Robbie Williams conducts this review of his life from bed, but that’s where the similarities to Marcel Proust end. In this four-part Netflix series, Williams walks into his bedroom wearing pants, then reclines and presses a key on a laptop to watch hours of footage he shot or asked others to shoot of his life, from Take That auditions in 1990 to the present day. “I was at the centre of the pop culture universe,” he says with that familiar twang conveying anxiety and monomania.
An endless hall of mirrors in which Williams gets to view himself from every conceivable angle and then talk about seems like his idea of heaven. Of course, the thrust of the series is that this is also his hell – a prison, which he recognises with increasing regularity, albeit through a glass darkly. His response to a lifetime of destructive self-obsession is a more self-aware brand of self-obsession.
The footage – shot on tour, in the studio or on holidays (the best comes from his time with Geri Halliwell in Spain coinciding with some appalling conduct by the tabloids) – reveals that Robbie Williams is only ever in conversation with Robbie Williams, even when he is talking to someone else. Or no one in particular.
Mitigating all this compulsive behaviour is that he was 16 when he joined Take That, which was clearly as terrifying as it was exhilarating. The early footage begins to evince some warmth, but even when Gary Barlow (who he openly despises at this point) turns his nose up at the Nineties’ favourite naughty teenager, it would be hard to see how Williams could live cheek by jowl with anyone and not have them broiling with resentment within five minutes.
Since Williams’ most notable quality is his childishness – a Tigger who wanted to be Jim Morrison – it makes the omission of anything about his childhood or family even more glaring and frustrating. He never discusses how he emerged a charismatic but vulnerable performer from Stoke-on-Trent other than that he was called “thick” at school.
In lieu of any revelations, we are treated to such stock phrases as “It was too much too soon”; “I’m a runaway train.” “It was spiralling out of control”. The malaise of his post-Take That career is saved by the success of Angels in 1997, which set him on course for a triumphant decade of Mussolini poses, awards, spats with Oasis, Glastonbury and Knebworth.
There is some honest reflection when he admits how churlish he became once he realised he could not break America, while suffering from depression and exhaustion on tour. He’s been able to live there since in happy anonymity for that reason.
The defenestration of Guy Chambers is typically unrevealing. After an hour’s worth of footage of his friend and musical collaborator on the first five solo albums, Williams does not elaborate on why he walked away from a devastated Chambers, merely saying, “There was nothing or nobody holding me back for the first time.”
He is at his most relatable and sympathetic when his world tour coincides with an outbreak of imposter syndrome sparked by the negative reaction to the much-maligned Rudebox. He finally succumbs to the wounds inflicted by a hostile British media culminating in panic attacks over two nights at Roundhay Park, Leeds in 2006. Naturally, he filmed himself before, during and after the breakdown. The last episode charts his semi-retirement in LA and what he calls the “happy ending” of his marriage to Ayda Field, who saw him through so much of his rehabilitation.
Williams’ lyrics are fuelled by references to himself and his self, but they feel like another dead end. It doesn’t matter how much we are told: we still don’t know anything. That’s because he’s the only one doing the telling and he doesn’t appear to know either.
