Robbie Williams gets brutally honest about what happened when he left Take That in his latest documentary, admitting that he spent a lot of time taking class A drugs in a London members club after he quit the band.
The singer, now 49, was just 16 years old when he joined the group alongside Gary Barlow, Jason Orange, Mark Owen and Howard Donald.
In the first episode of his self-titled Netflix series, Robbie recalls the early days of the band – when he faced a "complete dunking into the grown up world that I wasn’t ready for" – before turning his attention what happened when he quit in 1995.
Robbie left Take That when they threatened to go on tour without him if he refused to stop partying, and he immediately headed for London's raucous celebrity hotspots after his exit.
“I was just in [private members club] The Groucho doing a lot of coke,” he says sadly.
Thankfully, Robbie met struggling musician Guy Chambers and they wrote his debut solo album, Life Thru A Lens, in just 12 days.
The singer was required to get clean before its release though, and the Netflix doc sees him look back at footage of himself at the height of his addiction.
“This is the most difficult thing to watch,” he says as he looks back at footage of himself telling an interviewer that he doesn’t “like my own company at the minute.”
“I spiralled out of control so severely my manager understood what had to happen,” says Robbie of his stint in rehab.
Meanwhile, Take That lasted just a few months without Robbie and announced their decision to split in February 1996.
The group reunited without Robbie in 2005 and fans were delighted when he rejoined the group in 2011.
Sadly, he chose to take another step back in 2014 and Jason also decided to leave just months later.
The doc also sees Robbie give his take on the tensions within the band, as he tells the cameras: “There was an assurance about Gaz and his ability, mixed with a coldness.
“It was Lord of the Flies stuff. I wasn’t adept at dealing with the dynamics of the band at an early age and that’s why the wheels came off for me.”
Robbie’s 11-year-old daughter Teddy asks him who he disliked the most, and he candidly replies: “I disliked Gary the most because he was the one that was supposed to have everything and the career. I wanted to make him pay. I was vengeful by having the career that he was supposed to have.”
Robbie Williams' documentary series arrives on Netflix on Wednesday 8 November.
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