Robbie Williams works hard for his audience. At 60… sorry, 51… that glint in the eye he had as a young lad in Take That remains firmly in place. As a performer, he’s addictive. You can’t take your eyes off him. Indeed from his flamboyant outfits (“There’s always been one rumour which has followed me around…” he joked at one point last night), to impressive staging and a throng of boob-bejweeled dancers, the whole show was a visual feast. “I asked how much it was to give you all a light up wristband… but at £5 each you can switch your phone lights on,” he laughed. But wristbands aside, the show had it all, from loo-roll-esque confetti, pyrotechnics, a B stage at the back of the arena. At one point Robbie was even chaotically lowered to the ground on bungee ropes.
The two-hour-long show began with his new song, Britpop, before making way for a career-spanning set of hits. There was Come Undone, Strong, Kids, She’s The One… One by one they came like a poptastic box of chocolates. Rudebox was sadly amiss. Let me entertain you, Robbie sang. And entertain us he did. It was pure theatre from the start, with more patter than I’ve seen in a long time at a show. A particular highlight came via interactions with his AI older and younger selves. Because if there’s one thing Robbie’s fans love even more than his music – it’s him.
“You better be good, because I’m phenomenal,” he teased the 23,000-strong Co-op Live crowd on the first of two sell-out nights in Manchester for the singer, who opened up to fans about his struggles with mental health. “This was about five mental breakdowns ago,” he said, introducing Old Before I Die, admitting too that there was someone down at the front he’d slept with in the 90s.
And before the uplifting Love My Life, Rob talked about the transformative effect being a parent had had on him. “My life began when I met my wife, or as some of you say in the internet chatrooms… ‘that bitch’,” he said. “But my family – my four kids, their tiny hands and their big hearts – gave me a reason to live, to get out of bed, even when my head told me not to.” He’s spoken widely about his mental health over the years, but every time he does it’s deeply powerful.
Later, during a pretty little acoustic session on the B stage, surprise guest Lucy Spraggan came out to sing Lulu’s part in Relight My Fire. My sister, dancing next to me, was beside herself. “Tonight this song is mine,” Robbie joked of the Take That banger, sung by Gary Barlow.
As the show came to a close with an encore of the anthemic Feel and Angels, Robbie looked triumphant. And he had every right to. The King of Entertainment gave his people what they wanted: the hits, and lots of them. Every song from the carefully curated setlist was a crowdpleaser. Two hours in Rob’s company was a serotonin-boosting, raucous, dose of pure unadulterated joy. Can we do it all again, please?