Robbie Williams has hit back at a “bully” podcaster who called him a “redcoat” and a “fraud”.
The pop star was the topic of discussion in one of the episodes of the World Cup Of… podcast recently, and faced harsh criticism from the two hosts.
In a clip shared to Instagram, the two hosts recall how the ‘Angels’ singer initially rose to fame as a member of Take That in the 1990s, before launching a solo career.
“He’s just a fucking Redcoat who queued up to be in Gary Barlow’s band and got lucky,” one host said, with the term “Redcoat” used to described entertainers at British holiday resort, Butlins.
“Robbie Williams? Never been a fan of him,” the host continued, going on to recall his attendance at Glastonbury in 1995, saying he showed up with “bleached blonde hair, knocked about with Liam Gallagher, probably just shared a big bag of fucking gear.”
“He surrounded himself with artists… proper artists,” the other host added, while they also suggested that Williams “nicked their credibility”.
“It was [then] like, ‘Oh, you’re a rockstar?’… you’re not a rockstar, you’re a fraud. You’re not a songwriter. You might have songwriting credits because whoever wrote ‘Angels’ was happy to say that they co-wrote it with you. You were just in the fucking room.”
After coming across the post online, Williams took to social media to respond to the harsh comments aimed at him.
“My algorithm sent me this,” he began. “I went to Glastonbury because people my age went to Glastonbury. I’ve never called myself a rock star. Not once.”
As for being given the label ‘Redcoat’, he added: “I grew up on holiday camps. What’s wrong with being a Redcoat? I know exactly who and what I am. You, however, display a kind of cruelty that doesn’t even recognise itself. Scary. I’m a real Redcoat. You’re a real bully. I know which one I’d rather be.”
Concluding, he offered to show the presenters “one of my houses, so you can see exactly how lucky I’ve been”, and quipped: “I’ll send my plane to pick you up”.
Robbie has spoken about his memorable appearance at Glastonbury 1995 in the past, and recalled back in 2022 the indie snobbery he noticed in the mid-1990s and Britpop era.
“[There was] that school of thought that pop music is a lower art form,” he told NME. “I grew up in a time where that was never more prevalent, that sort of militant indie-ness: them against us. And by them against ‘us’ I mean indie people against pop people.”
He continued: “You know, me turning up at Glastonbury… I’m trying to put it into terms that won’t get me in trouble, but it was like Putin turning up in Westminster.”
Williams also added that partying with Oasis at Glastonbury in 1995, after leaving Take That, felt like the “start of his new life”.
“I started getting ideas about writing my own songs. One thing led to another and I made the cardinal mistake of breaking the rules. They couldn’t contain me anymore,” he recalled.
“I set off with [a] flute full of champagne and a pocket full of cocaine, ready to get insane in the membrane and I went to Glastonbury to begin what I didn’t know was to be the start of my new life.”
One of the photos taken of Robbie at the 1995 edition of Glastonbury was also used as the artwork for the singer’s latest solo album, ‘BRITPOP’.
When he first announced the record last year, Williams said he set out to create the album he wanted to write after leaving Take That in 1995.
“It was the peak of Britpop and a golden age for British Music,” he said. “I’ve worked with some of my heroes on this album… There’s some ‘Brit’ in there and there’s certainly some ‘pop’ too.”
Williams broke The Beatles’ record for the most UK Number One albums with ‘BRITPOP’, with it marking the 16th chart-topper of his solo career.
In a three-star review of ‘BRITPOP’, NME described the album as “a love letter to the ’90s and a bid to live forever”.
“He’s standing firm. Rather than neck a BuzzBall on a Lime Bike and do his take on ‘Brat’, Robbie knows his game and has done a record for himself,” it added. “An album to be remembered for? Probably not, but it’s bold, it’s a laugh, and he’s done it his way. That’s what makes him Robbie. For that alone, he’ll live forever.”