The Face - January 1999


And Now... The Nation's Favorite. The Award For The Most Clean-Living And Moderate
Popular Entertainer Of 1998 Goes To Robbie Williams

Part One: At A Pop Festival
August 22, 1998: Coming into the Leeds hotel, just off the bus from Liverpool, here to play at the V98 festival, Robbie Williams is jumped by some young kids. They come not to praise but to tease." Are you Robbie Williams? " they ask. He's not in the mood. " No, " he says. He tries to check in. They call him a cunt. He ignores them. They call him a batty boy. " What do you say to that? " he wonders. " ' It's not just you - I hate everyone ' ? " When I walk up to say hello, he looks wary - it's another weird guy who wants a handshake or a scribble, and he'll either have to pretend to be interested or have more uncouth vocabulary unloaded in front of him - until he realizes he's met me before. He apologies. I mention that it's been a while. The Take That days. He nods. " A lot of vodka under the bridge, " he says. Britain's most interesting and contradictory pop star has a pressing rendezvous. His girlfriend, Nicole Appleton from All Saints, is also appearing at V98, but she is staying at a different hotel. Their love has had its ups and downs, as regular readers of the nation's tabloids will know. It is not possible for every practically to keep pace with the heart's tortured progress. " I'm going over to the Marriott to see the missus, " he explains. " When we planned the hotels we weren't together. " An hour later, the rest of Robbie's band get on to the tour bus. There is a typed itinerary for each day on tour; at the top of today's are the words ' The Ego Has Finished The Album And Is Doing Some Gigs '. We stop at the Marriott and Robbie jumps aboard. He asks someone to dig out the T-shirt he's had made for wandering around the festival site. It is brown and printed with the words I've Been Advised To Say Fuck All. When we reach the bands' dressing rooms, Robbie is told that there is an
80-year-old woman who wants to meet him. The story spreads that she has some of the lyrics to ' Angels ' tattooed on one of her breasts. There is some uncertainly backstage as to whether this is anything anyone wants to see. Eventually Mrs. Hainstock, the woman is question, is driven into the artists' compound grasping a laminated cutting about her tattoo from her local newspaper. When the car door opens, her walking stick falls out, but when she throws her arms around Robbie and gives him a kiss, her eyes glimmer and she breathlessly mutters, " I can't believe it, " like any other starstruck fan." I've got an angel on my shoulder, " she says. " Have you got an angel? " Robbie says, solicitously. " Have you? " Mrs. Hainstock unbuttons herself enough to reveal her right shoulder, and the delicate angel which was tattooed thereon four months previously. She tells Robbie that she has a massive poster of him in her living room, and that she kisses it every morning. ' Angels ' is the song which both saved and opened up Williams' solo career. Robbie had tried to write songs with a number of people when he met Guy Chambers, who had played with World Party and his own unsuccessful band The Lemon Trees. The first time they sat down together, Robbie sang the beginnings of his song he had. He had another chorus, but Guy Chambers had a better idea. They immediately knew it was special. It was a simple song from Robbie's heart: " That I'm really fucked up, but I know there's something with me, " he says. From then on, they wrote everything together: Chambers co produces Williams' records, plays keyboards on stage and runs his band. " He's one of the only people that knows how to deal with me, " says Robbie. Famously, before ' Angels ' was released as Williams' fifth single, his Life Thru A Lens album had sold less than 40,000 copies in Britain.
It has now sold well over a million. Later, on stage, when Robbie comes to perform 'Angels', Mrs. Hainstock, by the side of the stage, takes her laminated cutting of her shopping bag and waves it vaguely in time to the music. And Robbie has his cake and eats it in every possible way. He does daft, crap things like shouting out - before everyone sings the line " I'm loving angels instead " - " What we doing? ". He wants to work the crowd, milk their emotion, really mean it, and commentate wryly on the whole spectacle, all at the same time. And it is his gift ( and, as is the way with these things, his golden curse ) that he is currently the only entertainer around who could pull all of that off, and get away with it. " It's very weird, " he will say. " I have a complete and utter lack of embarrassment, but at the same time I'm very embarrassed. A lot of the stuff I do on stage, I think, ' Shit, I wish
hadn't just done that or said that. ' Perhaps I'm too scared to take anything seriously... I get on stage and go, ' Fucking hell - this is daft! ' and people get that. I think people revel in the fact that, ' Yeah, we think it's daft too. ' " After a cover of The La's ' There She Goes '
( his drummer Chris Sharrock's old group ), he begins to introduce another song. He is interrupted by his band shouting at him. " Am I introducing the wrong song? " he asks. He checks the set list, then turns to the audience. " Oh, " he says. " You're missing ' Life Thru A Lens '. That one's shit anyway... " And they play ' Millennium ', which a few weeks later will become his first number one, instead.

Part Two: Entertaining Royalty
October 28th, 1998: Robbie sits in the stalls at the Lyceum theatre, watching the dress rehearsal for Prince Charles' birthday show. " The only reason I said I'd do it was to do a sketch with Eddie Izzard and Roger Moore, " he says. " And now it's not happening. " As 50 perky Prince's Trust youngsters come out and sing a song, his heart sinks further. Panic attack time. He goes and confers with his manager, telling him he doesn't want to do the show. I suspect his manager has dealt with these moments before. Eventually Robbie sits back down, a little calmer. Geri Ex-Spice comes on stage. Robbie says that earlier he told her she should listen to ' No Regrets ', a song on his album, a triumphant but bitter reflection on Take That. She didn't say anything. There's a long-term chill between him and the Spice Girls. He won't offer up the details, though he concedes that it involves group solidarity on their part after some ill-fated romantic shilly-shallying. " It's very silly, " he says. I mentioned that all the papers had him linked with Mel C. " Which one? " he says mysteriously. " Scary or Sporty? " After rehearsing the second of his two songs, he disappears. When the rest of the cast rehearse the final curtain call, there is a gap. Robbie is lying on the couch, his top off, watching TV in a hotel suite across the road. His hands are down his trousers, but then they often are. On his left shoulder is the beginning of an intricate new tattoo. It's a Maori design. He began it three weeks ago: it will go across his back and down his other arm. I ask him why. " Because I don't like myself very much, " he says. Then he adds: " I think it's gorgeous. And it's a prayer, protecting myself from me." " I'm bored now, " he says. He flicks on to Roseanne's chat show. She is asking her audience some questions. " When does a male reach his sexual peak? " she asks. " Eighteen, " answers the 24-year-old Robbie Williams with some assurance. Robbie's mother and girlfriend arrive together " You got any fags? " Robbie asks Nicole, then adds, " Babe, you
look fucking great. " He explains to her how he wanted to walk out of the show. " I had a bit of an episode, " he grins. They chat about seeing Halloween H20 the previous night. She was seeing it for the second time, but she says Robbie isn't the type of person to really enjoy that kind of thing. " I saw the first one! " he objects." Only because I made you, " she points out. They talk about The Exorcist. " Some of the scenes are genuinely disturbing, " Guy says. " Like a Gary Barlow concert, " says Robbie. " When are you on? " Nicole asks him. " I open and close the show, " Robbie replies. " Fancy me now? " Robbie has his make- up done. His guests take their seats. " See you mum, you look lovely! " he shouts. " Nic!
You look great! " He runs through everything he won't do tonight. He was supposed to lead a final hip-hip-hooray towards the Royal Box, but he has declined this honour. ( Roger Moore will do it instead ). He doesn't want to stand in line after the concert and shake Prince Charles' hand. " I don't want to do the press conference either, " he tells Gabby, who work for Robbie's management. " What would I talk about? " In the hotel lift, he runs through the pop star poses he will include. " I do a bit of Neil... " - he waves his hand at his side, palm open and facing forward, in a typically Neil Tennant manner - " a bit of Tina Turner, a bit of Elvis, a bit of Mick Jagger, a bit of Tom Jones, and... this is me! " He thinks.
" Oh. And Freddie Mercury. " As we leave the hotel, he says this: " You know what? Posh hotels remind me of cocaine. They're so decadent anyway, you think what it'd be like to get five grams and go mad. " Though he had messed about before then ( he took one of his GCSEs on acid when he was 14 ), Robbie really got into drugs when he was 16. " I used to smoke an incredible amount of weed, " he says. " Then I took speed - speed was good... " Towards the end of Take That he got into cocaine, " when I found out that when you come down off your E you can carry on with coke " After Take That finished, he went for it all even more, though he says that his principal vice was always the drinking. Those were the days in which he filmed what he considers his most cheesy soul-selling blunder: the Seven-Up ad in which he appeared in long hair and a bikini. He'd been out at Browns and been up all night. For the two weeks the ad ran, he left the country. " Fucking hell, you prick, " he says, to himself. Eventually, he decided he had a problem. " Denial is very strong thing, " he says, " but denial doesn't cut through vanity - not in my case, anyway. " The first time - and he appreciates how surreal this is - he simply telephoned Elton John. " Elton was the only person I knew that had actively stopped taking drugs and talked about it, " Robbie says. " I didn't know anyone that was clean apart from Elton. He was tremendously helpful, and to this day I'm very very grateful. " He went back for more help after recording his first album. In a documentary to be shown on TV this Christmas, there is footage of Williams recording his final vocal, bloated and drunk, swigging from a bottle of spirits, as he sings.
He's happy for it to be seen. " I think people thought I was fancying about when I told them I had a drink problem, " he says. And they might as well see the truth. That last night he wouldn't leave the studio. It was one of Sleeper's birthday party. He hadn't " touched Charlie for a while ", but he wandered into the bathroom at the wrong moment, and soon he was popping out to pick up four bottles of champagne, one of which he'd drunk even before he got back to the studio. He kept telling people he was going into rehab the next day. He was just scared. During his opening number, ' Let Me Entertain You ', Robbie is
imaginatively surrounded by cavorting circus performers. From backstage I can't see much, but Robbie recaps as soon as he's back in the wings. "I did all the drugs references to Charles - ' Little Bo Peep has lost his sheep / He popped a pill and fell asleep ', "he says.
And he grabbed his crotch as forcefully as he could when he hit the ' rock ' of " I will be your rock of ages ". Robbie turns back towards where the audience are: " Ladies and gentlemen,
" he says. " I am it. You might as well go home, or go to the bar." While Robbie changes in the next room, Guy Chambers begins playing acoustic guitar. There is no discussion. Robbie simply join in. It's a new B-side, ' Deceiving Is Believing '. When Robbie is dressed he
comes and they begin another one: " I'm your new best mate / Help me self-medicate... " There is something stupefying sweet about it. They adore these songs. They wrote them, they love them, and they're going to sing them to themselves. " Do you know what George Martin said to me? " Robbie says. Martin is another of the show's guests. "I remind him of John Lennon. " He is quiet for a moment and then says, " I want all the guitars to sound like Marilyn Manson now. " No one takes much notice. " I'm serious, guys. I want to go really heavy. The next album." They start doing cover versions, mostly by The Beatles. A crowd of passers-by gathers in the street outside. The performers are herded back on to the stage
for the curtain call. When the curtain closes for the final time, they stay in place for the receiving line where they will meet the Prince. Despite his earlier protestations, Robbie stays put, standing between Stephen Fry and Geri Halliwell, as Prince Charles slowly makes his way past lesser celebrities in the 1998 scheme of things - Rowan Atkinson, Joan Collins, Roger Moore, Clive James, Caprice - towards them. ( The strangest moment: when Prince Charles is about four people away from her, Ulrika Jonson slaps herself sharply on either cheek.) Robbie has met Charles before, when he was in Take That: Charles asked him if he was a member of a boys' club. This time, they have a matter which seems to make them
both laugh, some photos are taken, and it's over. " He said, ' What have you cancelled to do this? ' " Robbie reports back. " I said, ' Nothing, apart from world domination '. " Back in the dressing, people come and go. Samantha Janus and Natalie from All Saints hog the sofa. Goldie pops in, announces he needs to find Vinnie Jones and leaves. Nicky arrives. Goldie returns, and stands with Robbie in the make-up room. They do not discuss savage break beats, weird drugs, depraved sex and black magic. They do discuss the merits of owning property in English country villages ( Goldie extolling the virtues of the kind of little hamlet " with a chapel in it " ), of the likelihood that property values will plummet, and of the pleasure in having a decent golf course nearby.

Part Three: At Home
November 5, 1998: I go round Robbie's house in west London to talk. He's feeling a little edgy. He's done 40 European interviews in the last few days. " Bollocks, bollocks and more bollocks, " he says. He told one interviewer that he's opening a hypermarket in the Shetland Isles, because fishermen are finding it difficult to get fruit, and that he's helping with the building himself. " And they just nod at you, " he says. " One guy said, ' What are you doing tonight? ' And I went, ' Well, I'm going to visit a sex shop, then I'm going to go back to my hotel and abuse myself, and I'll probably cut little pieces off my body, fry them and eat them. What are you up to? ' That was live on TV. I quite enjoyed that. " It was while he was in Germany that he was told that George Michael has said " Gary Barlow doesn't have any talent ". And if Robbie, knowing that George Michael is Barlow's hero, felt a little sorry for him, would it make him less human if he also took some delight in it all? " George has gone all Robbie, " he sighs now, " he's slagging Gary Barlow off. " This leads to a discussion of George Michael's dancing style. I ask Robbie whether he has danced with George Michael, and he is honest enough to answer, though he is embarrassed that so many of the stories he tells contain the names of the famous and semi-famous. It was - " This is tossy, " he winces - in San Tropez, the weekend he left Take That. " I think, what else better to do the weekend you leave Take That than go to San Tropez and be with the A-list of the celebrity world? " he recalls. He is reluctant to say who offered him entree to this world, though the names which draw a squirm rather than a denial are Bono and Nellee Hooper. Earlier that day he had been on Mohammed Al Fayed's yacht. " I called him Sheik My-handy all night, " Robbie says. " I was twatted. " Robbie was scared of being with all these people, and got more pissed and more stoned, and when he went down below to get some food, he fell
down the steps in a cartoon style, hitting his head on each step as he went. When he landed and looked up, Simon Le Bon and Kate Moss were just staring at him. Later, he found himself on a San Tropez dance floor with George Michael as Wham! records played. Michael is often criticized for dancing to his own music, though Robbie thinks it's fair enough: if you make the music you love the best, why not enjoy it? " If ' Let Me Entertain You ' comes on,
" he says, " I'll go mad. " That evening, Robbie was trying hard to dance really well because there were lots of famous and beautiful people there, and he was some kid from a boy band so he felt he had plenty to prove. He'd met George Michael before, when he was in Take That, on a plane coming back from Berlin. Robbie, aware that everyone in teen bands always went on about how they were going to be the new George Michael, went up and told him that he was going to be the new Andrew Ridgeley. Loyally and sweetly, Michael replied,
" Don't take the piss out of Andrew." "I'm really not in the mood for a interview," Robbie says. He keeps massaging his arms; he's in agony. He worked out too hard. "I wanted to be Peter Andre in a day," he explains. "I felt like a fat bastard." We talk anyway, about his past. His parents split when he was tiny, and Robbie was mostly raised by his mother, Jan. His father, a comedian who won New Faces ( " I have my father's cabaret way with people," he says ) would mostly take him out " various Saturdays ", but when he was doing a summer season Robbie sometimes wouldn't see him for four months. How did their parting affect you? " I get on with women a lot better than I do with men - I think that's the major thing. I don't understand men. I can sit and have a conversation with a woman, no problem, but when it comes to doing men's things, I find it very difficult. Why do I feel really inferior, right now, speaking to you? " Speaking to a man? " Yeah. There's very few I get on with. " Feeling inferior how? " Just, not that there's anything I could be rumbled about, just feeling - you're going to rumble me. I don't know how to explain it. " Do you blame your dad for that situation? " I wouldn't say ' blame ', because blame's a negative word, but I would say that's why it's happened." You do present yourself, as you're aware, in a very extreme ' love me, everybody, love me! ' way. ( He nods. ) When someone's parents split very young, that's the kind of easy explanation people jump on. " Well, that's probably why. That makes sense. I do set my stall out and I play the victim an awful lot as well. I do do that ' love me love me ' thing and people around me do as well. " Pause. " I've got to stop that from happening. " Robbie Williams' door bell doesn't ring. A light on the wall flashes instead. " Just in case I'm DJing, " he explains, pointing to the twin decks in the corner. In front of them, by the pool table, is a large stuffed elephant which he bought in FAO Schwarz in New York. He has a life-size Star Wars storm trooper in one corner; he's planning to buy a Darth Vader to put behind his mixing desk and a Yoda to put on the top of one of his speakers. He has Jamie Reid Sex Pistols prints and James Bond posters on the walls. The Take That platinum discs are in the toilet. He reorganizes the six remote controls, two mobile phones and the games console on the coffee table. " They look great, don't
they? " he says. Then, suddenly, he looks very distressed, his brow intensely furrowed. When I ask, he tells me he's fine. " I go through moments of it, " he says, " and then I come out. " He plays me a demo of song called ' My Pimp Won't Let Me Go ', a haunting dark folk tune of self-hate, of kicked-in teeth and pissed-on sheets. It's both good and scary; Guy Chambers later tells me that it is the first song which Robbie has written on his own from scratch. It's about the feeling he gets when he's coming down off coke, or generally coming down, or generally being down. " It's not me protecting myself from myself, " he says. It's planned for the third album, which he wants to call Fifteen Minutes. I tell him it's a terrible idea, and that he might as well call it Betcha Hate Me Now. Unfortunately he seems to quite like that idea too. " I think it's quite weird at the moment, " he says, " because I know I'm incredibly naff but very cool at the same time. I know that. And I think that's funny. And I relate that to back at school, when I was very cool but really naff at the same time. I knew the cool people and I knew how to talk to them and what
they were listening to and I knew what I wanted to listen to. But I think people forgive me for being naff. " Generally, if people are in this kind of predicament, somewhere between cool and naff, it is because they are in the process of crossing the bridge between cool and naff. Most people are quite happy to swap the magnetic allure of the born entertainer for the poetic soul of the true artist. But it's different with Robbie. As deep as you go, and however long you study those always half-sad, half-glinting eyes, it's the same. He's cool to the very core and he's naff to the very core. It's one reason why he's never satisfied. He says, " I don't think anybody gets the respect that they think they should have. " But whenever anyone praises him - and these days, more and more, they do - he always seems to notice the parts they miss. If you have been reading casually about Robbie Williams over the past few months, you may have picked up the notion that he has renounced all
intoxicants for the rest of his life. He says that he has never wanted to give that impression. He read a review which referred to him as ' an Energizer bunny going from rehab to rehab '; that is never how he wanted to be seen. " Basically what happened was, I really fucked up," he says. " And I needed to stop. Right now, I'm not fucking up. If it does start to be a problem then I'll recognize that. " When I inquire about his current status as regards drugs and drink he says, " I'm just bemused. Really bemused. I'm probably living in denial. I put so much effort into being an addict that I don't actually know if I am one now. " When I ask specific questions, he answers them. " I've got nothing to hide, " he says. He last had a line of cocaine three weeks earlier. ( " It's not a nice drug, " he comments. " It's a fucking shit drug. It turns you into an asshole... It does have its moments. " ) He last had a drink the previous Friday, and he thinks he'll have one tonight. He'll say, " I'm as dysfunctional as any other 24 year old living in London. " He'll say it's not something he's bothered about, but that in the wrong frame of mind he can also spend 24 hours a day thinking about it. That lifestyle has given him some strange stories. Occasionally Robbie will say a certain kind of phrase - " My party trick that I did in New York with Lars from Metallica, " for instance - and you just start laughing at the absurdity. The trick was the ability to drink four pints of Guinness, one after the other, with his throat open, without stopping. He always found it easy. " Lars took his hat off, " Robbie says. " He couldn't believe it. " Nonetheless, it was an evening which ended unfortunately. " I was sick all over Liam (Gallagher)'s curtains, " Robbie says. " All black tar. "

Part Four: At An Awards Show
November 11-12, 1998: Robbie sits backstage in Milan on the rehearsals day for the MTV Europe Music Awards. Gabby comes in and says that he needs a new hotel pseudonym. " Barry Cade, " he suggests. " Or Lee Thargic. " Later, they run through his two songs, ' Millennium ' and ' Let Me Entertain You '. He really lets go. " That'll steal the show, " he shrugs. He jumps into a minibus and heads to a radio interview. His mother comes too. A car swerves, nearly driving into us. " Fuck off! " shouts Robbie, who is sitting in the front passenger seat. " Excuse me, " he adds. " Sorry, mum. " As we pull into Radio Deejay he
complains that he was just here about three weeks ago. " Why am I here again? " he asks. " I bet Madonna won't be fucking coming. " A pause. " Sorry, mum. " On air, the DJ - DJ Nikki
- asks him which awards he hopes to win tomorrow. " Best Female, Best Male, Most Pissed... " he suggests. DJ Nikki mentions to Robbie that he's changed his haircut and he says, " No, I've just lowered my ears. " Robbie's mum is asked to speak and tells Milan that she disapproves of Robbie's tattoos. When they play ' Strong ' he says, " I'd like to thank Oasis for that last song. " Pause. " Only joking. " ' Strong ', which you should expect to be number one sometime next year, is about being weak. About everyone thinking you can cope, when you can't. The first lines - ' My breath smells a thousand fags / When I'm drunk I dance like my dad ' - came to him when he was really out of it at a Longpigs party. The closing verse - ' Life's too short to be afraid / Take a pill to numb the pain ' - refers to when he started taking Prozac. He only stayed on it for a couple of months. " I couldn't be arsed," he says. One couplet got lost along the way, but he performs it now. " I've been told that I talk shit, " he sings, " but I must admit, I'm good at it. " DJ Nikki asks what they'll be doing tonight." We're going to get drunk and have a kebab, " Robbie says. " Kebab is from Middle East? " DJ Nikki asks." No, " says Robbie, " from Stoke On Trent. " Tonight, Robbie has been invited to dinner with Dolce & Gabbana, but he's not going. He agrees to eat instead with everyone else in the hotel, but he doesn't turn up. Guy says that he didn't think he would: Robbie hates waiting for food. Mrs. Williams comes, however, wearing her son's Tom Jones T-shirt. After about an hour, Robbie sweeps in after all, with Nicky. The loving couple are arguing about TV. Robbie hates having to watch Jerry Springer, and says that she complained when he watched Match Of The Day. Then they bicker lightly about the rota for making the Weetabix and tea, and the Marmite and toast. And so on. " When we go to bed,
" Robbie points out, " who tickles you until you go to sleep? " Afterwards, they head to the bar for one drink. " I'll have a wine and you have a water, " Nicky suggests. Robbie has a tequila. At the table, after her son has gone, Robbie's mother - who strikes one as impressively strong-headed and calm - tells the kind of stories only a mother can. Of how, before Robbie arrived, she and her husband had been advised that there was only a one-in- a-million chance of them conceiving. " He was obviously destined to get here, because there was so much against him, " she says. And of Robbie's precocious habits. When he was little, she would get up every morning at seven to open up the pub they ran to let the cleaners in, and Robbie would get up at the same time. He would observe the routine every morning. By the time he was about two-and-a-half he was able to vault out of his cot. One night he woke up and decided to help out his mother by opening up the pub before she woke. He picked up the keys on the sideboard, opened all three doors with the appropriate keys, propped back the pub doors with the wooden wedges to keep them open. He went to the till and took a five pound bag of ten pence pieces. He plugged in the jukebox and fed the change into it, and programmed it to play ' Summer Nights ' 50 times in a row. He put out the beer mats and began pouring pints. Soon his bright canary yellow one-piece outfit was soaked from the spillage. Outside, six or seven police cars converged on the pub. They burst in to find the new two-year-old apprentice licensee. His mother was woken up by a policeman by her bed saying, " Jan - don't be frightened. " The worst part was that for the next day, they couldn't get ' Summer Nights ' off the jukebox. In the end they had to call in the jukebox people to sort it out. When the TV crew leave, we talk some more. He recently walked out of an interview with the NME after five minutes. It wasn't anything that was said; he just realized he shouldn't have agreed to do it. " I don't like them, " he says. " They're written really nice stuff about me recently - a long time ago they wrote shit stuff about me - I just
hate the way that they think it's so important that they give their blessing to you, and it just pisses me off. It's very patronizing and it's fucking rude. I hate it when people come up to me and say, ' I thought you were a wanker but you're alright now, ' So, alright, you're a bad judge of character the first time you meet people? There's going to be a backlash so I might as well start my own by walking out... The only reason why those NME journalists exist is because they weren't strong enough to carry furniture. " He swears that he hasn't read the article which they ran anyway. I mention that much of it is a debate about how ' real ' he is. One of the NME's queries is whether he knows what ' There She Goes ' by The La's is about. " Heroin, " he says. " So fuck off. " He took heroin once, about a year and a half ago. " I ran out of coke, " he explains. He would have taken a Rohypnol if he'd had one, but heroin was all he could lay his hands on. It made him vomit. " It took the top end off crawling up the walls, " he says, " but the wondrous sense of calm never came. Wouldn't touch that again. " He's still thinking about the NME. " So they question how real I am? " he says. " But I'm not very real. I'm not very real. I'm an entertainer. That's not real. I wouldn't start singing ' Let Me Entertain You ' in the street, do you know what I mean? I'm not very real. And that's alright. " Last night Robbie Williams dreamed that he killed somebody. He often dreams that people kill him or that he kills somebody, and he dreams a lot about going to prison. People stab him sometimes. Riddle him with bullets. Most nights there's a bad dream, and it's been like that for a few years. Most days he wakes up feeling unsettled. But there are good dreams, too. Once, he dreamed that he was flying, and then he dived down into a canal and sat underneath the water, where he wrote a song with a salmon. How smart are you? I ask him. " I have an awful lot of common sense that I never use, " he answers. How clever are you? " You can't define intelligence, " he says, as his mother walks into the room. " How clever am I, mum? " " Very, " she says. " Emotionally intelligent. " " I couldn't name you all the capitals of the world, " he says. " I can't add up or subtract, I can't write very well, my spelling's awful, but... " "No, " she interrupts. " That's totally wrong. You sound as though you've not even got any intelligence with regards to sort of intellectual stuff, academic stuff, but you have. You were never below average at school.
 " Oh, I was, " he insists. She'll have no more of this. " You were not! Robert, we went through your school reports the other day. There were Bs. " She turns to me. " They knew that he'd got great potential, but he was just so busy with his head with stuff. He just loved life. " She turns back to Robbie. " You mustn't put yourself down like that, because you know I'm very very honest, and you were above average... " " Mmmm, " says Robbie, chastened. " ... and I think with you your expectations of yourself are always so very high. " She has one more thing to add. " I've actually come to borrow some toothpaste, " she says.
" In the bathroom, mum, " replies Robbie Williams. He wonders which suit he should wear tonight, rejecting one as " a bit tight round the bollock area ". He says he'll be really annoyed if he doesn't win an award. Best Male Artist is the one he wants. He tells me he has an idea for his acceptance speech if he wins an award. He's so sick of everyone thanking God that maybe he'll say, " God's just phoned and he wants to thank me ". Best Male Artist is the first award to be presented. George Michael opens the envelope. " Robbie Williams! " he says. Robbie strides cockily along a walkway to the podium, takes the award, and appears to gather his thoughts. He says only three words: " Damn right, too. " He closes the show with a medley of ' Millennium ' and ' Let Me Entertain You '. But backstage, after winning the award he wanted, and giving the kind of performance that only he can - everyone buzzing around him in celebration with their party faces on - Robbie's own face is dark, his lips are clenched together so that they form a long dark line of reproach across his face, and he hardly says a word. It's just one of those moments. You wish that the joy he splatters outwards could more easily be echoed in a joy he could feel himself. That the feeling he seems to get - maybe as much relief as pleasure - each time he jumps on stage, or bounces round a room of acquaintances, and realises that the cheeky, chirpy popular entertainment act he has fashioned from a scrapheap of dissatisfaction and disappointments has worked its potent magic again, could last a little longer. But Robbie Williams is not like that. Tonight, compliments and congratulations seem to fall off him like unwanted confetti blowing off a lonely man who has accidentally walked past a wedding. The messed-up and marvellous Robbie Williams just wants to get out of here.