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Robbie Williams · S1 E3
The School Stage
From age 3 to talent shows, the performing instinct that never left
St. Margaret Ward Catholic School, Tunstall, autumn 1987. A thirteen-year-old named Robbie Williams walks onstage as the Artful Dodger in a school production of Oliver! The room goes quiet, then the first laugh comes, and by the time the curtain falls something has changed that will not change back.
Let Me Entertain You (1998). The bombast, the shamelessness, the physical need to hold a room. Robbie didn't develop these qualities. He arrived with them. This is the grown-up version of the thirteen-year-old in Tunstall who just needed a stage.
Let Me Entertain You (1998)
The opening riff quotes glam rock deliberately: T. Rex, Bowie, the Ziggy-era stomp that announces 'watch me.' Steve Power's production is comically overblown on purpose: stacked guitars, pounding drums, a chorus designed for 80,000 people. The key change in the final chorus turns a pop song into a stadium anthem. Every inch of it is shameless, and that is exactly the point.
The Artful Dodger Finds His Stage
This is the first time a room full of people has responded to Robbie specifically, to him alone, separate from Pete Conway's son. He will spend the next three decades chasing this exact feeling, at a scale none of his teachers could have predicted.
The School Years
“Before I was 16, I'd put in 10,000 hours of thinking I was famous, and performing for myself.”
— Robbie Williams, The Face, December 2024
TAP TO REVEAL: Why the Artful Dodger was the most precisely cast role in British music history.
Millennium -- Robbie Williams
From I've Been Expecting You (1998). The James Bond sample, the orchestral sweep, the sheer audacity of opening a single with a string arrangement borrowed from 'You Only Live Twice.' This is what the boy who played the Artful Dodger in a school hall in Tunstall grew up to make.
What role did Robbie Williams play in his school production of Oliver! at St. Margaret Ward?
Next episode: the woman who stayed. While Pete Conway is on the road, Janet Williams is at home running the newsagent, driving Robbie to talent shows, watching something unfold she can't quite name.
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