Robbie Williams to perform his smallest ticketed gig to wrap up summer tour
By Lauren Del Fabbro, PA Entertainment Reporter
Pop star Robbie Williams has announced he will perform his smallest ticketed gig to close off his summer tour.
The new concert date will see the 51-year-old singer behind the number one songs Rock DJ, Candy and Millennium, perform for an audience of 500 people at a venue in London before the release of his new album Britpop.
The concert will be held at Dingwalls in Camden on October 9th, the day before his new album is set to release.
Speaking at an event in central London, Williams said: “I am really, really ambitious still and I have a burning desire to be quite good at what I do, which is lucky because people pay good money to come and see me.
“I mean what I’m doing. I am full of purpose. Like I said I have a burning desire to not let me down and not let them down and by the applause at the end of each show it feels like I’m not. So that’s good, and they might come back.
“I am going back to the start… I’m going to do Life Thru A Lens in its entirety, my first album, and then I’m going to play the whole of my new album too.
“So it’s lulling them into a false sense of security. And then I can do the bit for me – it’s not for them, it’s for me.”
The concert will end his UK and European tour, Britpop, which began in May in support of his upcoming album due to be released on October 10.
Speaking about the new album, he added: “I’ve kind of been musically a bit aimless for a little while, because I haven’t known really what to do. I chased yesterday an awful lot.
“Fortunately for me, I was in the pocket for so long, and my rise was so long, and then when commercial radio or whatever stops playing you, and you think, ‘Oh shit, what was it that I did?’
“I’ve just spent the last 15 years looking backwards. And I just think with this album, if I am going to move backwards, I might as well just clear the decks, go back to the start and head off from there.”
Alongside a determination to be creative every day, Williams added that he has additional entrepreneurial ambitions.
He said: “I want to build hotels and I want to create a university of entertainment. I want the entertainment industry to be somebody’s plan A and plan B.
“When you go to your parents, you say, I want to be a singer or I want to be a dancer. I want to be an actor. I want to go into the entertainment industry. You better have a plan B. I want to create the plan B for people too.”
Prior to launching his solo career, Williams was part of the boyband Take That which was behind the hit songs Pray, Everything Changes and Sure.
Last year he released the biopic, Better Man, where he is played by a CGI chimpanzee – a comment on how he feels like a “performing monkey”.
He equalled The Beatles’ record for most number one albums in the UK chart with the soundtrack becoming his 15th record to top the official albums chart.
Other chart-topping albums include I’ve Been Expecting You (1998), Sing When You’re Winning (2000), Escapology (2002), Intensive Care (2005) and Rudebox (2006).