Through the picture window of an executive box, destiny is calling Thom Rylance. “It’s not the Red Lion Pub, is it?” The Lottery Winners’ singer gasps, watching the first trickle of people swarm towards a small acoustic stage in the centre of Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium where, in roughly five hours’ time, his life is due to come full circle.
The first song he ever performed, Rylance explains, was on a school trip to the Low Bank Ground Activity Centre in the Lake District. There, this troubled, confused and unknowingly neurodivergent child sang Robbie Williams’s “Strong” for his classmates. “For the first time, everyone clapped,” he says, “and it really uploaded this thing into my brain, like, ‘That’s how you make people like you. This is what you’re gonna do’.” Now, aged 35, at The Lottery Winners’ first stadium show, Rylance has been personally invited to play an acoustic segment with Robbie during his headline set.
