Robbie Williams broke the hearts of fans and bandmates when he left Take That 27 years ago.
Known as the joker of the band, Robbie was just 16 years old when he joined the fivesome alongside Gary Barlow, Mark Owen, Howard Donald and Jason Orange. The group went on to have immense success with 12 singles reaching number one and eight BRIT Awards to their name.
Tonight, the remaining Take That members - Gary, Howard and Mark - are performing tracks from their new album, This Life, at the BBC Radio Theatre in London. Here, we take a look back at the brutal moment the original group split back in 1995, when teenage Robbie was kicked out.
A documentary in 2005, titled For The Record, revealed the inner struggles of Take That's initial chart domination, with Robbie said to have felt increasingly frustrated with his role within the band. He felt his musical ideas - he favoured rap and hip hop rather than pure pop - were being dismissed by Take That's then manager, Nigel Martin Smith. Gary admitted his bandmate became despondent and stopped offering his thoughts on their new music and simply "did what he was told".
Robbie also later admitted he had told his bandmates that their upcoming tour would be his last. He explained on BBC Radio 4: "I said to the boys, 'This will be my last tour.' We went for a curry the night before everything happened and we were taking a competition winner for a curry. It mustn't have been a very nice evening for them. I went back to the hotel and got drunk again, got up the next day, went into rehearsals and I wasn't in a very good way."
Following his trip to Glastonbury and missed rehearsals, the rest of the band were incensed and when he finally returned to work, they told him exactly what they thought. If he wasn't prepared to commit to what they were trying to achieve, he had to go. Jason was tasked with telling Robbie he was no longer needed as the Take That boys prepared for another huge tour.
Robbie said: "During the afternoon, Jason Orange said, 'Bob, we need to sit you down and have a chat. So you're going to leave after this tour and what we've decided is, we think it's best you go now, so we can prove we can do this as a four-piece. What do you think?' That was the opening of the door. That's all I needed."
And it wasn't just Take That fans who were devastated by Robbie's departure - his bandmates were also heartbroken. Mark later admitted the last time he'd cried had been when Robbie left the band. In shock at being out of Take That, Robbie was driven back to Stoke-on-Trent in tears. It later emerged that by that point the singer was already in the grips of alcoholism.
He later admitted: "I was a pathetic, pitiful creature. The first thing I would do in the morning would be to empty the bottle of wine that I had fallen asleep over two hours earlier. I'd have taken a line of coke because I couldn't get up without it." And without the structure of work to keep him on the straight and narrow, Robbie started to party even harder.
He was gaining weight and was furious about how he had been treated by his former bandmates. Robbie, then 21, branded Gary a 'clueless w**ker' and said the group, "had all the creativity of mentally unstable morons". "I hated our music and in the end I also hated myself," he raged. But for Gary, things couldn't have looked more different. He had worked out and got into shape and when Take That split a few years later, he launched his solo career.
He accused Robbie of being jealous of his £6.5million fortune earned from his songwriting royalties. "I do wonder if that's the source of his feelings because I probably made six times more than they did," he sniped before his debut single Forever Love rode in at number one. But everything changed in a heartbeat with Robbie's breakthrough song Angels.
The 1997 hit was a runaway success and catapulted Robbie to a whole new league of fame. He won three BRIT Awards and sold six million records while Gary was forced to cancel a show at Glasgow's Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre because of ticketing issues. And when Gary's second album, Stronger, limped into the charts at number 35 he got dropped by his record label and relegated to the proverbial scrap heap.
Madame Tussauds even melted his waxwork down. He couldn't understand how Robbie had got to where he had, lamenting the fact his nemesis had shown zero interest in writing, preferring to 'pick his nose' in the corner. And he knew Robbie would be loving it. "I can imagine the chat they'll be having in Robbie-land tonight," he said at the time. "The cheers, wolf whistles and belly laughs. There's no question now, mate, you're the winner, hands down.”
For Robbie, his success was like a red rag to a bull. And when friends warned him not to throw it all away amid his spiralling battle with drink and drugs, he sniped: "Throw it all away? And see that fat **** Barlow dance on my grave? No way." Despite his fame, he continued to criticise Gary and Take That at every opportunity, admitting: "My problem has always been with Gary. It was always with Gary. I wanted to crush him. I wanted to crush the memory of the band - and I didn't let go. You know, even when he was down, I didn't let go."
And Gary was crushed. Retreating to his Cheshire mansion, he disappeared from the public eye to write songs for others. Then, once again the tables tipped in 2006 when Take That reunited to critical acclaim as Robbie's career was on the slide. It would be four years before he would rejoin the group for their Progress album and tour and lay their ghosts to rest for good.
Then in 2011, he left again to return to his solo career - although the split was amicable. In 2014, Jason announced that he would be leaving the group as he no longer wanted to record or perform music. Since then, Take That has performed as a trio. Following the Coronation Concert earlier this year, the iconic boy band revealed they were 'back for good'. Sharing a clip of their performance on social media, they wrote: "It was incredible to perform live together again for the first time in four years and there is so much more to come. We're back for good."
- Take That: Radio 2 In Concert airs on BBC Two at 9.30pm tonight.