Robbie Williams at Emirates Stadium: 'a grand scale This Is Your Life'
If the latter was probably one odd step too far, then the rest of it felt like a grand scale This Is Your Life, helmed by a figure the entire stadium had grown up with. He brought Lulu out for a rendition of Take That duet Relight My Fire, surrounded himself with gold dancers for the once-timely Millenium, and serenaded a fan for She's The One. Across two hours, Williams spent approximately half the time chatting to the crowd, bringing up photos of his wife and kids, talking about a family member with dementia, and frequently referencing old moments across his storied career. On paper, it makes no sense as a stadium show; having earned, over 30 years, the sheer force of good will coming at him from the Emirates crowd, somehow it worked.
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Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Daily Mail
Gary Barlow suddenly halts Scarborough concert after spotting something in the crowd
Gary Barlow drew his concert to a sudden halt on Wednesday evening after spotting something in the crowd. The singer, 54, brought his Songbook Tour to TK Maxx presents at Scarborough Open Air Theatre and was just about to sing Take That classic, A Million Love Songs, when someone in the audience surprised him. Gary exclaimed: 'Hang on, stop, stop stop. Stop everyone. What's going on down here at the front? Is that what we think it is?' In the audience attendee Chris Calpin pulled out an engagement ring and popped the question to his partner Kirsty Peake. The sweet moment didn't go unnoticed by Gary who confirmed: 'There we go. He's got the ring there everyone. 'Oh my goodness. I take it it's a yes, right? It's a yes. It's a yes!' he said with the venue erupting into applause. He joked: 'Now listen. It's all about timing. I'd started the bl**** song. This number is dedicated to you both.' Gary kicked off his 41-date run on April 17 with a show in Isle of Man and will conclude the run in Suffolk on June 21. His tour comes following the news that a probe into a raid at his £6 million mansion has been dropped by police. The Take That star's home was targeted by a gang of thieves in April 2024, while he performed with the band on Ant and Dec 's Saturday Night Takeaway. Thames Valley Police have said the case had been filed pending further information and renewed an appeal for witnesses. A source told The Sun that the gang involved in the raid may have fled abroad, saying: 'There's always the fear that the gangs flee the UK after raids, which makes the cops' job even harder.' MailOnline has contacted representatives for Gary Barlow and Thames Valley Police for comment. Gary lives in the property with his wife Dawn, 35, and children Daniel, Emily, and Daisy, however it's unclear if they were at home at the time of the raid. According to The Sun, the thieves waited for nightfall before forcing the mansion's front gate to gain access, while it's still unconfirmed if anything was stolen in the raid. Gary is said to have been unaware of the break in until the following day when the police were informed, with investigators spotted by neighbours photographing the property in the days following. One onlooker told the publication: 'When I drove past I saw officers taking photos of the gates, which had been damaged. 'They were left half open. A few days later the gates had been fixed.' While a second said: 'The police have been round to ask me about what happened, but I wasn't aware of anything. I noticed the gates were flapping open. It's a rather secluded place. It's a warning to us all'.
Daily Mirror
2 days ago
- Daily Mirror
Gary Barlow halts concert midway through song as he spots concert-goer's stunt
Gary Barlow brought his jam-packed Scarborough show to a sudden halt after spotting something in the crowd as he began to sing a classic Take That song Gary Barlow stunned fans by dramatically halting a jam-packed concert in Scarborough. As the audience swayed and sang to his catalogue of huge hits, the Take That man abruptly paused after spotting something in the audience. Gary, 54, had been sitting at the piano and just started a rendition of A Million Love Songs when he told his band to stop. Waving his finger in the air, Gary said: "Hang on, stop, stop stop. Stop everyone." As he gazed down to the crowd he asked: "What's going on down here at the front? Is that what we think it is?" Spotting a man in the crowd holding up a ring, cameras panned onto the audience member, with screams of delight soon following. Gary went on: "There we go. He's got the ring there everyone." Gary's concert-goer, Chris Calpin from York, looked delighted to have caught the singer's attention and continued to ask partner Kirsty Peake if she will be his wife. "Wow," Gary exclaimed as he clapped his microphone before a stunned Kirsty wiped away a tear. "Oh my goodness," the star gasped. "It take it it's a yes, right? It's a yes. It's a yes," he gleefully revealed to the rest of the concert goers who roundly clapped the couple. However, Gary then joked: "Now listen. It's all about timing. I'd started the bloody song." He then told the duo to make a space for themselves and have a dance, telling them "this number is dedicated to you both". As he wished them a happy future and thanked them for attending, he got the hit tune back under way as the audience sang along while the happy couple embraced. The magical moment comes as Gary was continuing his UK tour at Scarborough's Open Air theatre. Will Smith is also due to wow the crowds at the venue later in the summer. Earlier in the year Gary also won the hearts of his crowd as he celebrated the momentous occasion as Liverpool FC won the Premier League. On the day the title was sealed, Gary kicked off the English leg of his Songbook Tour with a bang in Liverpool. The Cheshire-born singer took to the city's Empire Theatre on to perform hits from his three-decade long career, and couldn't help but celebrate the sporting win from his boyhood club. He was greeted by red and white confetti falling onto the crowd as he beamed and proudly displayed the scarf to the crowd. The joyous occasion came despite the star earlier promising not to talk sports during the show. 'We book these tours 15 months in advance or something so there's no way we could have known something like this could happen. But when we played Nafield in 2019, Liverpool had just won the Champions League. So it seems like every time I book a gig in Liverpool, we do really well!" Gary said before the gig.
New Statesman
3 days ago
- New Statesman
Hangovers I have known
Photo by Robert Norbury/Millenium It is now Wednesday, which means I am on Day Three of the hangover from lunch in London on Sunday. On the whole, things are much better than they have been. The nausea is largely gone, as is most of the trembling. The first day, though, was horrendous – as bad as anything I can remember in a life that has had a few belters in its time. The worst one ever was in 2005 in Umbria, when my friend D— came up from Rome with a couple of bottles of grappa which, he assured me, was the good stuff, and not the liquid made from battery acid, fermented twigs and rats' carcasses that gets fobbed off on tourists. To this day, I still feel slightly queasy when I hear the word 'grappa'; even typing it in full makes the stomach lurch. I can certainly never drink it again. As in that case, the excessive drinking last Sunday was the result of meeting up with a friend I hadn't seen in years. It was my old flatmate and partner in crime Razors, with whom I shared the original Hovel in Marylebone. I do not use the term 'partner in crime' entirely facetiously, but I am not going to say any more because that's all the self-incrimination I'm going to be doing for now. Razors, which is not his real name, escaped the clutches of Blighty and moved to Los Angeles, where he has been making lots of money doing something related to films. Occasionally I have asked him to explain to me what it actually is, but my heart is never in it when listening to the answer, and my mind wanders over to the important bit, which is that he earns a lot more money than me – a fact that he, too, is happy to return to. A few years ago family business called him back to the land of his birth, and he offered to buy me lunch at Rules, the venerable and incredibly expensive restaurant in Covent Garden. That was a washout: the night before, I treated myself to a kebab from what had up until then been my favourite gyro place on the Western Road: honestly, they were so good you could actually eat them sober. However, on this occasion, there had been some kind of breakdown in their health and safety regime, and I spent the next day and a half in agony in the bathroom; I was in no fit state to go to the chemist's for some Dioralyte, let alone get on a train to London to eat roast pheasant and spotted dick. So this time I was careful. For a couple of days beforehand, I ate nothing but dry bread and tinned soups, sterilised all my glasses before drinking from them and even took care not to go out in the wet in case I slipped and broke something. Rules was off the menu, though: some bean-counter has decided that you can't sit down for more than two hours at lunch, and two hours is no time at all for a decent meal when you have a lot to catch up on. So in the end he decided on Hawksmoor on Air Street, which we heard does a good Sunday roast, and that was what Razors was craving, because apparently in Los Angeles the only thing they eat is sushi. Quick food review: the roast beef was divine, with a nice smokey flavour, the roasties were acceptable, the gravy wasn't as good as mine but then no one's gravy is, and the Yorkshire Puddings… well, let's just say they need to go back to the drawing board with them. But the barman who made our pre-dinner Martinis knew what he was doing, so much so that we had two each, and this may be said to be where our problems began. By the way, when I said above that we had a lot to catch up on, that's not really the correct phrase. We do not really give a monkey's about what the other person has been up to. We just want to have a laugh, and Razors has a somewhat robust sense of humour that does not always go down terribly well in well-heeled circles in LA. A mutual friend of ours who happens to be female asked me, after our last meeting, how his children were doing (he has two sets, from two marriages). I replied that the question had simply not arisen, on the grounds that a) I didn't care and b) he had not flown several thousand miles across desert, mountain and sea to talk about child-rearing. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe 'The thing is,' he explained, generalising terribly but with perhaps with a grain of truth, 'when women have a conversation, it's about information; when men have a conversation, it's about entertainment.' Well, it was jolly entertaining, and my eldest child, who, along with their siblings, got to see a lot of him on alternate weekends, joined us for a bit, and that was delightful. The evening then got a bit ragged: we went to several pubs in Soho, I think, having large and expensive Islay malts in each one; maybe these, along with the bottle of Malbec each that we had at lunch, and the brandies after it, contributed to my lack of well-being for the next three days. I finally got back to Brighton after midnight. Then I thought it would be a good idea to have a nightcap. It was not a good idea. Since then, I have signed the pledge: not a drop of liquor will pass my lips again. Well, maybe a little one. But not just now. [See also: Thought Experiment 11: The Harmless Torturer] Related
