robbie

. .. I've taken drugs with everybody there is to take drugs with. I've done everything that is needed to do regarding drink.There is sod-all at those things apart from pissed-up people looking for celebrities. And I've met the celebrities and now I am one. One that they come and have a look at.What's the point of going out? It's not fun. You have to be pissed to enjoy it. And then all hell breaks loose. With me, anyway. No, for me, there's no point. If you've got nothing to say to anybody anyway, you might as well go home and have a cup of tea and watch telly.The whole Brits [music awards] thing is geared around the people at the tables or in the audience, they've come to have a look at a star and take a memory back with them - and invariably it's also about getting drunk or taking cocaine or ecstasy or whatever mood-altering substance you can get hold of.

I find the pressure of turning up to a place that's full of your peers and feeling like you don't deserve it and having that much attention thrown at you while you're in a shame spiral about not deserving what you're getting - I normally get rat-arsed because of it.On beating drugs:There is this huge devil inside me. And it doesn't come out and act out against other people; it just wants me to destroy myself. I have a disease that talks to me in my own voice and tells me I haven't got it. And that's my dark side.

When I got clean the first time, which was for nine months, I always thought that if I kept my bed clean and if I tidied my bedroom, I'd keep my sobriety. And lo and behold, as soon as I didn't ... It's a [revealing] sign for me. If my place is a mess, I'm probably back to the drink. It's like I've been in this deep sleep, this deep nightmare, and I've just woken up and seen how great things are. It is a complete 360-degree turnaround.On sex on tour:I've dabbled a bit on tour. It depends what my frame of mind is. I've done some tours and not dabbled at all. But on this [recent] tour I put down the drink and the drugs and wanted to substitute it with something else, so I did have sex.It's allowed. I'm a pop star.

Sexually, you can do what you want. Act out however you want to. But it's soulless. Every time you do it, it's boring. It's like having a wank. But for me it's a compulsion; it was a compulsion. Sex, drinks and drugs. They go hand in hand.
I haven't had a relationship with anybody as boyfriend and girlfriend for more than two years now. The last person I walked out with was [British model] Tania Strecker. But we weren't going out with each other, we were friends. We never committed to a relationship. She was just a nice person. And, yeah, the press want to believe that I'm going out with Geri [Halliwell] or believe I'm going out with whoever. I'm not with her. We're just really good friends.

On groupies:
The majority of the fans who sit in hotel lobbies, or outside hotels, or my house, are missing love in their real life. That's what I've come to believe.
They are obviously missing some real love in some way; from their parents or boyfriends or from whoever has treated them badly. So they go and look into this love that's unobtainable - me. Or whoever the object may be. Delete me and put in Ronan Keating. Or Bono. Or whoever.
A lot of them, I've noticed, are anorexic, bulimic, obese - you actually go and talk to them and they've all got some form of disorder, life disorder. They're immensely timid or immensely shy. Or just very young, yeah.

On being gossip fodder:
All that just frightens me. I don't have tabloid newspapers in my house because it distorts my image of me. It distorts what I believe myself to be. Because they've got this person they are claiming I am and more often than not the person that they claim I am is conceited and needs to be brought down a peg or two.
And if I read that, I believe that I'm shit. I believe that I'm a megalomaniac, arrogant, a sex maniac, whatever they want to write.
So I don't read it any more and it's doing me the world of good. But somebody had the paper in their house when I went round and it was like an addiction. I couldn't help looking at it. I only saw the front page and I saw the title "King Rob" and that was enough for me. I took it out of his hands and threw it in the bin.
You know ... I write some records with the help of Guy [co-writer Guy Chambers]. I sing them and I perform them. I might bring a lot of joy and a lot of love into people's lives.
I might touch them and if I do, then that's wonderful, but I'm not saving lives. I'm not doing heart operations or finding bone marrow for people. They're the real heroes.
I'm just very lucky. I've worked really damn hard ... I'm a 27-year-old that comes from Stoke-on-Trent. Very average when I was a kid. Very, very average and I'm very average now. I just have an extraordinary life.
To have something bestowed on me such as King Rob or anything like that, a quarter of my ego quite likes it and the rest of me just pales away and goes, "I don't want that. That's scary".

On friends:
I have acquaintances and a few mates, but I just don't have friends. It's sad for me. Take my best mate from school, Lee. Me and Johnny [Jonathan Wilkes, his flatmate, who's known him all his life] laugh, but Lee and I used to laugh and laugh and laugh. We spent a lot of time together growing up. Then I phoned him up once. I think this is when I gave up on everybody back home. I said, 'Can I come round and see you?' He said, 'Well, I need to clean the house and put my suit on'. And then he was all embarrassed that his house was a mess. And it made me really sad. Because he just wouldn't have bothered in the old days. I go away for six months and become a pop star and you come back and it's Robbie Williams. You're not the same person any more.

On whether he is gay:
It's only a difficult question if you deem being gay as something wrong. Or dirty, or derogatory. It's not to me. It's as simple as these men like men, these women like women, and some men like women and some women like men.
Someone said to Jonathan the other week, 'Oh, I think he likes men'. Of course, Jonathan got upset and stuck up for me, which he shouldn't have done. I just said to him, 'Next time somebody asks you if I'm gay, just say, 'When Rob's good and ready to come out he will do'.
I don't give a toss if people think I'm gay. I wouldn't say I've not thought about it, because you do. People do when they're growing up. And I did once kiss a man in a club, but that was like - you know, your lipstick lesbians that are not really lesbians - I just walked in and there was a friend of mine there at the time and he came up and kissed me. I thought, sod it, I'll kiss you then. But in a manly way.
I might try it. If I was attracted to a man, then I'd do it, but as it stands I haven't been physically or emotionally attracted to a man to do anything sexual with them. That's how it stands at the minute.

On the downside of fame:
If you haven't been followed 24 hours a day, you don't really know what it's like. From the outside in it would be like 'What are you going on about? Putting up with a few cameramen outside your house with all the millions that you've got'.
But if you're being followed 24 hours a day, you have no life. You're being watched. And it takes your masculinity away, because you want to go and break legs and you can't do that.
It is more than weird, more than strange, to be sat in your house knowing there's four people waiting for you outside who you don't know. And as soon as you go out flashlights are going to go off.