'I'd broken out of the cult': How Robbie left Take That

Three decades ago, the pop star caused chaos by leaving the UK’s biggest boyband. Mark Beaumont looks at the reasons for the split - from antics with Oasis to hard-drug addiction

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The hair was spiked and crusted with peroxide. The eyes were dark, hooded and glazed by fatigue. The outfit was pure Adidas Lad and he appeared to have a tooth missing. Resembling the delinquent love child of 2D and Murdoc from Gorillaz, the geezer - arguably the pinnacle of the form - looked for all the world like a drug dealer who'd jumped the fence and somehow blagged his way backstage pretending to be Robbie Williams from Take That.

Yet this was indeed the formerly clean-cut, cheeky-grinning boyband heartthrob, snapped relentlessly at that fateful Glastonbury of 1995 by the eager papparazzi - beer bottle in hand, cigarette in gob and either throwing an arm around Noel Gallagher or receiving a smacker from Liam. “Because I’m in the sort of band I’m in, people are looking at me like, “You’re not supposed to be here,’” he told the news cameras, seemingly unaware of the disapproving storm brewing back in the real world, too.

In just a few photos, Williams - by curling his Pilton-encrusted fingernails through the flimsy facade of squeaky-clean boyband perfectionexploded the great pop myth more than any Beatle beard. Within weeks of waggling his backside onstage with Oasis, he was ejected from Take That and the band was set on course for collapse, splitting just seven months after his departure. Yet Robbie’s rebellious departure — 30 years ago today - was more than just a heartbreaker for fans and a huge upheaval for the pop world. It stands today as arguably the ultimate expression of Nineties lad culture and a definitive image of the hedonistic abandon of the age.

For Williams himself, his real-me emancipation had been a long time stewing. “I’d broken out of the cult,” he said in last year’s Boybands Forever documentary. “[Oasis] were the antithesis of Take That and that very much appealed to me ... There were lots of rules and eventually when there’s that many rules, you’re gonna break rules.”