The Unlikely Lad: Robbie Williams

THE FIRST TIME I saw Robbie Williams in the flesh was backstage at an Oasis show at Earl’s Court in 1995. At that point the flesh in question was distinctly pudgy: it belonged to a sad, wannabe-bad male groupie growing porky on Pilsner, a boy-band deserter trying to find a new identity by association. "I wanted to be Liam Gallagher," he would later admit. "I’d been in a boy band and he was so cool."