Table Manners with Jessie and Lennie Ware - S10 Ep 14: Robbie Williams

Episode Date: December 16, 2020

I used to have his posters plastered on my walls (and ceilings), cry at his concerts and now I’m spending my Friday evening zooming him with my mum. This week we chat to the one and only @robbiewilliams. Robbie tells us all about who in @takethat can handle the spiciest curry aka ‘King Naan’, his love of Coke Zero, what happens when you eat too much tuna, Stokey Oatcakes & just how much he loves his wife. Let Him Entertain You... link to listen in bio x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to Table Manners. I am Jessie Ware and I'm on Zoom. It's Friday night. It's about quarter to six in the evening. Mum's here, Alice producer's here, Sarah manager's here and we're about to start a Zoom with someone that I used to cry at concerts for. I took you to the concert, Jess. You took me to take that concert when I was at primary school. And the man had to issue earplugs because of the screaming. That's quite common when you're going to see the most adored boy band in the world. Anyway, so he was always my favourite.

He broke my heart when he left the group. But we followed him. I supported him through thick and thin through that terrible bleached haired face you know and Alice Ward best friend Alice at school and I would compete with who could cry more at the concerts so I went to see him in Manchester didn't I you got me tickets for Manchester and then I Alice got me tickets for um London I think it was like the Excel Centre or something like that. And I don't think we even looked at the gig.

We just looked at each other trying to cry more than the other. And I think I went to Wembley, Jess. No, that was for Take That. Oh, okay. Anyway, it's not about us. It's about the international superstar, Robbie Williams, tuning in. And we are going to chat to him. And I can't quite believe if I could have told my 13 year old self that I would be spending the evening with Robbie Williams talking about

food with my mum well I wouldn't have believed it but here we are so Robbie Williams has a new single out called Can't Stop Christmas that includes buzzwords such as two metres, Zoom and Skype and it's out now and I know what I'm going to do I'm going to either swear loads or I'm going to pretend that I'm Emily Maitlis Try not to swear. I'm going to really try. I'm going to

see whether that flame can be reignited. Whether it is an eternal flame for Robbie Williams I mean he was on my walls. Do I say this to him? I feel like it's a weird thing to say. Oh, shit. He's here.

Oh, yeah. No, I've still got it. Still got the butterflies for him. Here we go. I'm going to faint. Hi. Hi. Let me just get these ear pod things in.

I gave up eating chocolate at the beginning of the year and I fell asleep at five o'clock into a really deep sleep. And you know when you wake up and you just need sugar? Yeah. You know that? I've just eaten a massive bar of chocolate so hopefully i'll be able to work some calories off from the chocolate just by talking was it worth it i don't know it's sort of like an ask me at 10 o'clock tonight question where i think back about it and be remorseful about what I did at five. Why did you stop chocolate in January?

Well, I'm just, you know, I'm trying on different things to see what fits and to see how I can stay, I don't know, offset the onset of middle age and obesity. Hi, I'm Robbie Williams. I used to be in Take That. Robbie, you're gorgeous. Thanks, darling.

And I'm swooning, and Jessie's going to tell you about all her swooning. So, Robbie, I have to just let this, I just have to let you know this now, because otherwise it's going to be the elephant in the room, and you're going to hear it in the introduction. So, I loved you. You were potentially my first love.

It could have been Ryan Giggs first, or it could have been you. I can't remember. It was about the same time. And I loved you. I loved you in Take That. Fine. I resented you for a little bit. And then I used to compete with my best friend who could cry more at your concerts.

Right. I loved you. Oh, wow. And this is a bit weird for me. Oh. And I'm just going to get it out there. And now we can be professional. We can be the UNICEF ambassadors that we both are we can be peers musical peers i just had to put it

out there that i loved you i had you on my walls i had everything oh wow well i um i'm very happy and honored that in some sort of way and you're like oh no the connection's no no genuinely i'm very happy and honored that i sort of facilitated for you your first safe crush where you wouldn't be brokenhearted or you know no you did break my heart what by leaving take that you did you broke i remember i think i did try and call the helpline actually do you remember i think it was on news round there was a help line yeah but i i didn't i i suppose there was some there there would be some form of separation anxiety uh but i didn't i didn't literally break your heart by being that arsehole first boyfriend it felt like it at the time robbie that's true it didn't feel like that it didn't feel anyway right now tell us the real reason you left mom no you can you can ask that okay okay fine I thought we're going

to talk about food okay in short yeah we had a manager and um I didn't like him and he didn't like me. And the only person that was being managed in the group really was Gary. And Gaz was a very talented songwriter, a very good friend of mine. We've made up because I since left Take That and slagged him off for years and years and years. You know, I was sort of jealous. Not sort of jealous not sort of I was jealous and resentful that he was the only person in the band that was being looked after me and Gary are very similar because we've kind of in the band with how we write songs how we present ourselves how we perform and where we want to go we're very much uh a one direction kind of person i don't mean in a harry styles way we're sort of like blinkered where there's no left and there's

no right if i was a footballer i'd be getting that ball and heading it away or heading it into the goal by any means necessary and gas was the same too so all of these things plus cocaine and ecstasy and vodka and um i needed to and had to leave to go and become the person that i thought i could go on and become which you did which i did yeah you definitely got the ball in the back of the net rob i did i did i i'm sorry if i'm not making much sense i i'm sort of like you make absolute sense you're a driven human you're driven that's right but now me and gary have learned how to share our toys and uh that's the benefit of maturity and getting older. I love him to bits and I have utmost respect for him. We write together, we'll go and eat together, we hang out and I love him

to bits. If you were a footballer who would you be? If I was a footballer who would I, which football team do you support? Man U. Oh okay. i'm from manchester okay well i'd like to think that i'd be eric cantona but i would actually be gary neville that's all right we'll take that we love gas yeah absolutely i'd still be i'd still be in a treble winning team tenacious but i have aspirations to be eric cantona but actually i would be gary neville i have to talk about um the i met eric cantona at soccer aid um yeah and i guess i have you to thank for that really because you start you started soccer aid um but eric cantona was there he is the coolest guy in the world he said do you want to have a drink and

I didn't want to have a drink I was actually really really tired but I was like Eric Cantona's asking me if I want to have a drink I didn't actually realize I was like eight weeks pregnant at the time and so I had that bloody glass of wine and I sat with him and and kind of said nothing particularly interesting and maybe tried to talk about when he used to play but he was so so kind of philosophical even though we were really I mean I really wished I could have spoken French then but yes he was amazing so but can we talk about Soccer Aid a little bit because I think it's um yeah I've been I've been a part of it um for a good few years since I've been working with UNICEF and it's such an occasion and it's it's such an event and it's I mean it

raises so much money and what you've been with UNICEF what for 20 years now yeah and I think you're actually one of the reasons why I kind of chose it you you brought it to my attention when I was a younger person UNICEF the charity with all the work that you did but Soccer Aid became your baby didn't it? Soccer Aid did become my baby and the reason why I joined UNICEF and I've remained an ambassador ever since is because of Ian Jury you know Ian Jury and the Blockheads yeah yeah and my I'm a massive like my lyrical inspiration is Ian Jury and I love the Barkheads and my makeup artist who's still my makeup artist today was Ian Jury's makeup artist and he asked her and she asked me and I became a UNICEF ambassador went out and did all the trips and stuff and one day with a friend of mine, Johnny Wilkes, came up with an idea for the Soccer Aid match.

And it just took off. You know, I was just expecting it to be a one-off. And then it was like, oh, and now we're going to do it every two years. And now we do it every one year. And it's raised 47 million. It's an unbelievable few days and and you know it's like nobody kind of sticks out as being an arsehole either because it's very rare that there's like the one person where you kind of like that guy over there because everybody feels so incredibly lucky and privileged

to be part of the event so what's it like living in la with an american woman does she know about oat cakes yeah she does know about oat cakes she's very um she's very european she's a francophile she's in love with france she speaks french she speaks italian she's got a very british sense of humor she's very naughty she swears like a trooper fantastic she's not american with her sensibilities i mean she does lose women every now and again she she also doesn't know that bollocks and pissing it down are not words that you can say on british television and and how did you two meet it was a blind date oh what did you two meet? It was a blind date. Oh, what did you eat? Do you remember? Oh, we didn't eat anything.

I just had a delivery from my drugs dealer and I wasn't peckish. So, I mean, long and the short of it is she came over to the house. I just, I was three weeks out of going to rehab. I was in a very very bad way and uh and then she arrived and like i think i i freaked her out she she'd had red wine now my wife when she has red wine is sort of like um ballsy new york jew she's she's jewish by the way is she yeah yeah she's jewish i knew it could have been me

yeah she's on that she's like there's like she's on the lady petrol there's either the white wine ida or the red wine ida and like um red wine ida is kind of where you know it's a kind of she's like joan rivers basically amazing great she's she's comedic she is a comedian that's how she started she does she did comedic acting and did stand-up and all of that business so she arrives and she's all sort of like ballsy and i arrive and i'm all sorts of like uh 1990 warehouse rave in blackburn yeah and they kind of sort of we just went uh and she'd just come from this party and i thought to myself i'm going to take her to this party and drop her off and um and then leave but while i was in the car she made me laugh and i thought i'll go in the party with her and i went into the party with her and we were in the car, she made me laugh. And I thought, I'll go in the party with her. And I went into the party with her.

And we were in the corner of the room looking at the party within the first five minutes of being there. And we looked at the room and then we looked at each other and this moment happened. And the universe just went, you've known this person many, many, many lives. You are understood and you are safe basically without a coin of phrase she's the one she's the one he's the one do this do this thing now wonderful well yeah but we didn't we didn't mention that to each other for two years when I was talking to somebody about how we met and she was like oh my god you felt that too and I was like yeah I I felt that too she said I didn't

want to mention it because I I didn't want to appear strange but that was an actual moment right and I said yeah and uh they said we've been married, we've been together for 15 years. We've got four kids. She is so smart, so funny, so right all of the time. And she makes me feel safe. And she is the reason I have become the person that i am now i want to marry her i'm gonna cry actually yeah i know yeah but here's the thing every time i talk about her i want to cry do you oh yeah i genuinely do you love her that much yeah here are my temples

every time if i'm like in an interview or if i'm talking about my wife to other guys or something happens right here in my temples where i'm like i'm gonna cry which is um which is a really it's a really special thing to have in in a very very turbulent unsafe world our sort of mini tribe you know there's that saying that people say that nothing outside can affect you when inside is uh safe i didn't know that one but and that's how i feel i've not heard that i i just paraphrased too that that's not the exact words, but that's exactly how I feel. It's like nothing out there can hurt me when I am with her. Oh, man.

She sounds like your fairy, your fairy godmother. She sounds perfect. Yeah. I mean, we wind each other up. You know, when people talk about, you know, we have our ups and downs, we actually don't have our ups and downs in the same sort of way that people talk about. She can annoy the fuck out of me. And I know, sorry, excuse my language. And I know that...

Don't excuse yourself. Okay, thank you. And I know that I annoy the fuck out of her too. But I tell you what, it's sickening. We are so good at when there's a problem. We know that within half an hour, 35 minutes, we'll talk through it and we'll be closer than we were before. And we'll be holding hands and watching the television and everything will be forgotten. And it doesn't make those moments less uncomfortable

trying to get to that place where you're comfortable again. But somehow every time we do, we manage it. I'm in so much like with her. I think there's nothing you can do about love. Love kind of happens to you. Like is a different thing completely and i i'm heavily in like with my wife that's so lovely i want to know you had a baby this year yes yeah bow so how's that been that's the fourth yeah and a lockdown baby and uh when when was Bo born? Bo was born nine months ago when was Bo born was it

February or March January February March listen I've got this this is the thing. Is that what happens on the fourth Robin? No I'm gonna get all the children's birthdates tattooed right. So you remember? Yeah because I I forget absolutely everything i don't know my wife's birthday there's so much i don't know and it just it won't go in it will not go in i was at the opticians and i took the two older kids to the opticians and they were like um hey mr williams how uh what's charlton's birthday and what's theodora's birthday and i went do you mind if they just go out of the room a second? Because I didn't want to say in front of them, I don't know.

Oh, bless. That's terrible. No, it is terrible. Okay. Beau wasn't born on the 14th of February. That's Valentine's Day. I was born on the 13th of February. Anyway.

I know it's awful, but it's really not my fault. I am dyslexic, numerically dyslexic. Oh, right. Which means I'm talking bollocks. Can you remember what you used to eat when you were younger? Can you remember that kind of stuff? So what was it like in Stoke-on-Trent? Your dad had a pub, didn't he?

Yeah, my mum and dad had a pub. So were you eating in the pub or was there food? My dad actually won New Faces in 1974. I bet I saw him. What's New Faces? It's like Britain's Got Talent. What was his talent? He's a comedian.

Okay. Your dad's a comedian? He won his round. Yeah. And then went to the final, lost in the final. But my dad's a comedian my mom and dad were together they had a pub called the red lion they split up and then my dad went and ran port vale social club so he had his own he had his own pub in the ground did you live with your mom or

your dad i lived with my mom but there was loads of oat cakes. Do you know about oat cakes? Yes. How do you know about oat cakes? Because we had a mother's help called Louise and she came from Stoke and she used to go home and bring them back and we used to have them with cheese. Yeah. Did you like them? They were gorgeous. They were like the best pancakes you could eat. They were just fabulous. Yeah.

Now, see, I want take robbie's own pancakes oat cakes and send them to the world you should do i am i'm going to do my own oat cakes so oat cakes is a stoke-on-trent delicacy and if i could explain it to you it is like a pancake, but not sweet. It's a savoury pancake, basically, but the texture of it is very spongy and light and gorgeous. Gorgeous. And you sort of wrap it up with cheese and onion and sausage and bacon or beans or egg or whatever you like. And they're absolutely incredible incredible do your kids like them

oh the kids absolutely love them too it's hard to get hold of now aren't they yeah they are they are hard you can't get them outside stoke-on-trent really can you that's why robbie's going to bring them to the world i'm about to rectify that so but robbie i want know, what was your mum making? Was she a good cook? And were you a fussy eater or did you love the grub then? No, I would eat whatever. In fact, the only thing that I don't eat are olives and capers. Okay, why? And that's about it. You just don't like them?

I just don't like them. And, like, people will say, oh, well, you like these olives. And like an idiot, I go, okay, then maybe I will. And then I'm like, no, no, I just hate olives. And I hate that olive that you've just tried to make me eat. What's your favorite sort of food? Well, my go-to, it's always like takeaway food, right? Are you the same with with food i mean

ollie i cook a lot so if you if you win if if we weren't in lockdown i definitely would have forced you to come to my house and eat chicken soup and matzo balls i would i would absolutely love that that would that's a date by the way we'll do that definitely darling i'll definitely make it for you i i eat incredibly healthily and i'm a big believer in fitness and well-being but my go-to if i was going to splash the calories out would be a sweet and sour chicken with special fried rice. And then I would have a balty, lamb balty. Right. Love lamb balty. Lamb balty done properly.

Because here's what you guys don't know, right? You guys don't know that you don't have a decent curry house down south. Well, you certainly don't have one in Los Angeles, do you, Rob? Shite. No, actually. No, no, they are shite. They are shite in Los Angeles, do you, Rob? Shite. No, actually. No, no, they are shite. They are shite in Los Angeles. Dreadful.

But a northern curry is probably the best curry on the planet. And that would be lamb balti. And then these nams the size of, I don't know. Your head. Shallows. Yeah, just huge nam breads like this is way too much but i'll take some home and then we'll eat it during the week so um yeah those two things lamb bolty and uh sweet and sour chicken what about you guys what's your i i don't discriminate i'll eat anything um and i'll eat lots of it i can't

i can't stop i love it i'm like a dog i'll just keep going but my mum is a great cook and so when mum does her jewish food it's like it's brilliant and i love it and it's reassuring um but i don't know i i mean i'll eat anything i want to know though is that is that your kind of would that be your main for we ask every guest what their desert Island meal would be or their last supper, whatever you want to call it. Would that be your main, the bolty and the sweet and sour chicken?

Okay. Are we having a desert? Okay. Yeah. Scarta main pudding, drink of choice. Okay. So I would go for fried calamari.

Which dip? Lovely. Well, I would have two bowls of calamari, one with balsamic vinegar, which I could have with shredded wheat. Really? Oh, my God. I've never heard that.

I've never tried this. I'm addicted to balsamic vinegar. And, like, it's a problem. I would have Weetabix and balsamic vinegar if I could. it's it's a problem i would have wheat a bit some balsamic vinegar if i could uh and then i would have another dip of a thousand island dressing wow okay sophisticated no but it's a bit left field i mean for a calamari i would have thought you'd go aioli or tata so i like this oh okay yeah have another bowl oh yeah but have you had perenese mayonnaise? What, from Nando's? From Nando's, yeah.

Yeah, it's fucking great. Yes, there you go. Well, you know, I could lie to you and tell you that my favourite food is like Gordon Bleu, but it's not. It's like when I go for it, I want chemical crap. So, okay, so that's your starter and then the main. Okay, the main would have to be the sweet and sour chicken with the special fried rice fine but like balti would be on the substitute

bench but you can have the balti too just have it as a little side okay thank you i'll have the balti too and then drink of choice okay so i haven't had any alcohol for 20 years. Chiggity check that out. Congratulations. My drink of choice, as I'm saying all of these things and I'm saying them publicly, I'm like going, hey, I'm really uncultured. So here's my drink of choice, Coke Zero. Come on.

I really like it too. It's great. It hits the spot without the sugar i think it's actually better than real coke yeah i can see you've got a lot in common with donald trump oh my god what he likes coke zero yeah he drinks coca-cola all the time let me tell you though guys yeah i eat very very healthily all the time apart from one meal a week. Is that how you do it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's what footballers do, though, don't they?

They have one naughty day. Maybe, maybe. I think they call it a cheat day. But like today, for example, I got up, I walked 10 miles before lunch, and then I had a vegan moussaka. Why vegan? Are you vegan at the moment? Oh, yeah, I've got to tell you.

I've got to tell you. So I was eating fish twice a day. I had my bloods done last week. High mercury. And I've got the highest mercury poisoning the doctor has ever seen. Oh, my God. Oh, my God, Robbie.

What sort of fish were you eating? I was just eating octopus, squid, but tuna every night. Tuna would be my snack meal. So I'd have in the fridge just tuna and pickled onions. Combo Unico. And I'd have that every night. Anyway, so here's the thing now. I am now plant-based. so i'm a plant-based person

and i have been for the last five days apart from when you had that chocolate today but i'm not do you think you'll be able to keep it up are you vegan vegan so you're not having eggs or anything i'm plant i'm plant-based the distinction between vegan is sort of like, the difference is that people are doing it for moral issues, which I'm also with too. I'm sort of like, I feel guilty if I do and when I do eat meat. But I'm doing it for health reasons. So is the chocolate vegan today? No, it wouldn't have been. No, you're right.

It's fine. But I wasn't myself when I woke up out of my sleepy stupor. And how does that work with like the four kids? Do you all eat together? Are you all having the vegan moussaka? Because I know what a bugger my children are with food at the moment with like everything either has to be beige or separated. So like do you as a family eat together and do you kind of all get stuck into the same stuff? Yeah, we do eat together.

get stuck into the same stuff yeah we do eat together i would say that mommy and daddy's food is slightly more restrictive than the food that the kids have not saying that you know that but the kids eat way healthier than i ever did and that's how we want to raise them with sort of we want to raise them with the best knowledge of nutrition that we have at this point in our lives. And my mom raised me with the best information of nutrition that she had at that point in her lives. We've moved on since then. We know more things. So the kids eat really healthily and me and mummy eat even more healthily. And are you feeling better doing the plant-based diet? Do you feel good for it?

I do, but I've just fallen asleep at five o'clock in the afternoon. I don't normally fall asleep at five o'clock in the afternoon. And then two nights ago, Ida was trying to talk to me and i was just she was trying to ask me like christmas presents what should we get this person i was saying please stop ask question i cannot answer you lack of energy darling like absolute but i'm taking iron in the morning um short answer is i will feel on top of the world i feel really good anyway you know i feel very happy very content so if i get rid of this mercury you look absolutely gorgeous if you don't mind me saying thanks darling you he looks you look so handsome

you don't look a day older than when you were in Take That. I think you look lovely. Better, probably. God bless you. Thank you very much. I really, really appreciate that. But I want to know, did you get your mercury tested because you went kind of neon and you started flashing or something? No, I got my mercury tested because my wife's neurotic. Oh, OK.

And she does all sorts of tests all sorts of times and it's very interesting statistic that i may be making up on the spot but i don't think so married men stay alive longer than single yeah i'm sure that's true that is because their wives badger them to be well and so it is with my wife like she wanted me to get these bloods done and i was like oh whatever okay and so many of the things that ida does and i do i'm just going she wants me to do it so i'll do it anyway thank god because i could have dropped dead of mercury and arsenic poisoning i want to know we haven't got your last pudding and i want to know more about growing up in stoke-on-trent and what was on the dinner table okay so there was one

special dish that my mum used to do and it was it was how i felt love because like food is love and which can also become part of the addictive nature of feeding our feelings you know and it won't sound very special to you but when i was growing up it was really special to me so she'd get a can of tuna and she'd get some mayo and some tomato ketchup she'd mix the tuna up and she'd make these tuna mouths but she would butter the toast not on the inside but on the outside and then she would put them in the oven and the butter would then like just melt into the whole thing and for for what whatever that was however that made me feel I just felt in that moment that it was heaven and I was loved I understand that a tuna

milk can do that to you but I'm liking the idea of the ketchup I may try that being in a boy band at such a young age I'm sure you were eating shit because we've had a few of the spice girls on and they were like we literally just eating packets of crisps and pot noodles but i just wanted to know is there any really memorable food moment take that all beyond being you know an international superstar pop star individual um but are there because you you were doing this like when there was loads of money in the industry and they probably spent lots, took you out, wined and dined you. That shit doesn't happen anymore, Robbie.

Oh, yeah, when we were kings. Yeah. Yeah, when we were kings. I was the last of my kind from when we were kings. Anyway, early days of Take That, we used to do this thing called King Nan. And basically, you would get points. So if you had a far, you would get six points. If you had a vindaloo, you get five points. If you have madrash, you get four points. And then it went all the way down to a korma. But you had to finish

your dish, right? And then as the month, the couple months months went on who had the most points then became king nan and what we did was we um we got a nan bread and then we uh put stuff around it and and a chain around it and you wore it at your you wore it at dinner time and and you were king nam and whatever you wanted everybody had to do god are you taking are you actually taking the piss no i'm not taking the piss and is that when you realized that you had to leave the back i haven't spoken about king nam for since at all in public at all that's the first time right And as the words were leaving my lips, I was like, this is mental what I'm saying. But it's true. So what would you command them to do?

I never was King Nam because I couldn't stomach a fowl. He couldn't take his heat. Who was King Nam? It was always Jason or Howard. And basically what they would do is like they would have a far which is hotter than a vindaloo and then if the points were close they'd order another far and eat that dish too how did they all look so ripped and fantastic when they were just eating curry after curry honestly we were dancing we were dancing for seven hours a day.

That's the key, Jess. Oh my God, that is hysterical. Yeah. So then you'd wear this non-gold chain naan bread around your...

Yeah, and what do you do to like stuff to make it not crumble? You varnish it. Yeah, we'd varnish a naan. No, we didn't.

Yeah, we did. This is so weird. Did you frame any of these naan breads no they were never they were never framed but like you had to call the person king nan as well when you talked to them who thought of this game we we all came up with it combined you know but it was it's a bit like lord of the flies isn't it um i want to know yeah your pudding your pudding. Your pudding for your last meal. Okay, there's a red velvet cake from Los Angeles. Red velvet cake.

At a particular place? Yeah, but sprinkles. Oh my God, they are really good. Have you lived in Los Angeles, Jessie? No, but I've done sessions there and I play gigs there. And I remembered somebody for my birthday I don't even know if it was my birthday like LA people really like to bring cakes to places like they really love that I've realized yeah and there's this sprinkles cake that has um

it was like before everyone was doing but it became like the confetti not the confetti like the you know um all the hundreds thousands they'd be all in the cake so it would look kind of like sprinkles i guess they're called sprinkles darling okay right well yeah and i remembered it celebration cake yes that's it called celebration cake yeah i guess maybe they were celebrating me arriving into los angeles but i used to always get one of them and it was always from sprinkles and it was delicious robbie williams do you have good table manners no I don't have good table manners I eat like a viking I suppose that's how if I could get rid of knife and forks and just attack it with my fingers I would um something takes over me.

I'm always the, my side of the table's always, always the dirtiest. And sometimes I'll be in company where that could be embarrassing, and it quite often is. But I'm very, very northern working class, and it's about getting it off that plate and into my stomach as quickly as possible by any means necessary. I understand that. Get it down. Yeah.

Are you going to be at home for Thanksgiving? No, I'm not. And I just spoke to Theodora, my oldest, who's eight. And she was like, Daddy, I just realized you'reodora my oldest who's eight and she was like daddy I just realized you're not going to be here for Thanksgiving what about Christmas though oh Christmas we're all over that we love Christmas what do you do we my wife just makes me love Christmas I couldn't be asked about Christmas it wasn't my favorite time and then Ida came into my life and she is the spirit of Christmas and now it's our favorite time of the year we absolutely adore it and once Ida got we got married and she got her feet under the table and she just started

to like go all out with the Christmas decorations we used to live on this gated community in beverly hills and i came back one day and she'd had the house decorated i swear you could see our house from the space station there was just like 15 nodding santas 20 bowing deers, elves, just honestly, it was like, I just thought about the electricity bill because when I was growing up, you still have to put 50 pence into a meter to keep the electricity going. Anyway, with Ida, she's made me have Christmas. And the problem is with my wife is she's very, very, very thoughtful. And she takes a lot of time and energy and patience thinking about presents for everybody and for me. The problem is this. I'm the diametric opposite of my wife.

wife. How I show my love is through touch and cuddles and all the way through the day, I will tell her how much I love her, how much I adore her, how beautiful she looks. And I genuinely mean it. I just, I love looking at my wife. I, you know, if I'm not beguiled with how beautiful she is, I'm looking at how interesting she is and how, you know, like, what's her face doing today? Anyway, that's the language of my love. But you're shit at buying presents. Darling, that doesn't make up for a nice present, though. I know, I get that. I'm not stingy in any way.

No, I'm sure you're not. It's just not in my makeup to be bothered. Do you want us to help you? Well, the problem is she likes je then that's easy yeah it is it is diamonds i can't go wrong yeah yeah i mean i started off doing the romantic stuff like i sent somebody to go and sketch her grandma's flat in Paris. Wow. That's a good one, right? That was fabulous.

Yeah, so I sent somebody to outside of grandma's flat to sketch it and then send it to us. And then I'd create, I do art. So I've made art for Ida. And then after a while, you're just kind of like, oh, I've got to do it again it again haven't i but then there's the like the day that we met in january uh the the the anniversary uh the christmas the thanksgiving the halloween the there's all of these things and i i'm speaking as a man i'm sure there'll be men listening to this will go

i get you and i understand you if my birthday falls on a tuesday it's a tuesday and if nobody says happy birthday to me i am not bothered if my wife's birthday falls on a tuesday and she doesn't become King Nam for the day, there's a problem. King Nam. Robbie. That's what you could get her, a Nam bread. Play King Nam with your kids.

Maybe you should bring it back. Just start. Maybe I will bring King Nam back. Maybe that will be everyone's Christmas game. After they've listened to this, everyone needs to send them pictures if they've played King Nant with their mates. Robbie Williams, thank you so much

for letting us into your life for an hour. It's been such a pleasure. You've kind of not held back. We love you. It's been amazing. And thank you. And I hope that, you know, I hope I get to meet you at a Soccer Aid gig

or you come around for chicken soup. Oh, well, bless you. Bless you both. Thank you so much for the love. I genuinely, genuinely really love it that you've been so kind and thoughtful, generous with your time, but generous of spirit when it's been come to tell me that you think I'm a nice person and I've spent time in your life before. Oh, many in my dreams knowing my dreams a lot to me yeah all the time yeah we we love you we love you oh thank you yeah you permeated our lives yeah bless you both hey listen why don't we we'll all hang out me uh me you too and the wife really really lovely love to I just remember why I loved him so much.

He's got this warmth and generosity. And he is a real star. You just, it's undeniable the way he's got so much charisma. I'm swooning. Oh yeah, I could see that, mum. I can get a bloody wedding. You and Rob having a good old chat. Hello, Rob.

Yeah, Rob. Come to my house, Rob. I remember why I loved Robbie Williams so much when I was younger. I still do, I think. He's reignited the bloody fame. The fame is eternal, Robbie Williams. I thought he was terrific. He was great fun.

I don't think he took himself seriously. He was just so lovely. I absolutely loved my Friday night being spent chatting to Robbie Williams about Sweet and Sour and King Narn. Maybe you could have directed him to Two Star, Jess. Oh, Two Star. Shout out Two Star and Peckham and Nunhead. I bet you could get a good bloody Lambolty there. Oof.

Anyway, Robbie Williams, love you. Just love you. And I reckon everyone's going to love him on this. And his single is out now. Can't wait for Christmas. Thank you for listening. Happy Christmas. It's coming up to Christmas.

Happy Christmas. We're going to be back next week for some Christmas nibbles with some friends Table Manners is produced by Alice Williams.