Dear Robbie.
I was not always a Take That fan. Especially in the 90’s when you were a five piece. That was my sister. She loves TT with a passion. When you left them, I respected that and took notice. But I have to be honest here, the thing that really made me prick up my ears was a random dream. I dreamt that you knocked on my door to escape the fans. It was a bizarre dream and ridiculously unreal. But it put you on my radar. I was always attracted to a bad boy and you were that but also vulnerable, an attractive combination. I started to buy your records. I saw you play Milton Keynes Bowl. I liked you.
If I am being totally honest, once Rudebox came out I wasn’t as keen. It wasn’t my style of music. I wondered if I preferred Guy Chambers music. But I still bought your albums. It was not your music that stopped me supporting you. It was a comment you made on Graham Norton about your wife giving birth to Teddy. I found it so disrespectful that I couldn’t support you anymore. I stopped listening to your music. I stopped buying your records. I wiped you from my memory. I labelled you as a tw4t.
I still enjoyed you in 2011 when I saw you come back to Take That and to help my sister out, I took a ticket to see you all at Wembley. Yes, all five of you. I really liked the Take That songs once they had reformed, and that like has grown. I also love Greatest Days musical. I have seen the film and the stage show and think its brilliant. I also have a ticket to see TT next year as they are heading to Milton Keynes and it would be rude not to.
I have dated men like you. Men with addictions. Men with a death wish. (They’re selling razor blades and mirrors in the street – Come Undone). They are not a good long-term prospect and I am glad that my second husband doesn’t fit that description. I think coming out of my first marriage, maybe I had… well not a death wish but a feeling I hadn’t lived. That I had wasted years of my life. So, I had my foot on the accelerator of life and wanted to feel real love in the home that I live in not realising that I was dating inappropriate people.
Watching your documentary, I can see you have grown up. You are Rob not Robbie. You are a happily married man with four lovely kids. (and there was a point in your life, I never saw that happening). This is great to see and I am so glad you are happy. Looking back, I can see the immense pressure you were under and how it affected you. It was unfair of me to judge you when you were so unsupported and didn’t know better and were so young to deal with so much responsibility. We all make mistakes, but most of us don’t have ours blown all over the tabloids.
So, I will once again defend you. I can relate on a level to the hurt and pains you have suffered. I may even go back and listen once more to your back catalogue. Well done Rob. You’re a survivor.
