Taken

It is earlier this year. Robbie Williams, Gary Barlow and Mark Owen are in a New York recording studio, tentatively laying down some demos for a new project that could possibly see Take That reuniting as a five piece after nearly twenty years apart. Following a successful morning's work, the band's remaining two members, Jason Orange and Howard Donald, arrive at the studio from London. They shake hands with their old bandmate. Robbie is keen to play them what they've achieved that morning.
"Actually, if it's alright, Rob, I'd just like to relax a bit first and wind down before listening to anything," Jason says, smiling thinly, looking around at the rest of the group. Robbie nods. An innocuous enough statement, but if you'd seen me and Lucy watching the footage last night at the IMAX, you'd have thought we were being faced with a scene so horrific that it threatened to bring up our dinner. Jason, Take That's Minister Without Portfolio, felt so threatened by the return of the uber-talented but uber-volatile Robbie that he kicked his old friend's eager exuberance with steel-toed boots. Robbie seemed to shrink in size. My hands were clutching my jumper, my stomach was tense, my neck so tight that my head had gone off at a weird angle. Lucy was wincing as if in excruciating pain and had reached across to grab my arm in a pincer grip.

We were at the premiere of Look Back, Don't Stare, the new Take That documentary, a 100 minute feature that will be shown in a slightly shortened version on iTV this Saturday. Told through face-to-face interviews with the five band members, the black and white film tells the story of the band's rise, fall and rise again, with particular emphasis on the past 18 months since the idea of Robbie rejoining became a serious possibility. Pretty much anyone with a passing interest in music and celebrity culture would enjoy the film, but for two people whose lives revolved around Take That for far longer than it's cool to admit (i.e. more than six seconds), watching this was an exhausting and intense trip. It was a bit like we'd spent our teens going out with five boys, who we thought about all day every day, who infiltrated our entire lives, who we dreamed about, whose radio interviews we recorded and listened to over, and over, and over again, who we occasionally cried over, for heaven's sake. And now, having not seen them together for nearly two decades, here they were all again, hanging out together. We were seeing how our childhood loves had grown up. And it was fascinating.

Having been five very average teenagers, the five of them have grown into pretty exceptional adults - all around their early forties now, they're articulate, thoughtful, philosophical, scarred, honest, and still very funny. There were many huge waves of laughter that blasted through the cinema last night, as well as gulps of pain when we saw what they'd suffered. And yeah, I know, suffering schmuffering, poor them with their millions, my heart bleeds - but these are five men who have gone from the bottom to the top to the bottom to the top again - a more extreme existence than any of us would surely wish for. Alongside the money and the adulation, there's been addiction, adultery, rejection, failure, agoraphobia and clinical depression. They've suffered public ridicule and private shame, and they've dealt with it all admirably. It was an exceptionally entertaining, humbling and thought-provoking film and I recommend it unreservedly. Maybe not to you, Dad. But I'd be staggered if most normal people didn't find it an extremely gripping and raw account of an extraordinarily turbulent time in the lives of five average British men.

What I found most affecting about the film was a) the lads' palpable closeness, the fact that they feel complete when they're together in a way they didn't before. And b) their awareness that, in spite of this connection, they remain completely on their own. They have the most special and unique of bonds, but that still has not been able to prevent them from spinning out, overloading and breaking down through the years. And, exhibiting a remarkable ability to relate absolutely everything back to myself, their experiences cemented a lot of what I've been thinking and feeling of late. We are always alone. We can love, we can parent, we can succeed, but we are the only people living our lives, we are the only people in the world who know what it's like to be us. We live - and die - on our own. That might sound horribly depressing, but I don't think it has to be. I reckon that those facts must be faced up to and accepted before one can be truly let go of one's crutches and be happy. Last night in therapy, I discussed a void that I feel is within me, a huge metaphorical space that I have had for as long as I can remember - a space that needs to be filled, that craves. And through my life, I've tried to fill it with a variety of things: food, friends, Take That, lovers, jobs, celebrities, clothes and hobbies. But no matter what I've consumed, the space has always remained. And now I'm learning to accept that it's there. I'm not trying to fight it or fill it any more. It's a strange kind of passive respect for reality and we'll see what comes of it.

In the meantime, if you're still awake, you can enjoy the fact that you are spinning around the earth's axis at somewhere between 700 and 1000 miles per hour, depending on your distance from the equator, and that in addition, the earth is moving around the sun at 67,000 miles per hour. We're going at a fair lick. Totes amaze.