Robbie Williams may be eager to entertain us, but he also gets into an awful lot of arguments. As his gig at the du Arena approaches, Si Hawkins look back at a few of his prime beefs.
Gary Barlow
(Beef rating: 9)
Robbie and Barlow are the boy-band Burton and Taylor, a duo seemingly destined for perennial break-ups and make-ups. The hugely popular Take That stars fell out in 1995 when Williams’s erratic behaviour and a longing for edgier music forced him out of the group. Bitterness followed as Barlow’s own solo career stuttered, much to Williams’s public delight. “I wanted to crush him,” he admitted, during a candid 2010 documentary. By then, Take That had rebuilt that rickety bridge over their differences and Williams was back — but not for good: he left the band again in 2012.
Oasis
(Beef rating: 10)
Williams flirted with indie rock after going solo, and famously joined Oasis onstage at the 1995 Glastonbury Festival – but this was another friendship that was destined to turn sour. Noel Gallagher (pictured) dismissed Williams as a “fat dancer” in 2000, Robbie used an awards speech to propose a fight and the mutual antagonism survived long after the’ demise of Oasis. Two years ago, Liam Gallagher enviously berated Williams for filling an arena while his new band, Beady Eye, played a small venue close by. Robbie then offered a message of sympathy … to Liam’s wife. This feud could live forever.
21 other Britpop bands
(Beef rating: 8)
Will Williams again rejoin Take That one day? Well, in 2013 he issued an intriguingly impassioned defence of manufactured pop acts. After Brett Anderson from the 1990s band Suede (pictured) criticised One Direction, Williams responded that “more hearts will genuinely race at a new 1D album than they ever have or will at any Suede album”. Williams also insisted that most of Suede’s contemporaries were only a “quarter decent” — and after promising not to name particular acts, he mentioned “Echobelly, Shed 7, Symposium...” and 17 others. Cue the inevitable Britpop backlash.
His own fans
(Beef rating: 7)
As his Middle Eastern audience would now agree, Williams can really test your loyalty. A late date change for his Abu Dhabi concert is the latest PR mishap, but more damaging to his career have been his sudden lurches away from pop. By 1997, the once clean-cut crooner was a failing rock star, until Angels — the fourth single from his debut album, Life Thru a Lens — went unexpectedly stratospheric. Then in 2006 came Rudebox, a misguidedly radical electro-rap collection that alienated faithful fans and signalled the end, he suggested, of “the whole ‘Robbie’ thing”. He was very nearly right.
Professor Green
(Beef rating: 5)
Hip-hoppers love mining their feuds for material, and the British rapper Professor Green (pictured) made good use of his row with Williams: a rant by the singer appeared on his 2014 album Growing Up in Public. Green had mocked Williams’s Rudebox, on his track I Need Church, then edited Robbie’s subsequent answerphone message into the song’s outro: “Green, it’s Robbie Williams. I’ve just heard your album. Listen, a) keep my name out of your mouth, b) why did you have to go and mention Rudebox?” They soon made up, though — Green is a long-time fan.
His neighbours
(Beef rating: 6)
Now a married dad-of-two, Williams is finding grander methods for infuriating people. The 41-year-old singer has spent much of this year battling his neighbours — including Led Zeppelin’s guitarist Jimmy Page (pictured) — over proposed building works. Williams applied to vastly extend the basement of his £17 million (Dh92m) London home, but Page vehemently objected, saying the effect on his own house would be “catastrophic”. The singer relented, but even his new air-con plans were challenged by another neighbour, Jonathan Seiff, the heir to the Marks & Spencer retail empire.