Back For Good/At Least an Album and Tour

You must have been hiding in a dank cave in the Middle-East if you didn’t know that Robbie Williams has rejoined Take That, returning the line up to its original five-piece for their latest album, Progress.

The clamour to get tickets for next year’s tour was staggering, even considering the success they have had since reforming as a quartet in 2006. Any thoughts that there would be a frigid response to Williams, the Great Betrayer, rejoining the group were soon laughed off as ticket sellers were rubbing their flabby guts with the money which had helped ship roughly a million tickets in a matter of hours.

When I was growing up my sister was a Howard Donald fan (she even stuck by him when he stopped showering and got the lank dreadlocks) but I always considered Williams to be the most interesting member of the band. It’s because he never played it safe like the others. He had that riveting unpredictability which would have everyone, including himself, unsure of what he was going to say or do next. Meanwhile, Gary Barlow would sit nervously in attendance, terrified that the applecart would not so much be upset but driven recklessly into a wall at high speed. Which it eventually was.

Williams’ decision to leave the band in 1995 showed that he had the balls to cut the tether which tied him to the biggest pop band in Britain and face the world on its own terms in the pursuit of artistic credibility. Whether he achieved that credibility is a moot point but, my word, did he have a hell of a time trying to find it.

Not remembering recording albums, overdosing in elevators whilst supermodels snorted the rest of his stash back in his hotel room, and all those stints in rehab (“I love a clinic, me”), the singer has gone through a picaresque journey which has now seen him come full-circle, albeit with a little more maturity and a smattering of garish tattoos.

He seems to have found solace in marriage and I’m actually pleased for him. What Williams will always have though is a cloud of capriciousness hanging over him. It’s all happy families with the band at the moment as the pressure is on and the need to play the game has never been higher, but it was his frustration at having to play the game which saw him leave the group in the first place. Watch this space.