- And in three, two, one.
Hello, British Vogue.
I'm Robbie Williams and this is my life in looks.
I feel as though I must tell you at this stage,
I hate revisiting the past and I hate looking at myself.
Come watch me squirm.
♪ Bum bum baaaadum ♪
Oh, very thick head of hair.
Award-winning hair.
Not a bad look.
In my pocket, I have a dummy.
It was from Rave culture.
It was a nod and wink.
I'd just left school.
But two years before this with no qualifications whatsoever.
Zero future from Stoke-on-Trent.
And I had this feeling that I could entertain.
I came alive when a camera was on.
Not ashamed to say that I loved it.
♪ Here we go here we go ♪
This is a still taken from the worst video ever to be made.
And because it's the worst video ever to be made,
it's possibly the best video ever to be made.
It was to a track called Do What You Like.
I am roughly 17 here, maybe 16.
We were given a budget to style ourselves.
Two things about that video was I was immensely proud
that we'd done a pop promotional video.
I also thought nobody should ever see it.
[Robbie chuckles]
We were of an era in an age
where controversy was a good thing.
And also, I for one, I'm one of those people that says,
"You know, if there's a button that says, 'Don't touch,'
I'm gonna press that button."
So with controversy or raunchy or too much
you can never have too much.
Too much, please.
I'm going to turn the page now, guys, come with me.
Ooh, the Smash Hits Winners Poll Awards.
Here we are, cleaning up.
This was the pinnacle of existence for the band
that we were in and the person that I wanted to be
in that moment.
Smash Hits as a magazine was incredibly important
to teenagers everywhere, not more so than me.
And here we are, winning award after award after award
and having an audience be in hysterics
of the mere fact that we were before them.
It doesn't get better than that.
I was wearing overalls with nothing on underneath
and a snug hat that said Philly Blunts on it.
Dummy, raver, Philly Blunt hat, eh?
I was telling everybody, "I'm about to go to rehab."
Dungarees were part of my look back in the day.
Cost effective, slightly unusual
because not many people were wearing them.
I'd be naked underneath with my top,
but it could cover up my belly.
So it gave the illusion that I was a buff tink.
This is the video for Relight My Fire.
I wasn't very confident as a singer
when I was in Take That.
I found a vocal booth intimidating
and I also thought I couldn't sing.
I was given the opportunity to sing the lead vocal
on this song, and I'll be honest,
I didn't do a very good job.
So Gary took over and did the lead vocal
on this tune and did an excellent job.
Absolutely smashed it.
This is the video for that song.
Mark Owen wore a t-shirt in this video that said,
"Junkie's baddy powder."
I had a big hat on, for whatever reason.
I would say that there have not been
that many days where I thought I'm in very good shape.
There are moments where that has existed.
I know on the Relight My Fire video
that this was probably peak me,
and then all downhill from there.
Let's go.
This is an interesting look.
We look like a 1993 table cloth from a radison in Bavaria.
The one abiding memory of me being in this look,
we used to go on tour and there wasn't adequate days
put in between shows.
There could be like five shows in a row
or six shows in a row, which even if you just stood there
playing guitar, is a lot.
But what we were actually doing was an hour 30
or an hour 45 an hour, 50 of cardio
workout every single night.
And I remember with this particular outfit, we used to come
up with helmets on and goggles, and we used to come
up through the middle of the stage and there we'd be.
One night I was that tired that I got down, crouched down
ready to pop up and fell asleep.
[Robbie giggles]
and then woke up, "Oh, Wembley, whoa, whoa."
I'm about like five steps behind all the other lads.
But like, that's how tired we were.
That's how knackered we were.
You just don't know what it feels
like to have 10,000 girls scream
at you for an hour and a half, an hour and 45.
If we needed any energy to do the job that was
being asked of us, they gave us that energy.
It's overwhelming and overpowering
and intoxicating and incredible and scary.
Oh, Glastonbury, 1995.
I have just been at the Nordoff Robbins Award
with Take That where I announced
to them that I was going to Glastonbury.
You can't imagine the sort of, "You are what?
Oh my God."
[Robbie imitates explosion]
Ructions, confusions, fear.
Can you imagine?
That that was even a thing back in 1995.
The story behind the missing tooth
is I actually blacked out a tooth.
It was black paint.
I felt like I shouldn't be there.
I felt like I didn't belong.
I felt alien.
At the same time as experiencing it, all of those things,
was experiencing incredible hedonism
in the most rock and roll manner, which is the antithesis
of what I was supposed to be in public or in private.
I'd been living that way in private for a long time.
There's no social media
so nobody knew or could find out really.
I was also with the most rock and roll band
on the planet at the time.
I do have to say, the reality of what that day was
was me in the back of a catering van,
feeling incredibly paranoid,
experiencing very heavy psychosis.
The pictures and what you think it was
actually betray the reality.
I just dye my hair blond, and I think that
at that given time, whenever I had a new haircut,
something extreme was just on the horizon.
Woo, The Brits.
Very, very important moment in my career.
The release of Angels kicked into gear
and made my career possible.
Around about the same time, there was two performances
on TV that I think captured the imagination
of the general public, and one was my performance
with Tom Jones.
I'm a massive fan of Tom.
He is me with me high pitched voice from Stoke-on-Trent
that sounds like he's been on helium.
Basically what I did was my impression of Tom Jones.
You can just see him looking at me as if to say,
"I don't know what this is, but crack on, you know?"
Let Me Entertain You video.
We are of course aping Kiss.
I was actually worried that they were gonna sue me
because they did a lot of that
when it come to anybody doing anything like this.
The makeup done by the wonderful Gina Kane
who's been my makeup artist for 27 years.
I was very loose that day, and if I do say so myself,
performed very well for a video shoot.
So here is me on Top of the Pops
seeing how far I could push things.
This was me wearing a see through dress for some reason.
Top of the Pops became my second home.
I was there actually in the 90s more
than I was in Stoke-on-Trent.
At some point you just go, "Can I wear your dress?"
[Robbie chuckles]
Ah, Rock, DJ.
The latex outfit that took seven hours to get in,
two hours to get out of.
I thought the opportunity was too good to not go running
down the road in this outfit by myself
just to freak people out in cars.
I'd wait behind a hedge and then a car would come
and I'd run across the road, and then jump behind the hedge
just to make people think, "What the fuck was that?"
And then I went to a local hotel
and ran through the bar dressed like that.
I went in one end and they came
out the other end just for the hell of it.
The video for Rock DJ was incredibly expensive
and then it got completely banned.
The tiger pants made an appearance in this video.
To this day, when I do my live shows,
I put them on for and giggles and also
a nod in the wink to the past and energy
that may gimme some testosterone
to fulfill the performance that I'm about to do
as a middle-aged man.
They raised 4,200 pounds for my charity.
They should've raised more.
Me and Kylie Minogue on the set of the Kids video.
The longest crush on Kylie.
I was honored and I still am to be on a record with her.
Dreamy, still crushed, still crushing.
There is a Sandy and Danny inspiration
for the video, of course.
Grease is the most important film of my life.
It was the first film on the planet where I went,
"I wanna do that.
I wanna be that."
My life is just one long series of surreal,
weird, wonderful things happening to me
that just completely blow my mind.
And one of those was filming with Kylie Minogue
and her completely disrobing in front of me
and nobody told me it was happening.
Oh, Vogue, the front cover,
me and Gisele, the first male to ever be
on the front cover of Vogue Magazine, in its history,
a fact and an honor not lost on me.
Big day for me.
Oh, Nicole Kidman on the set of our video, Somethin' Stupid.
Very kind, very gentle, very talented, lovely person.
The style inspiration behind the video
is 1950s Americana drinking crooners.
My favorite kind.
People ask me, "Are you gonna do the the acting?"
I haven't really wanted to do the acting
because moments like this are really, really boring.
Knebworth, arguably one of the biggest moments in my career.
What was I gonna wear?
I'd seen The Hives and they wore black suits
with white ties.
For some unknown reason that translated
with me to wearing a tie with no shirt.
It's not the best look really, but there you go.
I think it's vitally important that when you're on stage
you feel comfortable in whatever you are wearing.
Because weirdly, having 125,000 people staring
at you can feel uncomfortable.
I have a responsibility to give these people
a good time no matter how I feel.
But this particular time I was sober
but I was really depressed.
The guy that lived his day to day basis
quite sedentary and isolated, couldn't get
on stage because that would be boring.
There's always a dichotomy with my career, what I have to do
in public opposed to who I actually am in my real life.
At the moment, the two are getting
closer and closer together.
Here I am dressed like a angelic soldier
from the Middle Ages.
I think it's quite a look.
I have seldom been involved in the concept for my videos.
Not to say that I don't have any good ideas, because I do,
and maybe I should get involved more,
but, "Don't worry, go over things on, want play FIFA."
Oh, this is my wife and I in Cannes.
Oh she looks lovely and I look very dapper.
The reality of everything is always disappointing.
It's just a bunfight.
The best part of being in Cannes and being a famous person
I suppose, is your glam squad and getting ready.
Everything else is just a torrent of,
"Monsieur Robbie Williams, I take it, Robbie, Robbie."
That's the energy of it.
My eldest kid, she started to have an opinion
about what I should wear.
She'll say, "Mm, them shoes don't go with that, Daddy."
They haven't seen any of what I used to wear
but what I used to wear is the least
of the explaining that I will have to do.
Me and Gary Barlow, X Factor.
Do you know what?
We would've been an amazing double act.
It's just come to me.
Me and Gas as a duo, as a band
could have absolutely conquered the world,
smashed it out of the park.
The film that's coming out about me,
the biopic, Better Man, the worry about it
is I speak and think in the way that I once spoke
and felt when I was 16, 17, 18, 19 year old.
It can be unkind about everybody
around me because that's how I felt at the time.
But if this film Better Man was about Robbie Williams
circa 2012 to 2022,
it'd be a love letter to Gary Barlow.
Simple as that.
This is at home during lockdown
and I'm wearing a puppies make me happy t-shirt
that I got in a mall and a cowboy's hat and my cowboy boots.
The tiger pants do make an appearance.
They're a bit worn out and they needs a bit updating,
'cause the elastic's given a little bit
and there's not much protection,
say if I wore a kilt, this wouldn't be a good look.
I'm Robbie Williams.
That was my life in looks and you know what?
Contrary to what my mind was telling me before we started,
really enjoyed that.
[soft guitar music] [pen writing]
[soft guitar music]