News of August 2004

31/08/04

British singer Robbie Williams has struck back at claims he had gay sex with a dancer ten years ago, when he was still a member of boyband Take That. Yesterday (29AUG04), British newspaper The People alleged the Let love Be Your Energy star shared a steamy romp with dancer Nathan Conroy after they met at a gay night at Manchester, England's infamous Hacienda nightspot. And Williams, 30, is reportedly so furious, he's taking legal action against the newspaper. An insider says, "Robbie is absolutely livid. The story simply isn't true and he is sick of people questioning his sexuality. He's had a laugh in the past about fancying men but that's just Robbie on the wind-up. "He is a red-blooded bloke and has been out with a string of stunning women. What more proof is there about his sexuality than that?
"Robbie is a good bloke and holds his hands up when stories writtenabout him are true. But he is determined to stick up for himself when people spread lies about him."

31/08/04

SIR Elton John 'kidnapped' singer Robbie Williams and forced him to seek help for his drink and drug addictions.
Williams makes the revelations in his new biography Feel. He says the singing legend drove him to a clinic in 1997 after watching him binge on heroin, cocaine and ecstasy.
Robbie reveals, "I was sandwiched by two people in the back of the car, so I wouldn't try to commit suicide or run off."
But the singer insists rehab staff treated him like a "naughty boy" and the experience didn't help him: "There was no love or care. They said, 'Write down everything you are addicted to.' "So I wrote it all down, everything I'd ever taken - heroin, ecstasy, marijuana, cocaine, alcohol, amyl nitrate, speed." He fled the clinic and checked into another one just days later and he confesses the experience ruined his friendship with Sir Elton - the pair have barely spoken since.
Robbie adds, "Elton tried to do a lot for me and I didn't thank him enough. But what he did was weird. "Elton tried to do what he thought was best, and obviously that came from a very loving place. But the whole thing for me is tarnished with the lack of professionalism."

31/08/04

British singer Robbie Williams was so obsessed with living forever, he became fascinated with life-enhancing products.
The Angels singer, 29, met with a travelling chemist last summer (03) who urged him to try coral calcium to prolong his existence.
The chemist relayed a theory to Williams about "how people live a long time in the high Himalayas and how the Okinawas put it on food and have low cancer rates". According to Williams's biographer Chris Heath, the singer made the chemist write down detailed notes about vitamins and dietary supplements.

30/08/04

Robbie Williams has revealed for the first time how he faked a series of photographs, including a famous picture of the singer cavorting with the model Rachel Hunter, in an effort to fool the press and cheat the paparazzi he loathes. Williams, currently the most bankable star in British music, is fiercely protective of his private life and has, in effect, left the UK to avoid the attentions of photographers who used to besiege his home in London's Notting Hill.
But he has now admitted in a new biography that he faked shots in which he frolicked by a pool, wearing just a towel around his waist, with Hunter, who was topless. The images were bought by the News of the World and appeared on the paper's front page in June 2003.
Money raised from the sale of the pictures - which ran into hundreds of thousands of pounds - was donated to charity by Williams.
He even admits mocking up pictures that would have given the impression he was gay, but he destroyed the photographs.
The plan was to manipulate the press and sell images that were so over the top that there would be little demand in future for anything less racy.
However, Williams says he has since had huge regrets about the episode. "I felt really dirty. I felt it was a huge, huge mistake. I thought 'what must people think of me?'," he said.
He makes his admission in a new book, Feel, written by the journalist Chris Heath, who spent two years with the singer chronicling his recent life through a series of candid interviews.
In the book, he discusses his well-chronicled battles with drink and drug addiction, including a brief flirtation with heroin. Williams also talks about how his friend Sir Elton John checked him into a clinic to help him with his problems back in the days when he performed with the boy band Take That, which he left in 1995. He has also used anti-depressants to cope with his unease with global fame.
His discussion of the tabloid press in the book sheds most light on the unhappiness his success has brought.
He claims he is being used as "a pawn in the game they're playing with me, Im not a human being, you know?
"What you are actually dealing with is the devil, I believe. You're actually dealing with people who want to see you die. I'm a competitive person ...
and if I think that someone's got the upper hand on me in any way I want to find a way to beat them."
His photoshoot with Hunter was a bid to do just that. Williams hatched the plan after his friendship with Hunter, the estranged wife of Rod Stewart, became public knowledge when they were pictured together.
"I said, look, if we give them what they want - exactly what they want - then there'll be no call for them. If we give them everything, they won't hang out and there'll be no money for it."
He and Hunter "got excited like schoolkids" when they discussed it, he recalled, and the next day his management arranged for the shots to be taken They were then touted as genuine paparazzi shots, and the proceeds were given to charity.
Williams then went a step further. He had long been dogged by rumours that he was homosexual, and he decided to pose emerging from a gay shop holding hands with a male friend.
"My thinking behind it all was if I flood the market with loads of stuff they won't know what to trust, therefore they'll stop taking pictures."
He eventually gotcold feet about the gay pictures and they were destroyed.
His distrust of the press is partly behind his decision to decamp to Los Angeles. While living in London he would find a pack of photographers outside his home at all hours.

30/08/04

Pop superstar Robbie Williams passionately kissed a Man in a nightclub - and then asked for more.
Hunky dancer Nathan Conroy says he had a sex romp with Robbie after the steamy snog.
Nathan - the first gay to sensationally speak out about the mystery surrounding the 30-year-old singer's sexuality - told The People: "Robbie kissed me like I had never been kissed before.
"It was powerful and passionate. It left no doubt in my mind that he is into men in a big way."
Nathan, 31, has spoken just days before the mega-star publishes his autobiography Feel in which he details frankly his affairs with a string of women - but does not mention the MEN.
The dancer revealed how Robbie...
BEGGED him for sex in a nightclub toilets.
SPURNED the advances of a beautiful girl and instead chose to kiss Nathan.
SHOWED experience in gay sex.
NEVER hid his man-to-man liaisons from his friends.
Nathan, who is also a session singer and has worked with the Spice Girls, said: "Robbie is gay and those close to him know it but he is being suppressed and not allowed to come out.
"It's very sad and the pressure is beginning to show. His drink and drugs problems are telling signs that he is so unhappy that he can't be himself. I feel very sorry for him."
Speculation over Robbie's sexuality have been rife since his days with the record-breaking boy band Take That. The star has done little to play down his alleged gay tendencies, often openly confessing to finding men attractive and hinting that he is bisexual.
He once announced on Tops of The Pops: "Tomorrow I will be coming out as homosexual so get in there while you can, girls."
And when dismissing an alleged romance with ex-Spice Girl Geri Halliwell he told reporters: "I'm gay anyway." And speaking last year in US gay magazine The Advocate he admitted to wanting to bed American actor The Rock.
He said: "I'd love him to throw me about a bit. He's quite brutish and hot, don't you think?" Nathan, from Glossop, Derbyshire, met Robbie at a gay event at Manchester's legendary Hacienda club.
The singer was riding high on the international fame of Take That and the band were regular faces on the Northern gay scene.
Nathan said: "It never occurred to me that he was straight. He was so outrageous. He was one of the campest boys around and dressed and acted gay.
"At the Hacienda Robbie and the band sat behind where I was dancing. "I suppose I fancied him but I was so used to celebrities I didn't take any more notice of him than I would of any good-looking bloke.
"I used to dance in one hour intervals and then hang around the toilet with my friends. "I know that sounds weird but things were never normal on the club scene. There would be people dancing, singing and chatting in there. It was a respite from the very warm and loud club.
"I was leaning against a sink when Robbie walked in wearing an unbuttoned baggy white shirt with big cuffs - very gay. "He went to one of the cubicles, turned around, looked straight in my eye and beckoned me to go with him. I didn't think twice."
Robbie, then aged 20 and Nathan, 21 kissed passionately and performed sex acts on each other. Their moans could be heard by Nathan's friends.
Nathan said: "Even though I was slightly older than Robbie, I was very inexperienced. He wasn't. "He took the lead. The kissing was so powerful. It was full on." What happened next proved to Nathan that Robbie preferred men.
He said: "My extremely good-looking female friend came into the cubicle and started playing with Robbie's hair. "He pushed her out and turned his attention back to me.
"If he was more attracted to women than men, then he would have gone for her. All men did, but not Robbie." The pair remained in the cubicle for at least 20 minutes. Nathan says Robbie begged to have full gay sex but he refused.
Nathan said: "I was young and new to the whole gay thing. Robbie definitely wasn't."
When the club closed the singer gave Nathan his phone number written on EMI record company paper. Nathan later discovered Robbie had given him the wrong number.
But that didn't deter the pop star from trying for a repeat performance when they bumped into each other again a year later at Manchester's Paradise Factory club.
Nathan said: "He maybe seemed a bit shy but spoke like we were old friends.
"He said in my ear, 'I need to talk to you,' and indicated for us to go to the nearby toilets.
"I had begun seeing someone else so told him I wasn't interested.
"I walked off but my friend remained speaking to him. He later told me that Robbie had tried it on with him as well. My friend also refused.
"I later saw Robbie disappear with another bloke down the dark streets at the back of the Paradise Factory. It was obvious what was going on."
The star, who is now dating Cuban Nip/Tuck actress Valerie Cruz in Los Angeles, talks frankly in his autobiography out this Wednesday about his relationships with women.
He says he lost his virginity to his childhood sweetheart Rachael Gilson in his home-town Stoke-on-Trent when he was 17. Robbie also speaks about his string of famous girlfriends, including All Saints singer Nicole Appleton who aborted their baby because of their rocky relationship.
But apart from admitting an interest in men, Robbie does not discuss any gay encounters. Nathan said: "It's very sad that Robbie has turned out like he has. He doesn't seem at all happy.
"He has been suppressed and the ramifications of that are now beginning to show.
"He looks a mess - he looks like a lost unhappy individual.
"It's very telling that none of his relationships with women has lasted.
"He is now dating another actress in LA. It won't last. It's all for show.
"Deep down he is gay. Robbie and I were completely comfortable with each other. He was the more dominant one and knew what he wanted.
"That's not the behaviour of a man who's is experimenting for fun. It was for real."

30/08/04

Pop superstar Robbie Williams has hinted he slept with ex-Spice Girl Victoria Beckham in his new autobiography. The hunky Angels hitmaker, who has previously romanced fellow Spice Girls Geri Halliwell and Melanie Chisholm, admits to bedding at least one more Spice.
In one chapter of the book - released next week (begs30AUG04) - Williams is overheard speaking to his best friend, actor Max Beesley, who famously dated another Spice Girl, Melanie Brown.
Williams said, "Max Beesley, between us we've nearly got the perfect Spice Girl's jigsaw...apart from one piece. "Oh yeah. I did say one piece missing. You do the math!
"You know about three of them but there's another one. You don't know that."

27/08/04

Following on from the 2001 illustrated account of Robbie's touring world, Somebody Someday, is the complete, intimate story of Robert P Williams. Spanning his childhood through Take That to his current status as rock icon, probing his love life and his family relationships, this is closer than you'd ever thought you'd get to Robbie Williams.
Written by Chris Heath, who has spent nearly two years working with Williams himself on the book, every word is imbued with the star's humour, charisma, talent, memories and complexity. But more than ever before, this book tells the truth about his extraordinary life.
You may have seen his face a million times, heard his music every day, followed him from the beginning of Take That, but this is a man with some serious surprises in store. This is a truly original and brilliantly written book; a grippingly honest story of an extraordinary man.

25/08/04

Pop hunk Robbie Williams confesses to sleeping with a mystery journalist in his former friend Liam Gallagher's bed in his forthcoming autobiography.
The Rock DJ hitmaker had a brief friendship with the Oasis star and his brother Noel following his split from Take That, which included sordid booze and drug sessions, before the Gallaghers famously cut Williams off.
Williams claims he snuck a well-known British writer into Liam's bedroom during a party - which Liam later found out after the pair had finished copulating.
According to friends of Liam, the furious rocker said, "Tell that cheeky c**t he's a right cheeky c**t!"

25/08/04

Robbie Williams has spilled the beans on his rollercoaster relationship with Oasis stars Liam and Noel Gallagher. The former boy band member's forthcoming autobiography, Feel, reveals how he fell out with both brothers. "I went from Noel's mate to him keeping his distance
and me being mates with Liam," the Daily Mirror quotes from the book.
"For a while, it felt great." "But Liam was really paranoid about everything. It's dreadfully sad for him." Robbie says the Gallagher brothers started to shun him because it was no longer cool to hang out with the
"screwed-up kid from Take That".
"It wound me up because I really loved them and admired them for a while," he says.
The 30-year-old says he managed to end his feud with Liam but Noel refused because he "absolutely hates me".
Robbie later wrote a letter to Noel alluding to his record-breaking three-concert stint at Knebworth.
"PS: Finding it difficult to find adequate support for the show. What are you doing on the 1st and 2nd? Oh, and the 3rd?," it said.

20/08/04

Robbie Williams' forthcoming Greatest Hits album won't feature anything from his Swing When You're Winning album. Swing When You're Winning was the follow-up to the previous year's Sing When You're Winning and featured covers of classic crooner hits including his duet with Nicole Kidman 'Something Stupid'. Greatest Hits will feature two new songs 'Radio' and 'Misunderstood'.

The tracklisting is:
1. Old Before I Die (from Life Thru A Lens, 1997)
2. Angels (from Life Thru A Lens, 1997)
3. Lazy Days (from Life Thru A Lens, 1997)
4. Let Me Entertain You (from Life Thru A Lens, 1997)
5. Millennium (from I've Been Expecting You, 1998)
6. No Regrets (from I've Been Expecting You, 1998)
7. Strong (from I've Been Expecting You, 1998)
8. She's The One (from I've Been Expecting You, 1998)
9. Rock DJ (from Sing When You're Winning, 2000)
10. Kids (from Sing When You're Winning, 2000)
11. Supreme (from Sing When You're Winning, 2000)
12. Let Love Be Your Energy (from Sing When You're Winning, 2000)
13. Eternity (from Sing When You're Winning expanded, 2000)
14. The Road To Mandalay (from Sing When You're Winning, 2000)
15. Feel (from Escapology, 2003)
16. Come Undone (from Escapology, 2003)
17. Sexed Up (from Escapology, 2003)
18. Radio (new)
19. Misunderstood (new)

17/08/04

Robbie Williams has landed a girlfriend after a 18-month drought. The 30-year-old singer went on his first date with Valerie Cruz, a star of the US drama Nip/Tuck, last weekend.
The Cuban-born brunette is Williams' first girlfriend since he split with New Zealand model Rachel Hunter in February 2003. She plays psychiatrist Grace Santiago in the plastic surgery drama, which is broadcast on Channel 4.
The pair met through friends in Los Angeles. A source close to the singer told The Sun: "He really liked Valerie and asked her out on a date. They had a fantastic time, I think she feels Robbie is very funny.
"It wasn't a case of wining and dining as Robbie doesn't drink, but there was some romance. They went shopping in Beverly Hills, had lunch and got on really well. It's hard for Robbie to date because of who he is but in America it's certainly a lot easier. He doesn't come with the baggage he has in Britain."
Williams is about to lift the lid on his turbulent life in a new autobiography, Feel.

14/08/04

Robbie Williams has shed stones over the past months - which means it must be time for a new album. The chart-topping pop star looked slim and fit in Hollywood this week wearing a tight white vest.
Since his days in boy band Take That, the 30-year-old's weight has yo-yoed.
In May last year the Robster looked trim and toned but by December his figure had ballooned.
This year his weight has bounced up and down - slim in March, chubby in May, and now the new streamlined Robbie in August. Nicely timed, as around October he releases his new Greatest Hits album and in the meantime there is publicity for his second autobiography Feel.
A source close to Robbie said: "Everyone knows Robbie has problems with his weight. With the album coming out Robbie knows he'll be doing a lot of publicity and wanted to look his best."
The star has spent hours in the gym with a personal trainer and stuck to a strict diet regime. The source said: "He hates the way he's been labelled Blobby Williams.
"Robbie's never been happy with the way he looks, even when he's slim. It's a pity because he's got into fine shape."

11/08/04

Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine has warned Robbie Williams off, after the British pop heartthrob tried to steal his girlfriend.
Levine understands Williams' attraction to model Kelly McGee - but he insists the British singer has no chance with his beau.
He gushes, "She's a beautiful girl. Everyone would enjoy taking her out.
"He's more confident than your average male but I don't hold it against him. I'm confident in my relationship but I don't really mind when other men hit on her.
"I think I have enough self-worth to realise that I'm better than everyone else for her. And girls hit on me all the time so we both just deal with the fact.
"It's not going to happen Rob, sorry!"

10/08/04

FROM THE SUN:

Robbie Williams has admitted he is obsessed with David Beckham's hair. I can reveal that in Rob's autobiography Feel, out next month, he confesses: "I've got people I employ just to hair-watch David Beckham." Robbie's Becks barnet obsession began after the England captain shaved off his Mohican and grew his hair longer. Robbie writes of his own mop: "I'm going to grow it f***ing full-speed and have long hair before David does." But Robbie later decided that longer locks made his face look like a football - so had them lopped off. He also admits in his book that he was too shy to return a call from Becks. He says: "I won't phone him because I'm scared."

08/08/04

FROM THE SKY NEWS:

Robbie Williams is determined to shift the excess pounds that he's gained over the last year. And he plans to do that by playing more golf.
Robbie said: "I used to play just twice a week but now I'm out there every day for up to six hours. "It's such great exercise - and more fun than a gym."

07/08/04

Scissors Sisters are quickly gaining a respectable celebrity fan base. Pop singer Robbie Williams and his gay mates were spotted at the Sisters' performance in Los Angeles last week. U2's Bono watched their show on Saturday in New York City at the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (via Brad).
Paul wrote that he attended the group's concert in Los Angeles last Thursday. He ended up standing next to Robbie Williams (in a snazzy white suit) and his friends, "I got to stand next to Robbie Williams in the Troubadour balcony. He was clearly at the show with a crew of gay guys...2 British guys and 2 American guys... This doesn't prove their all gay, but...speaking of gaydar - mine works very well!"

04/08/04

Rumours are floating about that Robbie Williams is set to return here for a tour less than a year after his last jaunt. Robbie's record company EMI isn't willing to lend any weight to the scuttlebutt. But an October tour would coincide rather nicely with the forthcoming release of Williams' greatest hits album, scheduled to hit stores on October 17.
Vodafone, sponsor of Williams' successful tour here in December when the star played two shows at the Sydney Football Stadium, say they haven't heard anything either.
But a Vodafone spokeswoman has hinted that something may be on the cards.

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