Robbie - Sean Smith

Robert Peter Williams was a sixteen-year-old selling double glazing when he auditioned for a new boy band which became Take That. Twenty years on he is one of the most popular entertainers Britain has ever produced: he has recorded eight number one albums in the UK and once sold 1.6 million tickets for his 2006 world tour in a day. The most successful artist in the history of The Brits, Robbie was given a Lifetime Achievement Award three days after his 36th birthday in 2010.

The UK’s leading celebrity biographer Sean Smith has followed Robbie’s remarkable journey from the unpromising streets of Stoke-on-Trent to the millionaire’s playground of Beverly Hills and discovered a vulnerable, funny, gifted and deeply complex man. Using new research and interviews, Sean Smith reveals there is far more to Robbie Williams than just the superstar we all think we know.

Robbie explains his love for his mother and his troubled relationship with his father. It chronicles his love of performing which began when he won a talent contest, aged three, and traces his need to be one of the boys as well as his first tentative steps with the opposite sex. His phenomenal success with Take That came at a price as drink, drugs and depression took hold of his fragile personality.

Everything seemed rosier when he signed an £80 million record deal and moved to Los Angeles but overnight his golden touch disappeared when critics turned on his album Rudebox and rumours began that he suffered from stage fright. But, now, drug-free and with a million-selling comeback album, his fortunes have again been transformed. And he has fallen in love.

Robbie’s roller-coaster story will astonish you. Sean Smith’s hilarious and heartbreaking account of his life will be the unmissable showbusiness book of the year.