunkest to leave. At home, he had two goldfish called Vodka and Tonic; on the streets, he would sign autographs as "Robbie Williams, nutter".
In the summer of 1995, he finally defied his management by filling a Jaguar full of champagne, driving of to the Glastonbury festival and proceeding to get drunk - off - stage and on - with his hero, Liam Gallagher. Television footage of that day shows him dancing like a puppet, his hair dyed blonde and his front teeth blacked out with tape.
A cry for help? "Naw, it was a great day, although I can't remember a thing about it." On his return to group rehearsals the following week, he was sacked.
"Was I? I don't know if I was sacked or not now. I am bewildered. Was I? Who cares? Anyway, I was lucky to leave and I would do the same thing again. I had to do it because I was going insane. If you are incapable of making your own dicisions, you go mad" Had you discussed this with the other members of the band? "In Take That, we didn't talk about anything of substance. We were like the People's Popular Front of Judea in The Life of Brian."
After the split, Naughty Robbie lived up to his reputation by embarking on a lost weekend which lasted until October 1996. Finally - encouraged by Elton John - he checked into Beechy Colclough's rehabilitation clinic for a six-week intensive therapy course. So Williams today is clean and sober, with a conversational style which - in his more serious moments - is thickly laced with therapy-speak. "I just decided to take a swim in Lake Me," he says.
He tells me earnestly that he has empowered himself, he is grounded, he is centred, he is searching for the inner truth and he has done some serious "work" on himself. This would all be tremendously boring and just a touch selfrighteous if his irrepressible spirit did not bubble through now and again. "Come on," he yelps. "I was a teenager. If I hadn't taken drugs and slept with lots of girls when I was in a pop group, then I would be abnormal."
However, his unquestioning and wholesale embracement of therapy does point to someone who is easily manipulated. Williams, in his pupyish eagerness for everyone to like him, seems to change personality to suit the prevailing circumstances.
In Take That, he was happy to be "Naughty but Nice" until he found a new set of heroes. When he hung out with the big, bad rock stars he so touchingly wanted to emulate, he developed a drink and drugs habit which put theirs to shame. He seems to keep riffling through some internal personality filing cabinet, hoping to find an identity that will really fit.
"I am aware of that," he says, lighting another cigarette with his pitted fingers. "I know that if I stopped wanting people to like me so much, it would help me enormously, but I can't seem to be able to do it. How do you do that? I've been like this since I was a kid."
He now lives alone in his north London flat, removing himself from the hurly burly of temptation by staying in and watching television. "Does everyone suffer a bit from being alone in their flat sometimes? he asks, plaintively. When assured that yes, we all do, he seems cheered.
"I live alone and, yeah, it's good. You just need a bit of patience sometimes. I stick on a video, watch the telly. I am a bit lonely, but I laugh at my own jokes and dance around by myself when I'm making something to eat. I listen to my new album over and over. I'd like to do a bit more reading, but I can't get into that book thing yet."
He is, he says, rather tired of women because so many of them just want to be with him because of who he is. "I haven't had sex for 12 weeks. I'm just not interested in it any more. The irony is that, now, I really would like to settle down with someone. But once I get them really to like me, I'm not interested any more. It's bonkers, isn't it? I've only ever had one proper girlfrien, and I can't have a family life if I carry on like this, can I?"

Saddest of all is that his relationship with the former Take Thatters - his best friends during his adolescence, the boys who shared his great adventure - is now non-existent. " I lost their friendship. I was bitter then, I am sad now. We had fun, I took the micky out of them. That was my coping mechanism. I would love to see them again, but I don't think I am ready yet. I don't know if I would lose my rag or burst into tears. Or both."
He has spoken to Gary Barlow on the telephone to discuss the group's planned one- off reunion for a charity concert dedicated to Diana, Princess of Wales, but despite his initial enthusiasm, remains unsure if it will ever take place. "There are still a lot of things to discuss. Remember, this is a group which only split up two years ago."
When he reflects on those days, he says that they feel unreal, as if they were something that happened to a younger brother. He is making a sincere effort to drag his life back together again - the new album surprisingly good and there is a 16-date tour next month - and the prognosis seems good. "It is all about the future now," he says. "But, sometimes, I don't know if I'm a kid or a grownup. Do you know what I mean?"
Yes, Robbie, I tell him. I do.