From http://www.london.net.co.uk

 

 

 

Robbie Williams fails Take That literacy test

- 'How do you spell Patience,' asks singer

 

Robbie Williams can't spell the name of Take That's new single Patience.

 

The 32-year-old singer, who quit the band in 1995 to pursue a solo career, tried to illegally download the hit song so he could hear it at his Los Angeles home, but was left red-faced when he realised he couldn't actually spell Patience.

 

The embarrassing incident occurred during an interview at Robbie's house.

 

After being quizzed about the track, he said: "I haven't heard the new single yet. The only way I can get it is by illegally downloading it. Hang on I will try and type it in. How do you spell Patience?"

 

Once Robbie conquered his spelling difficulties and managed to find the music video online he found it too emotional to watch.

 

According to his personal website, he said sadly: "I think I will take a proper look at this later. It's all a bit too weird for me really."

They clearly are desperate for a story -_-

 

It was a joke you idiots. :rolleyes:

Most nasty things they talk about were jokes made by Rob...God I hate them.

The Big Question

http://entertainment.msn.co.uk/pidl/123870259/robbie_ed5.jpg

 

When Gary Barlow, Mark Owen, Howard Donald, and Jason Orange were reunited for a TV documentary at the end of last year, nobody could have predicted what the next 12 months would bring.

 

At the time of writing, the reincarnated Take That are riding high in both the singles and album charts while their former bandmate Robbie Williams' fortunes appear to be sliding in the opposite direction.

 

It's time to ask the big question and that question is...

 

 

http://entertainment.msn.co.uk/pidl/123872265/robbie_ed211.jpg

 

Is Robbie Finished?

 

Although we've only got the benefit of one year's hindsight, I reckon last November's Take That documentary may one day be seen as the moment where Robbie Williams lost his grip on the nation's affections. After a decade of playing the misunderstood but loveable cheeky chappy, his refusal to meet his former bandmates left a nasty taste; even more so when we were reminded what decent blokes they are.

 

While they were enduring the ignominy of career failure, he bestrode the world as the biggest solo star of his generation, his lyrics becoming increasingly self-obsessed, his ego expanding in line with his bank balance, and his expression set somewhere between a wink, a smirk, and a leer. Not only that but he rarely missed an opportunity to take a swipe at them, Gary Barlow in particular, from the vantage point of his enormous fame and success.

 

How different things seem now. The devotion originally created by Take That and stolen by Robbie Williams is back with Gary, Mark, Howard, and Jason again. Their new music, better than anyone had any right to expect, is classic melodic pop while Robbie's recent output has been so underwhelming and self-referential that some people have questioned whether he's taking the you-know-what. Perhaps more to the point, they are the same nice, genuine guys they always were, whereas Robbie, well, nobody really knows who he is now, do they?

 

 

Is Robbie Williams finished? Join the debate on the MSN Message boards

 

 

What lazy pathetic journalism this is :rolleyes:

 

TT come back after 10 years have a #1 so that means Robbie is finished :blink: :rolleyes:

 

:arrr: :arrr: :arrr:

We shouldn't be upset or surprised by those articles anymore still it's

annoying to read it! -_-

 

 

Those Xmas smileys make every post look like a joke :wacko:

:lol: I know what you mean Nicky. :lol:

That MSN thing- couldn't get more nasty than that. :puke2:

Yeah, we know. TT are the good guys that can do no wrong and Rob is the villain, that everyone hates these days and who gets what he deserves...

Of course we know better Scotty but the sad thing is, the public opinion is probably the same (as in that article). If it wasn't influenced by the press, Rob wouldn't be struggling like he is now. I think we all know the bad press has had its effect. :angry:

I only wonder if TT will still be that interesting in 5 years, when it is not so special anymore that they are around (like it is now after a comeback following 10 years of absence) and when they are still doing the same ballads.

It's true that they are nice guys, but if you ask me they are also a bit boring (*hiding from the bricks thrown by TT fans* :o :lol: ). And although the press might not like Rob much now they should not forget what he has given them to write about over the last 10 years - and that's because he is a complex and interesting person and maybe not an exclusively nice guy. :P

 

 

I agree Monsoon. It is so annoying :puke2:

 

This part in particuar made me furious :angry:

 

The devotion originally created by Take That and stolen by Robbie Williams is back with Gary, Mark, Howard, and Jason again.

 

WTF is this all about :rolleyes: It is simply unbelievable the amount of ignorant people that are journalists in the UK :rolleyes:

 

How did Robbie steel the devotion. Honest to god :arrr:

Oh what a lot of unadulterated pish. Excuse the French. :rolleyes:

From http://www.news.com.au/sundaytelegraph

 

 

Why we love the bad boys

By Kerrie Davies

 

December 03, 2006 12:00

 

These men behaving badly can do no wrong with female fans. They are outrageous, notorious and have battled drug and alcohol addiction. They're also loved by Oscar-winning actresses, engaged to supermodels and voted the sexiest men on the planet.

 

Now that Bono and his campaign to end world poverty have left Australia, bad boys are back in the news - and the naughtiest of them all, Robbie Williams, hits town this week on his world tour.

 

Instead of talking poverty or politics, Williams' only promise is "a smashing after-party''.

 

Recalling a previous tour of Australia, he says:

 

"I remember having a really good time, but I was on drugs the entire time I was there.

 

"I got off the plane in Sydney, went to some club, got some speed, and that was it. I can't remember the rest.''

 

Others do remember Williams running down a hotel corridor naked and urinating in lifts.

 

He's no longer drinking or taking drugs, but Williams does confess he's struggling to kick his love of casual sex. "How many's too many?'' he asks.

 

The singer describes his new home, Los Angeles, as "babe heaven'', and cheekily admits he wants to team up again with former duet partner Kylie Minogue in Melbourne because he still fancies her.

 

Media personality Bianca Dye says of Williams:

 

"He's a dirty big spunk. When I interviewed him on the phone, he kept asking me what I was wearing.

 

"Women love Robbie; I know two girlfriends who have slept with him.

 

"Robbie's trying to reform - but once a bad boy, always abad boy.''

 

Australian bad boy Keith Urban continues to enjoy the support of wife Nicole Kidman, although the actress showed the strain of marriage to a former hell-raiser last week when she lost her cool with a TV crew at the UK premiere of Happy Feet.

 

Urban checked himself into a Nashville rehabilitation centre after an alcoholic binge just four months after the couple married in Sydney.

 

"He's the bad boy in the good-boy hat,'' says Dye, who has penned a book with Dr Cindy Pan, Hard To Get, that includes a chapter on bad boys.

 

"Keith is a dark horse, whereas Robbie's trying to be a good boy but it's never going to happen.''

 

Perhaps Kidman should share her trials with Kate Moss who, having had her own trials as "Cocaine Kate'', is a veteran of the art of being in love with a bad boy.

 

Moss's fiance, Babyshambles frontman Pete Doherty, has just checked himself back into a Portuguese rehab centre for another stint at clean living.

 

But Doherty recently found bad boys have fans in the most unlikely places when, despite admitting possession of heroin, crack cocaine and cannabis, he escaped jail after a judge said she liked his songs.

 

But for Dye, every woman has her limits.

 

"There are bad boys, and then there's just tragic," she says.

 

 

:unsure: :P

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here's the worst one yet.

 

From http://www.dailymail.co.uk

 

 

Why Robbie hates me (and why the feeling's mutual!)

Last updated at 22:52pm on 1st December 2006

 

 

 

There are some things I assumed I'd never experience again once I turned 40: a 34-inch waist, a kiss from Cherie Blair... and Take That back at No. 1 in the pop charts.

 

I assumed wrong. OK, so Cherie hasn't puckered up under the mistletoe, and my waistline's no match for Daniel Craig's. But to my astonishment, Take That are, indeed, back at No. 1 after ten years, with a song called, ironically, Patience.

 

The band's extraordinary comeback will be celebrated tonight in a star-studded ITV1 'Audience With' tribute show. And forgive me for feeling rather more nostalgic than most as the boys strike up.

 

It's not just that I remember them as fresh-faced newcomers, desperate to get their first toehold in showbusiness. It's not even that they became good personal friends.

 

It's that in a cynical and exploitative industry - one that can bring out the very worst in people and destroy young lives for ever -theirs is a story with a twist.

 

It has a happy ending. And, as with all happy endings, the villain gets his just deserts while the good guys come out on top.

 

The story begins when I was 25, and the showbusiness editor of The Sun. My phone rang one morning, and the voice sounded just a little desperate: 'Please mate, just give us a chance.'

 

The speaker was Gary Barlow, lead singer of a new British boyband called Take That. They had been created in the wake of a hugely successful American group called New Kids On The Block, but were struggling.

 

Despite whoring themselves around every magazine, newspaper, TV and radio show for months, their first few attempts at a hit record had spectacularly flopped. And they were now staring into the ultimate abyss of the musical knacker's yard - all washed up before they'd even started.

 

That day, they were due to do a promotional photo session just a few minutes away from the paper's HQ in Wapping, East London.

 

"Just come down for a few minutes and we'll show you what we can do," pleaded Gary.

 

"I can't, I'm too busy," I lied.

 

The truth is that I couldn't see the point in wasting a £3 cab fare on a band that was going absolutely nowhere, fast.

 

"We'll pick you up, and drop you back," persisted Gary.

 

I looked at my watch. It was 1pm, and it was either meeting Take That or eating a cheese and pickle sandwich. After several long seconds of deliberation, I reluctantly opted out of the sandwich.

 

"OK," I said. "But half an hour, and that's all you're getting."

 

Take That's old, rusty camper-style van arrived outside the newspaper's offices, and I jumped in the back to find five fresh-faced, over-excited young lads.

 

A surpirisingly chubby and ordinary looking bloke who could have come straight from a bank clerk training centre, said: "I'm Gary, nice to meet you."

 

"I'm Mark," grinned a small babyfaced kid.

 

"I'm Howard," chirped a third, taller youth with dreadlocks.

 

"Jay," announced another, a toughlooking character in ripped jeans and goatee beard.

 

I turned to the fifth member of the band. "And I am Robbie," he declared, sticking his hand out, then removing it as I went to shake it and sticking his tongue out instead. He was a cheeky little tinker, and a real livewire of energy and charisma.

 

During the ten-minute journey to the studio, they bombarded me with questions. They were stupendously naive, and ravenous for fame and fortune. But they also had talent and charm.

 

When they began singing and dancing to their new single, It Only Takes A Minute Girl, I found my feet tapping, my neck twitching, and my ruthlessly commercial tabloid brain screaming one word: "Hit."

 

"OK," I said. "Here's the deal. I'll get behind you in the paper because I think you've got real potential. But in return, I want to write your first two books if you get to No. 1."

 

Robbie burst out laughing. "Mate, if we get to No. 1, you can have a lot more than a couple of books!"

 

I looked into his eyes, and saw a burning, naked desire. Not for me, but for celebrity. This was an only child who had been a show-off all his life, and now wanted to show off to the entire world.

 

A month later, It Only Takes A Minute Girl roared into the Top 10. And within six months, they'd enjoyed a string of No. 1 smash hits, not to mention tea with Princess Diana at Kensington Palace.

 

They went from Z-list to A-list in one clean bound and, before long, were sitting on Elton John's sofa shouting out requests for him to play on the piano.

 

The first of my two authorised books on the group was published shortly afterwards and, more by accident than design, I became one of the biggest-selling pop authors on the back of them.

 

Both my Take That tomes were quite appalling literary works, but each sold more than 350,000 copies. (And yes, I am looking to reissue them on the back of their resurgence as quickly as possible.)

 

I hung out with the band a lot through this period. I even appeared on stage as a surprise guest at Wembley Arena one night, to present them with a wagon-load of awards. And trust me, when you stand on stage in front of 12,000 screaming girls, it can have a strangely intoxicating effect on a man.

 

In fact, I rather overstayed my welcome on stage until Robbie ran over and shouted in my ear: "Piers, no offence mate, but can you f*** off now, this is our show, not yours." Happy days. But there was a cloud on the horizon. There always is.

 

With the success and adulation came the inevitable pop star descent into sex, drugs, squabbling, and money obsession. But that was just Robbie. The others always remained polite, charming, modest and generous.

 

I still have a signed copy of our first book, in which Gary, Mark, Howard and Jason paid heartfelt tributes to our friendship and Robbie - bitter about my royalties - simply scrawled: "To Piers, f*** you and f*** your money." The ungrateful little wretch.

 

His innate egotism was festering and, before long, it boiled over. At the peak of the band's power, Robbie suddenly walked out to seek solo glory, ditching his closest friends, both professional and personal, with a ruthless selfishness that is shocking, even by the shallow standards of the music business.

 

And that, inevitably, was the beginning of the end for Take That.

 

The four remaining boys limped on for a few months before finally splitting up in February 1996, amid scenes of near-hysteria from their distraught teen fans. (A special counselling hotline was even set up to help them cope with their 'grief'.) It was, in every way, the end of an era.

 

The boys tried their hand at their own projects, but none of them really took off, and they slowly fizzled into obscurity.

 

Robbie, by contrast, embarked on a two-year rampage of cocaine-fuelled orgies, ballooned in weight, covered his expanding flesh in ugly tattoos, and seemed to be spinning into a speedy, cliched and utterly predictable rock 'n' roll graveyard. And I don't just mean metaphorically.

 

Then, just as the coffin lid was shutting, he released Angels - which became one of the biggest-selling singles of all time, and propelled him into the superleague of British pop stars.

 

It seemed a particularly cruel twist of the knife for his former colleagues. Not content with dumping his mates like a sack of cold spuds, Robbie never missed a chance to rub their noses in it - ridiculing them in interviews, boasting endlessly of his millions, and informing anyone who cared to listen that he had always been the star of the band and now he was proving it.

 

I will never forget an interview I did with Mark Owen for a TV series I presented on the subject of fame.

 

He was a sad, pale imitation of the sweet little boy with whom every girl had fallen in love a decade before. With unkempt hair, chainsmoking and nervous, he greeted me like a long-lost brother, then sat for two hours unburdening himself about his life.

 

"I was finished at 23," he said. "And, ever since then, it's been a struggle just to get through the days, to be honest. I went from 80,000-seater stadium shows to playing small clubs for a few hundred drunks who laughed at me. It was awful."

 

What made it worse was seeing his former friend and colleague Robbie Williams enjoying such fabulous solo success.

 

"I secretly went to one of his shows recently," Mark said quietly. "I just stood at the back of this great big stadium watching the crowd going mental. And it made me want to cry. Not out of jealousy, because me and Rob never really fell out. But it just made me realise how different our lives had become, and how much I miss what we used to have together."

 

Mark was searingly honest in that interview, and on the verge of tears several times. It was a fascinating insight into the mind of a young man who'd had it all, and lost it all.

 

He gave me a hug at the end, and said: "Thanks for all your support when we started out. I really appreciate-it." And then he shuffled off down the street, totally anonymous to passers-by.

 

I'd seen other teen bands fall in equally dramatic circumstances, so the brutal world of pop music didn't surprise me. But I felt a curious paternal empathy for this particular group.

 

And, frankly, I felt deeply irritated that the cockiest, greediest, least likeable and least deserving member of Take That was the one who'd gone on to superstardom while the nice guys got buried.

 

But here's the strange thing. The other Take That boys may have struggled. They may have envied Robbie's solo success. But as individuals, as people, I have no doubt that they were happier for not being as famous as he was.

 

A few months after interviewing Mark, I bumped into Gary Barlow at the Royal Albert Hall. He hadn't changed a bit, and was now working as a songwriter for other artists.

 

"I like writing for others," he told me. "It's the best of all worlds: I get the money and success, but not the fame. And fame's not all it's cracked up to be, I found that out soon enough."

 

"How's Robbie?" I asked. He raised his eyebrows to the ceiling. "I've no idea. Never see him or talk to him. We've invited him to perform with Take That again, but he doesn't seem very keen on the idea. I guess he's too big for us now."

 

And Gary smiled, wistfully. By chance, I saw Robbie just a week later. It was at the Brit Awards after-show party, and he looked miserable. I'd heard that he now hated me because of all the intrusive stories I'd published about him during my time as a newspaper editor.

 

I didn't hate Robbie in return, I just felt sorry for him. Having £80 million in the bank is fine. But if you get to 30 and you're a self- obsessed, lonely, single, recovering alcoholic, then how much fun can your life be?

 

Our eyes met across a crowded floor. He stared at me for several seconds, his face frozen in a half sneer. I stared back, my mind flashing back to that van journey when we first met.

 

God, he wanted fame then, and God, how he seemed to hate it now. Back then, his life had been so uncomplicated, so much fun. Now, he looked consumed by vitriol.

 

He shook his head slowly, and I shook mine slowly back at him. Then he left the party and went home, presumably to a cup of cocoa and his beloved PlayStation. He had been at the party for just four minutes.

 

I read Robbie's official biography after our encounter - a tale of unrelenting narcissism and selfinflicted misery. He treats women like dirt, is ludicrously paranoid about a media which he has voraciously used when it suits him, and spends most of his time talking about himself to his sycophantic entourage.

 

It seems such a pointless, unfulfilling life. And his latest record just bombed, removing the one thing he did have going for him - sustained success.

 

By contrast, Take That are back at No. 1 in the charts, still the closest of friends, and loving every second of their reborn careers.

 

This time, they can enjoy their fame because they know its limitations. And, judging by the rapturous receptions they have received touring the country again, we love them all the more for it.

 

How deliciously ironic that if Robbie Williams called them up now finally to accept their offer to play with them again, the answer might be: "Thanks Rob mate, but no thanks."

 

Sometimes, just sometimes, the nice guys win in the end.

 

 

:rolleyes: Pillock.

 

:o :puke2:

 

I have nothing to say after this... :mellow:

I can't take much more of this $h!t :arrr: :arrr: :angry:

 

It is like a full time job defending Robbie lately from the vindictive horrible British press. That Pierce morgan is calling Robbie sad and saying his life is pathetic, well who is the one writing a huge article about how much they hate someone you sad piece of $h!te :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

 

Oh and he needs to do some bloody research as well. Rudebox bombed did it Pierce??? Funny how it got to #1 in 15 bloody countries you stupid nob :angry:

 

I am just going to ignore all this $h!te. It is getting really boring <_<

I know. I'm getting to the point of 'past caring'. He's breaking touring records all over the world and his career is apparently over. :blink:

I am just going to ignore all this $h!te. It is getting really boring <_<

 

 

 

That's what I try :cry: :cry:

 

 

(((KNUFFELS)))

Twinkle! :o

 

You never come in here. :unsure:

Twinkle! :o

 

You never come in here. :unsure:

 

 

 

I come here all the time....just never post much :blink:

:o

 

Really? Oh. ^_^

:o

 

Really? Oh. ^_^

 

 

Believe me Twinkles read everything ^_^