Robbie Williams' rogue move that got him sacked on the spot from Take That
It was the mid '90s and UK boyband Take That were at the top of their game. Robbie Williams, the youngest member of the group at just 21, was in the middle of a 31-date world tour alongside his bandmates Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, Mark Owen and Jason Orange.
But behind closed doors the charismatic singer, who was just 15 when he joined Take That, had been spiralling. "I think that I was in the middle of a nervous breakdown, my first of many," said Robbie. "All the information going into the computer had made the computer overload.
"It felt like I was in some sort of burning building and I needed to get out. That's how it felt at the time. And then I was like 'Ok, I'll do this tour and then I'll leave.'. And they actually went: 'If you're going to leave, can you go now?'."
Robbie partied hard at Glastonbury weeks before he left Take That (Getty Images)
Robbie Williams and wife Ayda Field attend the launch of the singer's new Netflix documentary series (Dave Benett/WireImage)Weeks earlier, Robbie had been pictured at Glastonbury partying hard with rockstar Liam Gallagher. Drinking too much and struggling in rehearsals ahead of Take That's homecoming gig in Manchester, he decided to let the group know it would be his final tour.
He explained the BBC Radio 4: "I said to the boys, 'This will be my last tour.' We went for a curry the night before everything happened and we were taking a competition winner for a curry. It mustn't have been a very nice evening for them.
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"I went back to the hotel and got drunk again, got up the next day, went into rehearsals and I wasn't in a very good way." Following his trip to Glastonbury and missed rehearsals, the rest of the band were incensed and when he finally returned to work with told him exactly what they thought.
They told him he should leave the band sooner rather than later if he wasn't prepared to commit to what they were trying to achieve. Jason sat Robbie down in the rehearsal room and said if he was going to leave, they all thought it was best he left then, so he did. "I told the rest of the band to say nothing to anyone while I tried to get hold of Rob to see if he really wanted to do this," said band manager Nigel Martin-Smith. "Then he issued a press release saying he’d left the band – so there was no going back."
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On July 17, 1995, Robbie walked out the door and was driven away in a blacked out car. Fans of the group were left so distraught the Samaritans charity, which helps people in emotional distress, set up a dedicated hotline.
Take That split the following year when Jason left the band but are now back together, with Gary, Mark and Howard performing. Robbie, meanwhile, set about becoming just about the most famous singer on the planet.
But while he carved out a hugely successful solo career he failed to find happiness at its height, battling with his mental health and entering rehab for drug addiction in 2007. Now 49, Robbie married actress wife Ayda Field in 2010 and the couple have four children, Teddy, 10, Charlie, eight, Coco, four, and Beau, three.
Looking back nearly 30 years to the day Robbie left Take That, Howard, 55, has regrets on how things could have been. “To have someone close to you that you can speak to about your feelings, that’s one of the things we never ever did in the 90s, hence why Robbie left. We never discussed what he was feeling before he left that room. We look back at that moment and think we wished we could have talked more."
* Robbie Williams is released on Netflix on November 8.
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