By the way Robbie Williams opens his show at London’s O2 Arena, you would think he has something to prove. A national treasure and one of the best-selling artists of all time, Williams has been reflecting British culture back at itself in a hurricane of hair gel and bravado since joining Take That in 1990. Equally, he’s had a life of stark ups and downs – adoration and derision, addiction and recovery – that has made him something of an underdog. Tonight, you hear him before you see him. That familiar, eternally boyish voice checking the mic – “two, one two” – giving the occasion a fly-by-the-seat of one’s pants vibe. Next, you see his silhouette. He emerges behind the band frozen in an Elvis pose; crouched over, mic in hand, flared trousers and all. They start Let Me Entertain You and Robbie struts to centre stage, revealing a gold glitter waistcoat, a greying French crop mullet and box-fresh white trainers. “Now SCREAM!” he demands. And they do.
Williams is a performer who, much like Liam Gallagher or Alex Turner, is able to tap into a kind of British masculinity that is loud of mouth and soft of eye: ballads for lads who are constantly one gulp of Carling away from bursting into tears over an afternoon with their grandad 24 years ago. As he bowls around the stage singing lyrics like “my bed’s full of takeaways, of fantasies of easy lays” and “I don’t wanna die, but I ain’t keen on living either” to an all-ages audience, you get the sense of these songs being timeless because they were written from a precipice. Whether he’s proclaiming “I’m a star but I’ll fade” or lamenting that “youth is wasted on the young”, the threat of loss hangs over every high.
