Robbie Williams on 23-year rivalry with Take That’s Gary Barlow: ‘I was vengeful’

He’s lived his Life Thru A Lens and now Robbie Williams is opening his heart – and his bedroom – to the cameras of Netflix.

Sitting at home in his underpants, the most successful UK solo artist of all time reminisces about his extraordinary life, revealing that joining Take That aged 16 was a “complete dunking into the grown up world that I wasn’t ready for”.

As well as featuring a surprising amount of Robbie’s thighs, the show also makes use of unseen footage of the the nineties era that made him, broke him, and made him again.

A fascinating nostalgia fest, Netflix’s Robbie Williams treats fans to behind the scenes footage from the early Take That years, and gives us Robbie’s take on tensions in the band.

Robbie makes no secret about his struggles to work with songwriter Gary Barlow. “There was an assurance about Gaz and his ability, mixed with a coldness,” he tells the cameras. “It was Lord of the Flies stuff. I wasn’t adept at dealing with the dynamics of the band at an early age and that’s why the wheels came off for me.”

On the show, Robbie’s 11-year-old daughter Teddy asks him who he disliked the most, and dad-of-four Robbie replies, “I disliked Gary the most because he was the one that was supposed to have everything and the career. I wanted to make him pay. I was vengeful by having the career that he was supposed to have.”

Robbie left Take That after they threatened to go on tour without him and immediately hit the London party scene, spending hours in private members club The Groucho, taking drugs with other celebrities. “I was just in The Groucho doing a lot of coke,” he says sadly.

Fortunately he found struggling musician Guy Chambers and together they wrote Robbie’s first solo album Life Thru A Lens in just 12 days. But before the album’s release, Robbie needed to get clean. Watching footage of himself at the height of his addiction is upsetting for Robbie. “This is the most difficult thing to watch,” he says as he looks back at footage of himself telling an interviewer that he doesn’t “like my own company at the minute.”

“I spiralled out of control so severely my manager understood what had to happen,” says Robbie of his stint in rehab.

Sobriety paid off and Life Thru A Lens was a hit after the release of Angels. For Robbie, who is now happily married to wife Ayda Field, it was validation and a relief. At the same time he briefly found happiness in a relationship with All Saint star Nicole Appleton.

He says, “Success definitely subconsciously, did equal happiness.”

However, Robbie reveals at the end of episode one of the four-part series that the contentment was not to last, saying, “I’m on a runaway train… I didn’t have the tools to deal with what was to come.”

Robbie Williams' documentary series arrives on Netflix on Wednesday 8 November.

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