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http://www.music-news.com/shownews.asp?H=R...p;nItemID=77097

 

 

Robbie Williams fears upsetting Gary Barlow

 

added: 12 Mar 2014 // by: Music-News.com Newsdesk

 

 

 

Robbie Williams is worried about upsetting his former Take That bandmate Gary Barlow by saying no to a reunion and has therefore suggested that they take things slow at first. :kink:

 

The 40-year-old singer - who reunited with his former band in 2010 for their sixth album 'Progress' - is said to be worried about upsetting Gary, who he's had differences with in the past, and isn't sure he's ready to focus completely on Take That rather than his solo material.

 

A source revealed: "Robbie isn't against the idea, although he doesn't really have time this year to commit to Take That, although they have collaborated on compositions.

 

"He also doesn't want to upset Gary, given that they patched up their differences and are as close as ever."

 

The 'Let Me Entertain You' hitmaker has reportedly suggested to Gary, 43, that they take things slow by working on material together - along with fellow bandmates Mark Owen, Jason Orange and Howard Donald - for now, and then discussing a world tour at a later date.

 

The source told The Sun newspaper: "He's suggested recording together, seeing how that goes then embarking on a world tour in 2015."

 

Gary himself is preparing to kick-off his own solo tour with dates in cities including Glasgow, London, Cardiff and Manchester starting later this month, and Take That are already back in the studio working on a new album which is expected to be released later this year.

Robbie Williams exhibition at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery to be extended due to demand

 

 

 

By The Sentinel | Posted: March 14, 2014

 

 

AN EXHIBITION charting the life of Potteries pop superstar Robbie Williams has proved so popular that it has been extended for another month.

 

Almost 17,000 people visited Portrait of a Potteries Pop Star at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery (PMAG) in its first month.

 

It is one of the most popular exhibitions the Hanley venue has ever staged in terms of first-month visitor numbers – second only to the unveiling of the priceless Staffordshire Hoard Anglo-Saxon treasure.

 

Museum staff are so pleased with visitor numbers and feedback that they have decided to extend the exhibition, organised by The Sentinel in conjunction with the city council and Robbie's parents, until April 30 so that it will be open during the Easter holidays.

 

 

The exhibition includes clothing, memorabilia and awards donated by Robbie's parents and archive Sentinel photographs.

 

It was a key part of RWFanFest – a celebration here in Robbie's home city to mark the 40th birthday of the singer who has given £5 million of his own money to more than 300 local charities in his native North Staffordshire.

 

As well as art exhibitions and fun days in the Mother Town of Burslem, a fund-raising concert at Vale Park starring Robbie tribute act Mike Andrew raised more than £10,000 for the Donna Louise Children's Hospice at Trentham Lakes, of which Robbie is a patron.

 

Further collections and bus tours around a brand new Robbie tourist trail have helped to boost that total to more than £17,000 – with more expected from collection tins at PMAG.

 

Over the weekend of RWFanFest hardcore Robbie fans from around the world descended on Stoke-on-Trent – providing a welcome boost for hotels, pubs and restaurants.

 

Groups from Venezuela, Spain and the United States have all praised the PMAG exhibition in its visitors' book, with Andalusian guests commenting that it was 'a dream come true'.

 

Nichola Meaney owns 'Frosted Fancies of Stoke' business on Greenbank Road in Tunstall where Robbie was living when he joined Take That in 1990. She said: "Since the trail went up I've seen people on Greenbank Road taking pictures of his old house The city has done a nice thing for him and hopefully he can soon come and see it all."

 

Millie Brundrett, head receptionist at The George Hotel in Burslem, said RWFanFest had provided a huge boost for local businesses.

 

She said: "Over the weekend of February 7, 8 and 9 we were extremely busy – as was Burslem. We had people from Poland, Scotland, Ireland, France and Germany staying with us."

 

But it wasn't just Burslem that benefited from the tourism.

 

Patrick Fitzgerald, general manager at Hanley's Quality Hotel said: "The bookings at our hotel peaked over the course of the weekend with Robbie Williams' birthday bash at Port Vale. We were fully booked one night."

 

Next week city councillors will meet to agree to offer Robbie the Freedom of the City in recognition of his musical success (70 million records sold and a record 17 BRIT Awards to date) and his charitable works which also include the bi-annual Soccer Aid charity football match in aid of UNICEF.

 

 

 

Read more: http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/Robbie-Will...l#ixzz2vvWUgnBX

 

Snippet take from an interview that Gary B gave to a German journalist

 

 

 

The song you wrote together with Robbie Williams. Later this year there will also be a new Take That album. What role will it play Robbie Williams?

 

Barlow: That's the big question, is not it? (smiles) I think there will be a song with him. We are a family again. He has written a song for my album, I have a written for his - and somehow he will be heard at the next Take That album, definitely.

 

By Gary Barlow said Nadine Lischick

 

 

 

 

 

Williams to duet with dad again

 

 

UPDATED 18 MARCH 2014 09:13 PM

 

Robbie Williams is set for a new collaboration - this time with his dad.

 

 

The Angels singer duetted with dad Pete Conway at a show at London's Palladium in November and Pete has told The Sun it isn't the last time they will sing together.

 

Pete said: "I loved doing the Palladium with him. It was great. I really enjoyed it.

 

"We're going to do something together soon. It will be announced shortly - I just don't know all the details yet."

 

Pete is a retired nightclub singer and comedian, and in November sang Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me with his famous son at the Palladium.

 

It came as part of a concert where Robbie performed songs from his second swing album, Swings Both Ways, which was filmed for a BBC special shown in December 2013.

 

 

Irish Independent

There's nothing foolish about Robbie Williams when it comes to money ( Exception being that mad house he bought in the UK on a whim for 11 million, showing off in front of Ayda me thinks ) ....

Jary Barlow gives Robbie Williams May deadline to decide on Take That return

 

 

Mar 28, 2014 00:00 By Ashleigh Rainbird

 

The band have begun working on a new album but Robbie hasn’t been involved - as the rest of the gang have only just started, the deadline has been extended

 

 

 

Gary Barlow has given the singer a deadline to decide if he wants to return – and he has just two months to make his mind up.

 

The band have begun working on a new album – hooray! – but, so far, Robbie hasn’t been involved.

 

And time is ticking...

 

Gary, 43, says: “We need to know what we are doing by the end of May.

 

The thing is with Robbie is that he is a family man, so whether he will be in the final line-up I’m not sure.”

 

Gary said previously that Robbie had until January to decide.

 

GettyGlory days: Take That pose in 1991

But as the rest of the gang – Howard Donald, Jason Orange and Mark Owen – have only just got cracking, deadline day has been extended.

 

Gary added: “We’re one month into the writing process, with the new record hopefully at Christmas and a tour next year.

 

"We think we have some good material already but no album title just yet.”

 

The ultimatum sounds definitive but Gary has offered Robbie, 40, an option if he can’t commit fully.

 

Speaking to Alan Carr on tonight’s Chatty Man on Channel 4, he adds: “If he’s not back in the band, he’ll write on the record and we will work with him on his next record.”

 

Their last writing collaboration, Candy, topped the charts in 2012. That year, Robbie and wife Ayda welcomed a daughter, Teddy.

 

As Alan knows, no conversation with Gary is complete without a reference to Gary’s stint on The X Factor, so let’s have his thoughts on Cheryl Cole’s much-heralded return...

 

He says: “Everyone will be watching to see the chemistry this time – and I hope Cheryl erupts.

 

“That would be great.”

 

Someone should write a musical about it!

 

 

 

Mirror.co.uk

Better Man

 

 

March 29, 2014

 

 

After finding fame at 16 with Take That, Robbie Williams followed a classic rock'n'roll script: sex, drugs, rehab and bitterness. Then he met the girl who changed everything.

 

 

Robbie Williams, international icon of pop, is sitting in a TV studio ante-room in Sydney, tattooed hands clasped. He's here to promote his 10th album, Swings Both Ways, but - as always - he's brilliantly off-message. "I am!" he insists. "Like a girl! Inside me there's a fat man dying to get out, all the time. All the time!"

 

As the 16-year-old baby of infamous boy band Take That, Robbie Williams was (correctly) packaged as the "cheeky one": the crazy-eyed, wide-mouthed joker juggling melons at the five-star buffet or mooning people from the luxury yacht. Later, after he controversially left the band, he seemed just plain crazy: in and out of rehab, drinking and dosing himself to oblivion, searching for UFOs on the deck of his high-security LA mansion surrounded by the five luxury cars he bought in a single afternoon even though he couldn't drive.

 

Of course, during the same period he also managed to record seven No. 1 albums, sell 70 million records, and win 17 BRIT Awards - but even so. He was like a toddler with a loaded gun: never more than a heartbeat away from disaster.

 

Yet today, in the flesh, he's like the idealised form of his earlier self: same striking pale eyes and thick lashes; same truly excellent northern English accent (he makes a hard edge of every "g", so that phrases like "being a singer" make you want to laugh), same bad tattoos (including a new teddy bear, for his baby daughter, Theodora "Teddy" Rose); but no angst, no drama, no hurtling-towards-disaster warning signs. I am bound to report, however, in the interests of truth in journalism, that he is, indeed, fatter.

 

http://i59.tinypic.com/28l6txv.jpg

 

"I had a surprise birthday the other week," he says - he turned 40 in February - "and I just ate and ate and ate. Afterwards I said to Ayda [Field, his wife of three years], 'I think I'm going to reinvent myself as a fat, cuddly person. It'd just be easier.' "

 

Maybe you've relaxed, I suggest: contentment doesn't always breed low body fat. "Maybe that's true; maybe since I've found Ayda I've got fat and happy," says Williams, sounding pleased. "I hunted and gathered for a long time, and then I went back to the cave and said, 'Right, let's eat this shit!' " He starts to laugh. "I'm going to become Fat Cuddly Dad. And I could be a family entertainer: there's a nice thing going on with the swing music. I don't think you have to be ..." - he sucks his cheeks in - "you can be rotund and sing these songs."

 

Frank Sinatra was a bit rotund, wasn't he?

 

 

"Well, yes." Williams laughs again, giving a bounce on the sofa. "But he was 80 when he was rotund. I'm 40 years behind him."

 

What has made Robbie Williams happy? If you go back to the beginning of his career, or even his life, the long-term prognosis didn't look good. His childhood, he explains, was grim. "I come from a very bleak, very working-class town where people beat the shit out of each other," he says. "I had parents who were really not getting on with each other; no money; all f***ing horrendous."

 

His father, comedian Pete Conway (who recently married a woman Williams' age) left when Williams was three: he was raised by his older half sister and his mother, Janet, whom he adores. As an over-the-top, insecure teenager, fantasy was his escape - "Fantasising about being an actor, or a singer or going to the moon," he once said. Or, of course, becoming a member of a stratospherically successful boy band.

 

From inauspicious beginnings ("I think I was the fifth person to audition," Williams once explained, "out of a total of six"), Take That became the mega-manufactured band of the 1990s, with multiple international No. 1 hits, including 11 in Britain (their biggest single, Back for Good, reached No. 1 in 31 countries). At the height of their fame, Williams and his fellow band members inhabited a world where crazed fans hurled themselves in front of their chauffeured cars on a daily basis, camped in front of their parents' homes for weeks on end, and fainted away en masse at their concerts.

 

Behind the matching shell suits and the co-ordinated break-dancing, however, tensions were high. Gary Barlow, Take That's lead singer, has admitted, "Rob wanted a voice. He was a frustrated writer and singer ... [but] he only ever got rejection." Stifled and increasingly isolated, by 1995, after four years with the group, Williams was drinking a bottle of vodka a night, taking drugs, missing rehearsals. A lot of this was typical teenage rebellion. But some of it, it turned out, was undiagnosed depression.

 

In November 1995, amid scenes of great bitterness (and, once again, a melon), Williams left Take That. The remaining quartet lasted only three months without him, and went on to forge solo careers of more or less spectacular obscurity. Williams, meanwhile, a bleached-hair, addict-skinny live wire, spent the next two decades interspersing his alcoholism and class-A binging with one massive hit after another.

 

This is because Robbie Williams is that rare thing, a genuine pop star. He's extremely, naturally charismatic (even Gary Barlow once admitted, "I'm never going to win a popularity contest with Rob"). He writes irreverent, inexorably catchy songs whose job is the same as his: to entertain. And he takes this job seriously. In concerts, he arrives on stage suspended by his ankles, or attached to a zip-line, or balanced on an eight-metre replica of his own head. He dances and sings and sweats and works. And people love him.

 

His very first solo album, 1997's Life Thru a Lens, containing the massively successful single Angels, spent 40 weeks in the British top 10, and sold three million copies in Europe. He followed it with more huge singles - Millennium, Rock DJ, Feel - and more huge albums - The Ego Has Landed, Escapology, Intensive Care. His 2006 world tour entered Guinness World Records for the fastest ticket sales in history: 1.6 million in a single day. Over the years, whatever he did - big-band music, film soundtracks, Frank Sinatra covers, collaborations with people as unlikely as Nicole Kidman - turned to pop gold.

 

But none of it made him happy. As his world got bigger, so it got smaller. He had the money (an estimated fortune of £130 million) for a huge house in LA, but he couldn't sleep except in tiny spaces like the box room he'd had as a child. He had 24-hour security to protect him from people, but he couldn't bear to be alone. He wanted to be relaxed, happy and in love, but instead he was bitter about Take That. ("Sorry, Gary," he said bitchily while collecting one of his BRITs, "but I was always the talented member of the band.") He hated ex-Take That svengali and manager Nigel Martin-Smith (who successfully sued him twice for defamation, winning six-figure sums both times), and he was useless at relationships. "I was so lonely and co-dependent, from my early 20s onwards I was always saying, 'I want someone to fix me!' What I wanted was a maid."

 

Then, in his late 20s, he finally sought (prescription, as opposed to illicit) drug therapy for depression. "Suddenly, I sort of felt all right," he explains. "I was like, 'Hang on. I'm good here. This is all right.' " In 2006, just before a final stint in rehab, he met Turkish-American actress Ayda Field, a former law student and graduate of American soap Days of Our Lives. And then he retired from the world. "One day I decided to stay in, and I didn't come out for three years. I just ate kettle chips, watched reality TV, wore a kaftan."

 

This sounds odd, but you can see his point. He'd been famous since he was a teenager (one year in Take That he received 80,000 Valentines), he had more money than he could ever spend, and he was worn out being the emperor of pop. And most of all, at long last, there was somebody to stay in with. Field moved into Williams' LA pad in 2009, and the pair married in 2010. For someone who has made a life - and many, many hit songs - out of the ironic one-liner, Williams is surprisingly unironic about her.

 

"I made a promise to myself in my late 20s that I wasn't going to get married or have kids," he says. "I suppose a lot of it was to do with deep depression, but there were no good adverts for relationships: there wasn't anybody that was in a relationship where I went, 'Yeah, that's brilliant, I want a bit of that.'

 

"Then somehow I found this person who is my best friend, who I get on with, who I spend 24 hours a day with normally. We don't wind each other up, you know? We go forward as a unit; we're in love, she's really funny." He lifts his hands, which are surprisingly hairy; his right fingers are tattooed with the letters L-O-V-E. "I used to do a lot of time in AA and therapy and stuff, and they always used to talk about a God-shaped hole. 'Your problem is a God-shaped hole.' And I used to be always trying to search for some sort of spirituality, or an understanding of God. And since I found Ayda eight years ago, I've stopped praying." He shrugs and smiles, almost apologetic. "She's my God-shaped hole."

 

Eight years, I say: in Hollywood terms you've been together forever. "Like dog years!" laughs Williams. "Yeah, we have. Every day's a PB."

 

Since their marriage, Williams - who used to be the sort of bloke who specialised in remarks like, "I am the only man who can say he's been in Take That and at least two members of the Spice Girls" - has been learning about "consistency. And trust. I really trust her. And she, mistakenly, trusts me!" He gives a Dr Evil laugh. "Ah ha HA! But she does. And I am a guy with a penis, and I'm a pop star, so I do things like Have Sex With Women. So I've taken my head out of the lion's mouth in that regard: I don't put myself in positions where I could betray her trust. So far, so good."

 

He hasn't totally reformed, however. Last year, actor Emma Thompson asked him on a TV talk show if he'd been down the "business end" during his daughter's birth. "Yeah, yeah, I was," he said, looking sad. "It was like watching my favourite pub burn down."

 

If birth was like that, how is fatherhood? His daughter was born in September 2012 ("Theodora if she's a doctor, Teddy if she's a stripper," he told one journalist - "we've got it all covered") and he's touchingly defenceless about his love for her. He wrote the whimsical Go Gentle on Swings Both Ways for her; he wants her to grow up in England, close to his roots but far, far removed from his own childhood. "There's some lovely posh people I've met that I would like her to be like," the working-class boy from Stoke-on-Trent told one reporter. "You know, with that accent and upbringing and education and lovely manners."

 

There seems to be no conflict between being a pop star and being a dad. Williams went on tour last year, and "graciously, Ayda let me do my business - go to sleep when I wanted to, wake up when I wanted to". This grace, of course, was aided by large numbers of domestic staff, but when the tour ended, even the fleet of servants and his kind wife couldn't protect him from brutal parental realities. "It was full on: all the early mornings, weekends, everything!" He laughs. "I go for an hour and I'm the perfect father, then I think, 'Shit, I've got to do this forever? She's going to be here tomorrow morning, again?' " He grins. "So I can be a bit resentful. Actually, I'm not resentful in the moment, but I see a resentful in the future. It's weird. But it's not my primary emotion. It's all wrapped up in the same love ball."

 

He and Field are currently "completely taken up" trying for another baby, and when, through a long series of disasters, he meets my own 18-month-old daughter at the Good Weekend photo shoot, he seems genuinely thrilled. "Oooh, she makes me miss Teddy so much," he says, wriggling. "Does she like stories? Have you done That's Not My Hippo yet?" He addresses her gently. "Can I have a cuddle?" At which point my daughter, crushingly, becomes the first girl in history to refuse a cuddle with Robbie Williams.

 

In 2005, to everyone's surprise, the four non-Robbie Williams members of Take That re-formed the band. They released two albums and defied all expectations (including their own) by being extremely successful. Initially Williams wanted nothing to do with them, though he said he wished them well. But in late 2009, he agreed to a series of secret meetings in LA. The idea? To see if it might be possible to work together again.

 

In one sense, this sounds completely self-indulgent. In Look Back, Don't Stare, a documentary made about the rapprochement, the levels of male ego and designer stubble in the room are almost laughable. But, it seems, ego and stubble might be two crucial ingredients in pop success: the quintet's subsequent album, Progress, debuted at No. 1 in Britain and became that country's fastest-selling album of the 21st century.

 

There was considerably less fanfare in other places. "The boys came out here," Williams recalls, laughing, "and Australians just totally took the piss out of them! They got back on the plane and said, 'What was the f...ing point of that?!' " But you get the sense that nobody really minds; not their fans, and certainly not Williams. He says he hopes he'll do more stuff with Take That in future. "The whole [reunion] shifted an awful lot of shit," he admits. "We shall write again at some point, because it was a lot of fun."

 

Robbie Williams has never taken himself too seriously. As he once put it, "I've managed to stretch an elastic band to the moon and back with what I've got." This self-deprecation and its attendant self-awareness have always endeared him to fans. Whatever else he's done, he's never bored us by trying to be anything other than what he is: a northern lad with a genius for pop.

 

"I was thinking about all this the other day," he confesses. "They say you become stunted at the point you become famous. Which means I'm still 16. And I really am! I'm a man-child! I still don't know the price of milk; I live far from the world where I grew up." He grins. "But I have learnt how to entertain hundreds of thousands of people. Everything else I'm really shit at, but I've excelled at that."

 

 

 

 

 

ROBBIE OVER THE DECADES

 

1990: At just 16, after his mum saw an ad, Robbie Williams is selected with four others - Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, Jason Orange and Mark Owen - to make up Take That.

 

1997: After splitting with Take That, and a stint in rehab, Williams releases his first solo album, Life Thru a Lens, which in turn spawns the monster single Angels.

 

2000: Between numerous brief flings, and much to the delight of the gossip mags, Williams dates Spice Girl Geri Halliwell (having dated her fellow Spice Girl Mel C in 1997).

 

February 2007: After extensive partying, he enters rehab again, reportedly for his addiction to prescription pills ... and the energy drink Lucozade.

 

2010: Williams finally "settles down" and marries his Turkish-American girlfriend, actor Ayda Field, at his home in Los Angeles.

 

2012: In September, Williams becomes a father after Field gives birth to their daughter, Theodora Rose.

 

2013: Williams makes a spectacular entrance during his Take the Crown tour last year by walking down a huge sculpture of his own head.

 

www.smh.com.au/lifestyle

I've never had a deep fried Mars Bar in my life and I don't know anyone else who has had one either :unsure:
I've never had a deep fried Mars Bar in my life and I don't know anyone else who has had one either :unsure:

 

 

A bit too sickly for my liking :huh:

I think I might get a butler. I feel I'm naturally suited to having a butler. -_-

From

 

http://www.mizonews.net/entertainment/robb...to-us-for-wife/

 

 

Robbie Williams to move back to US for wife

 

 

London: Singer Robbie Williams has decided to shift base back to the US as his wife Ayda isn’t too fond of the British weather.

 

 

 

The couple moved here shortly before the birth of daughter Theodora “Teddy” Rose in September 2012.

 

Robbie likes it in London, where they bought a 17 million pounds mansion, but Ayda has persuaded him to move back to Los Angeles.

 

In fact, the family has spent the past four months lapping up the sunshine at their Beverly Hills home. They have also been soaking in the joys of walking in the mountains and enjoying the beach and the weather.

 

Ayda, 34, was born in Turkey but raised in Hollywood.

 

“Ayda agreed to spend a year living in London as a trial. She’s lived in LA all her life and most of her friends are there. While he’s happy to live in either country, things were a lot different for Ayda,” said a source.

 

“She much prefers the climate in LA to the constant cold and frequent rain in Britain. But it was not just the weather she missed. She’s lived in LA all her life and most of her friends are there.”

 

“She always had company as her mum lives with them and travels with them everywhere but she missed her pals who knew her before she was Robbie’s wife,” added the source.

 

 

 

:rolleyes:

:offtopic: But I couldn't help but laugh at this quote from The Telegraph (reviewing Gary Barlow's gig the other night)

 

 

 

Gary Barlow, O2 Arena, review

Gary Barlow’s ability to adhere to the middle of the road deserves recognition from the Department of Transport

3 out of 5 stars

:lol:

From

 

http://www.gigwise.com/news/89944/robbie-w...for-my-managers

 

 

ROBBIE WILLIAMS: 'I'D BE DEAD IF IT WASN'T FOR MY MANAGERS'

 

Singer made the admission during awards speech

 

 

Robbie Williams has paid tribute to his team of managers at a London awards ceremony, admitting: "I'd be dead if it wasn't for my managers."

 

The singer won the Artists' Artist gong at the Artist and Manager Awards at London's The Troxy on Thursday, and thanked his team for helping him through his more difficult times.

 

 

The singer, who rose to fame with Take That in the 1990s before achieving solo success, has battled with mental illness and substance addictions in the past. The singer has also struggled with Bipolar disorder, and entered rehab in 2007 for addiction to prescription drugs. He has also been teetotal for around fourteen years.

 

"I'd be dead if it wasn't for my managers," Williams told the crowd at the awards ceremony, adding: "I'm serious, so thanks."

 

Williams' tenth studio album, Swings Both ways, was released in November last year, and topped the UK albums chart, becoming the UK's 1000th No.1 album. The album features both covers and original material, including 'I Wanna Be Like You' featuring Olly Murs, and 'Dream a Little Dream' featuring Lily Allen.

 

Other big winners at the Artist and Manager Awards included Paul McCartney's representative Scott Rodger who was named Manager of the Year, and Pharrell Williams, who received the Artist of the Year Award.

 

 

:(

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