Robbie Williams on 'manopause' struggle at 49 as he shares grim 'death' warning
How time flies. While the original teen Take That fans may now find themselves in the throes of the menopause, it may be some comfort for them to know that their pop idol Robbie Williams seems to be going through the male equivalent.
The Rock DJ singer, who turns 50 on February 13th, admitted, “The hair is thinning, the testosterone has left the building, the serotonin is not really here and the dopamine said goodbye a long time ago.I’ve used up all of the natural good stuff. I’ve got the manopause.”
But while the star is open about starting to show signs of ageing, Williams is still one of the most loved (and lusted after) entertainers in showbiz. It’ll take a lot more than a receding hairline to put off his millions of fans.
Ever since he shot to fame in Take That back in 1991 at the tender age of 18, Robbie Williams has lived his life in the spotlight. As the baby of the band, the singer from Stoke on Trent stole the hearts of women across the world from the moment they had their first hit with Do What U Like. While lead singer and songwriter Gary Barlow was firmly in the role of the “sensible” one, Robbie made everybody laugh with his cheeky humour and sense of fun.
Of course, we now know that underneath the smiles, Robbie was deeply unhappy as the band became more and more successful with hits such as Could It Be Magic and Everything Changes. His resentment towards Gary and his other bandmates Mark Owen, Howard Donald and Jason Orange got so unbearable that he dramatically quit the band in 1995. Fans were left so utterly devastated by Robbie’s decision to leave the band, that the Samaritans were moved to set up a dedicated suicide helpline to offer support to those who needed it.
Robbie Williams and wife Ayda Field discuss their 'completely dead' sex life
Gary Barlow, Mark Owen, Robbie Williams, Jason Orange and Howard Donald in 1991 (Andre Csillag/REX/Shutterstock)
Robbie's Let Me Entertain You coverReflecting on this time in the recent 4-part documentary series on Netflix, Robbie Williams, he said,”When I turned about 19 I started to have a long, hard think about what was happening. Too many interviews, too many performances, so many countries to visit and then repeat it.Take That’s fandom was obsessive. It was intense! On top of that there was an assurance about Gaz (Gary Barlow) and his ability mixed with a coldness. And it seemed like there was one person being managed in Take That, and it was Gary Barlow. It was all geared around him and as a young person, I would’ve been jealous of that. I suppose a lot of me resented him.”
Outspoken Williams certainly didn’t hold back when it came to his anger towards Barlow, labelling him a “clueless w****r” and saying the group “had all the creativity of mentally unstable morons”.
His resentment of Gary might have been eating him up inside, but it also motivated Robbie to make a success of his solo career. “I wanted to crush him. I wanted to crush the memory of the band and I didn’t let go. You know, even when he was down, I didn’t let go,” he admitted.
He certainly stuck to his word and in 1997, Williams released his first solo album, Life Thru a Lens, which featured his best-selling single . Riding high on the success of his solo career, Robbie performed three record-breaking gigs at Knebworth in 2003, which were attended by 375,000 fans every night and which he described as “The best show in the world”.
However, despite his commercial success and the fact that he dated a string of beautiful women such as Geri Halliwell, Melanie C and had a brief engagement to Nicole Appleton, Robbie’s life was in free-fall and the singer was battling mental health issues and addiction to drugs and alcohol.
Talking about his struggles, he later said,”I was ingesting everything I could get my hands on – ecstasy, cocaine, drinking. I’m literally drinking like a bottle of vodka a night before going into rehearsals...” Admitting that substance abuse was his way to “numb the pain”, Robbie has since said, “I had to stop taking drugs or else I was gonna die.”
“What happens is, when you stop drinking, you’re left with the person that you are. And the person who I really was, was depressed and isolated. I didn’t know how to socialise... I didn’t know how to be a human.”
All of this changed when he met the American actress Ayda Field, when she appeared on a UFO documentary he was making in 2006. Despite a rocky start due to his social anxiety, the couple have been married since 2010 and have four children, Teddy, 11, Charlie, 9, Coco, 5 and Beau, 3.
Robbie with wife Ayda Field (Instagram)
He admitted he wanted to 'crush' Gary Barlow after leaving Take That (David Fisher/REX/Shutterstock)Talking about how his problems almost ruined his chances with Ayda, 44, Robbie said, “I googled her, she was obviously very attractive. But I was also doing a lot of pills that were making me antisocial. So we had plans but I flaked.” He made up for it though and explained, “I left her a message days, weeks, later, and it made her laugh. We made plans to meet. But I wasn’t leaving my house, so she had to meet me there, which freaked her out a bit.”
Looking back on the moment he knew Ayda was The One, the singer said, “I had this moment where I felt like I had known her forever.” But Robbie, who had fallen off the wagon after a period of sobriety, went to rehab after they met and ended the relationship to focus on himself.
Robbie Williams hardly has sex with wife Ayda but they're happier than ever
The couple eventually got back together and became engaged, but Ayda has said it took her man a while to adjust to the idea of marriage. “We were together three years before he proposed and I think in his head that’s how long it took him to even come round to that concept,” she said, “There were three break-ups before that. But he got there.”
After their lavish LA wedding, which Robbie said made him “the happiest man alive”, the couple relocated to West London, where they now live in a £17.5million mansion with their children (two of whom, Coco and Beau, were born through a surrogate).
And despite the fact that Ayda says their sex life is “completely dead” these days due to her husband’s non-existent libido, the pair seem more content than ever and even worked together back in 2018 when they were both judges on The X Factor.
Add into the mix the fact that he has made peace with his former bandmates (he even rejoined Take That for a year in 2010) and has admitted that he’s “sorry” for the way he treated Gary, and Robbie Williams seems to be in a good place these days.
He said recently, “I’m not bipolar, but there is a sort of semi-bipolaresque element to my mental health. Some days good, some days bad – but it’s better than it ever was in the 1990s and at the start of this century.”
In an interview 21 years ago, Williams hilariously predicted that if he was still in the public eye at the age he is now, it would be because his life had gone wrong. He said, “As a 29-year-old, the only thing that I can possibly think is that if I’m still performing at 50, it’s because I’ll have had disastrous marriages and I have to pay for them.”
But despite his self-deprecating humour, the singer isn’t too modest to admit that he’s made a good go of things, even if he can’t quite believe it himself. “What I’ve done is the equivalent of stretching an elastic band from Stoke to Mars, when it comes to my talents and where I’ve found myself,” he said.
“And I’ve sold the most No 1s in the UK ever: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Elvis and me – that wasn’t supposed to f***ing happen. And I say that in a way like I’m as dumbfounded as anybody else.”
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