With a new album, Robbie Williams is happy to be back in the spotlight; but the media should back off from Kate Moss, he tells Brian Boyd
'Here's the thing about cocaine and the people who use it and the people who write about people using it," says Robbie Williams. "I have taken cocaine with . . . media people who have been writing all these stories about Kate Moss. These people - the same ones I have taken cocaine with - have so much power and what they are writing about her . . . it's as if they want to devour her, as if they want her dead. Get off her f**kin' back. What she does in her private life is supposed to be just that - private. She's in rehab now. I've been in rehab and it's not fun."
Williams was talking yesterday at the launch in Berlin of his new album, Intensive Care, and ahead of a sell-out concert at the city's Velodrome arena tomorrow. Having been through the "My Cocaine Hell" himself - with full tabloid coverage - he was seething with anger about what he sees as the gross hypocrisy of certain sectors of the media.
"You accept it to an extent - the coverage - because I'm a public figure" he says. "But it's scary, really scary. I'm here to talk to people about my new album but already today I've been asked who I'm currently sleeping with; I've been asked who is better in bed - English girls, German girls or American girls. And I've been asked if I'm going to be going to Ant McPartlin's (from TV's Ant and Dec) wedding. I mean, come on . . ."
Having sold more than 35 million copies of his albums and become the most successful solo male singer of his generation (in Europe at least), Williams is clearly irritated by the sheer amount of "bonking and boozing" questions he has been asked. For the record, he no longer drinks or takes drugs, he says. And his only worry these days is if his knees will hold up for upcoming mess-around football matches.
Now 31, Williams graduated from the boy band Take That and became a young man behaving very badly indeed for a few years (taking cocaine with journalists - whatever next?) before he began a solo run of dizzying commercial success.
His new album is a surprisingly nostalgic affair. "I went back and listened to all the songs I loved when I was growing up," he says. "When I think about school and hear some of the songs from the 1980s, it breaks my heart, it really does. A song such as The Human League's Louise, which I adore - it's about a man who sees his former girlfriend at a bus stop and realises he still has strong feelings for her. And a lot of the songs on this album are about ex-lovers - one in particular, Spread Your Wings, is about me back in Stoke talking to a former girlfriend. Those songs I heard 15, 20 years ago growing up have so many memories for me and still break me up. I can only hope that the songs on this album will do something similar to people in the future."
It always seemed that the only thing missing for him career-wise was that he never broke the US (where he has lived for the past six years).
"Here's the truth about that," he says. "I've had seven albums out and I've spent a sum total of two months promoting them in the US. I've spent longer than that on promotion in France alone. I haven't tried with the US because I'm not that bothered. Yes, I could go and shake all the hands and I could go to the barbecues thrown by the radio station people. But I don't."
A feature of the new album is the tie-in with the T-Mobile phone service provider whereby people who use the provider (which isn't available in Ireland yet) got to hear the album's first single, Tripping, on their phones even before radio stations received copies.
"It's a big collaboration thing and it's to do with this new musical revolution about hearing music through your phone's headset. It just feels like I'm at the forefront of this new technology. There's loads of stuff going on; you can stream one of my shows live onto your phone now - it's still a bit mind-boggling for me. We didn't have mobile phones when I was growing up."
Drinking coffee and water in alternate gulps and looking relaxed in his urban casual gear, he talks about touring the new album. Suddenly he stands up and does (very passable) impersonations of Mick Jagger, Tina Turner and Freddie Mercury.
"People ask me where I get my stage moves from and I tell them it's a rip-off of how those three move on stage. It works for me!"
This is his first full album without his usual songwriter Guy Chambers. Instead, he's working with Birmingham songwriter Stephen Duffy, one-time leader of The Lilac Time and also a founder-member of Duran Duran.
"There was that thing that I fell out with Guy because he started writing songs for other people, but we're talking now and we will work together again. With Stephen, I really had to reach above myself - he had me playing bass guitar and keyboards and everything. In fact, the first single, Tripping, I wrote on the bass guitar. I really feel I own more of this music and if Tripping gets to Number One it will feel like it will be my first Number One."
Despite reports that he slips on and off the drink and drugs wagon, he says he has never felt better. "For the first time in the 16 years of my career, I can truly say I am really enjoying being a pop star. And that feeling has only been there for the last two years. You know, I'm very lucky. Here I am talking to you, and I'm still just glad that people are turning up to ask me these questions. There are no problems in my life.
"It's as simple as that. The only thing I really worry about is for how long I'll be able to play football."
• Tomorrow night's Robbie Williams concert from Berlin will be screened simultaneously in cinemas and theatres throughout Europe, including the Olympia Theatre, Dublin. Doors open at 5pm; Admission €20. Tel: 01-6793323 1890 925130. Intensive Care is released on October 21st