|  | | | | |  Robbie Williams..... THIS IS YOUR LIFE !
 | | |
As a tribute to the great man from his home-town website, and as our humble present on his 30th birthday, we now present the story of Robbie's LifeIn Pictures - with some very strange photos indeed..!
We here in Staffordshire are pretty well placed to illustrate the places that featured large in Robbie's life ...but we didn't think we could persuade the Robster himself to accompany us around the Staffordshire places of his childhood.
So, what did we do?
Well, big-time fan Sarah lent us her Robbie Doll (she bought it when she was just a kid, she says .... yeah, right!); and off we went around the area with our camera, our Robbie-Doll and, er, Robbie-Doll's friends.
We hope you enjoy the ride too.
To start at the Beginning
Lovely Jan (Robbie's Mum) decides nine months is long enough to be carrying Rob around - so she gives birth to him at the North Staffordshire maternity hospital, in Newcastle-under-Lyme.
So baby Robbie shows his first talent - for escapology(!).
Meanwhile, Jan wonders if she can do this four more times. Then she'd have enough for a boy band....
Infanthood
For a while Jan and Pete, Robbie's parents, ran the Red Lion pub in Burslem -- not far from the "Wembley of the North", Vale Park, home of Port Vale football club.
Robbie learnt about life in a bar at the Red Lion pub - until his parents divorced when he was 3 years old.
Rob and older sister Sally grew up in the shadow of Vale Park, so is it any wonder that Rob became a Valiant?
Nursery School
Was Robbie one of the little "angels" at Stanfield Nursery school (aka Dolly Lane Infant School)?
We can pretend....
Junior School
At Mill Hill Primary, just down the road from his home, our Robbie starts to dream of playing for the Vale.
We fancy the boy Robbie would have said: "...Knebworth? I'd rather play Wembley!"
Stage struck
Robbie begins to find a talent for acting and singing.
In his early teens, he starts appearing on stage: at the Queen's Theatre in Burslem, he was chief kid in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" and also appeared in The Pickwick Papers and more.
Most everyone in the Potteries claims to have appeared on stage with Rob! Even BBC Radio Stoke's Janine Machin says she was also in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - but we believe her.
St Margaret Ward Secondary School
By now Robbie is living with mum and sis in a new house - in the next town, Tunstall - and he had moved on to a new, secondary, school.
In Robbie's days, the school wasn't called St Margaret Ward, but "Blessed William Southern School".
But, here's a question - who were St Margaret Ward and/or Blessed William?
Vale vale vale
Robbie's house in Greenbank Rd is only a walk away from Vale Park along the so-called Greenway.
Even closer (well next door, actually) to the house is Tunstall Park.
The boy who wants to play on the Vale's left wing hones his skills here.
A Life in Music
Robbie wasn't nuts over music at this time, but even so, did work experience as the Saturday boy for Signal Radio, the local commercial radio station based in Stoke.
He didn't stay long - we guess he wasn't happy being the "wrong" side of the microphone!
Look at the licks....
Rob wasn't yer best ever school pupil (even if he did have a strong reply later to one of the more, er, critical teachers. You know the song).
So, hanging out in Tunstall town was one option. His had his hair cut at "Patricia's" in the town. Patricia McNair was friends with his mum Jan, and Robbie used to play with her son Jamie.
Move on up
The big break-through came with the musicals company, the North Staffordshire Amateur Operatic Society, for whom he'd already appeared a few times.
Rob was selected for one of the child leads in Oliver!, at a much bigger theatre this time - the Theatre Royal in Hanley (now Jumpin' Jaks nightclub).
Not surprisingly, the little scamp was given the role of the "Artful Dodger".
Our guess is, that for a boy from the back-end of Tunstall , it opened up a new, dazzling world.
Take a bit of that!
It seems strange to realise it now, but Jan had to give Robbie a shove to make him apply for the auditions for "a new boy band being formed" in Manchester.
Just a couple of months after he'd left school came through the news - he was in! At 16, he was by far the youngest member of the outfit.
Is it possible he celebrated with a visit to the pub across the road from his house?
Life through a lens
Within two years, the band were riding high.
It didn't take long for some for the fans, who came from all over the world, to find Greenbank Road, and to camp out outside the house waiting for the Robster to appear.
Sing while you're ....
Robbie (and Jan) took a while before they left Tunstall.
After all, Rob's grandmother ("Nan") lived not so far away at Newfield St; and Rob still liked to go do karaoke at the local pubs - including the Sneyd Arms in Tower Square.
His favourite karaoke song, it's reported was Mack The Knife, made a hit by both Louis Armstrong and Bobby Darin.
S.sing while you're ....
By now, Take That are conquering the world.
Sarah says she went to the GMEX in Manchester when she was just a kid, and she swears Robbie flashed his bum at the concert - but some people we've talked to say it was just his underpants.
Maybe she was watching the Do What U Like video a bit too much.
South of the (Cheshire) border
The fans are starting to get a bit too much for Jan at Greenbank Road, so she sold up the family home there, and moved to Newcastle under Lyme.
One house that Rob bought was in Betley village (on the Nantwich Road, on the Staffordshire & Cheshire border) - a really enormous place that has a lake and plenty of room to drive his favourite Ferrari.
This luxury home, Old Wood, had a sale price of £975,000 with 24 acres of land including landscaped gardens and woods. Party time!
But, he also makes the break from North Staffordshire (and from Take That); when he sets up one of the great bachelor pads of all time - in Notting Hill in London - with his mate Jonathan Wilkes, who is the son of one of Jan's friends.
Silent in Stoke
Robbie still came back ocasionally of course. It's rumoured he even brought Nicole Appleton to have a good look round his home town.
And, coz it's a neat little place, he even brought some tracks to one Stoke music studios, Silence in Trentham, where he and the engineer John Aldersea worked on getting Rob's first solo album right (though not, surely, in, er, silence?).
Goodbye to all that Take That
And then, guess what, along comes Angels - the supreme song making Robbie what he is today.
After all that "stuff" with Take That behind him, Robbie is not only a free man, but top of the tree.
Goodbye to small venues too. He plays Glastonbury and in 2003 sells out Knebworth in record time.
Suddenly the Manchester GMEX, the biggest venue near to North Staffs that Robbie has played, seems a long way behind.... and a he's a bit too big for Tunstall Park now, isn't he?
The new millennium
Now, the man lives in Los Angeles - and we wish him the best of luck.
He still gives money to good causes in Staffordshire through his Give It Sum charity, so in fact we still have some connection with Rob here in this area.
And if you see some guy with shades hanging about wistfully near to Vale Park on a Saturday - well, you never know, it could be him. Couldn't it?
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites | | |
| | |
|
