DO YOU THINK MOANING ON ALL THE TIME HELPS?

Poor Robbie Williams - no, really, grab yourself some hankies, this is sad. The poor lamb - sniff - has never known true love. (We're presuming he's not counting his full and reciprocated passion with himself, here.)

But asked when he was last in love, he confessed: "I haven't been. I've had a 'want to be'. I've had a giant expectation. But I was 16.

Blimey. Fancy not having had a giant expectation since you were sixteen. There are pills, you know, Robbie, that can help get that giant expectation back - Pele was telling us about them the other day...

"I wake up every morning with fucking expectations."

Presumably just small ones, though? But that is quite normal, Robbie. Waking up with an - ahem - expectation. There are dreams, too, aren't there? We've seen A Voyage Round My Father.

But I've never had a love in the sense that other people have experienced it.

"No one's ever - and I don't think it's anybody's fault other than mine - fallen in love with me that way. I've got a few things to sort out before I'm ready to go into relationships again."

Sorry, Robbie, our attention was drifting... we were just thinking about that old competition Mark Radcliffe used to do - "is it a bird? is it a bloke? haven't a clue mate... sorry I spoke?" But back to you. You were saying you had to sort something out before you have a successful relationship?

"I just thought it would be about getting sober and then you have a fulfilling relationship." Pointing out that he had been sober for five years, he added: "Six years out of a relationship."

But what about the secret girlfriend you were telling us all about a couple of weeks ago? It couldn't have been a fib, could it?

As the bar starts to empty, Robbie gets even more maudlin. Everyone at school has got girlfriends:

"Ronan Keating's married with kids, Justin Timberlake will be married to Cameron Diaz soon.They are deeply in love. "On the other hand, there's a sense in which I I want to pat myself on the back and say, 'Well, fucking hell, you got through your 20s without getting divorced. There are no single mothers running around with your babies and you have no lifetime attachments to people you hate'."

Right... so we've sat here listening to you blubbing on for half an hour, but actually you're quite pleased with yourself because you've not got divorced? Brilliant. Why do you suppose people don't fall in love with you?

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