Nobody Someday

Pop star extraordinaire, Robbie Williams, is a walking, living contradiction. He hates performing and yet is fearful lest one person in the audience might feel bored. He wants to be David Bowie, but ends up being Norman Wisdom - "I can't help myself." An ex-alcoholic and drug addict, he's been clean for four years. After a concert, when everyone else is relaxing with a line of coke, or a bottle of Highland malt, he's sipping a cup of rosie and playing Uno with the lads.

Nobody Someday is not like other tour bus docs. For one thing, Robbie's far better value than your average topliner. He talks of girls and booze and being scared and despising celebrity and wanting to do bad things to the paparazzi with refreshing candour. In his spare (that's a joke) time, he's a fanatic soccer player and not entirely useless on the ski slopes.

He's on a European tour, starting in Scandinavia. "I've never enjoyed touring," he confesses. The Swedes are cold. They don't really know him. Copenhagen is different, closer to terrific. In Stuttgart, "a nutter" dodges Robbie's personal security guards, runs on stage in the middle of the set and pushes him over the edge onto the heads of the crowd. It's a scary moment and he carries it off superbly. Bruised and shaken, he climbs back up, shouts to the audience, "I'm not going to let any f***er stop you having a good time," to roars of applause and carries on.

In Paris, he has reached the point of admitting that he's not hating every minute. "I don't want this to stop," he says. Half the time, he's fooling, but you don't know which half.

"I'm ace," he grins. "And there are 30,000 people out there saying, 'We agree!' What's better than that?"

The film is artless and makes no attempt to break new ground, like U2's Joshua Tree US tour movie, Rattle And Hum. Also, it's very English in its refusal to make an idol out of Stoke City's favourite son, who went platinum ages ago with the first of the post Bay City Rollers boy bands, Take That.

Robbie's story is one of redemption, humour and honesty. His stage performance has the exuberance of a natural clown. How can he say he doesn't enjoy it? Either he's an actor or a liar, and somehow you know he's neither. What you see, altered by the artifice of film, is a great entertainer.