Gordon in the morning: Robbie Williams is not lost in space

Gordon returns to the Robbie Williams and the aliens story this morning:

ROBBIE WILLIAMS’ obsession with extra-terrestrials has just jumped to lightspeed.

Does an obsession travel at lightspeed?

The beardy pop nob has been spending his free time — which is about 18 hours, seven days a week — visiting observatories in the Arizona desert.

Gordon then goes on to have a bit of a laugh at the idea of Williams going to an observatory, of all places, to look at space. Can you imagine?

Now, while it's true that his obsession with aliens and chumming up with David Icke looks a little flaky, is hiking out to an array of telescopes to explore the possibility of life in other parts of the universe such an eccentric thing to do? After all, NASA was pumping out Beatles songs into space the other week, in the hope that some other worldly intelligence might hear them and thus create some demand for digital downloads of the back catalogue, and nobody started to suggest that NASA had lost its mind. And if Williams is interested in aliens, isn't it actually quite intelligent of him to head out to a place where serious scientific research is taking place to see what they're up rather than asking David Icke which members of the cabinet are shape-shifting aliens?

I know. This does constitute cutting Robbie some slack. I don't like it any more than you do.

Gordon, though, is showing exactly the same sort of grasp of science that makes mainstream journalism what it is today:

Rob has been peering through telescopes looking into space for signs of life on other planets.

Yes. He's squinting through a small tube telescope, Gordon. That's the way it works in Arizona.

Surely writing a new album is more important than staring at the heavens like eccentric, xylophone-playing Sky At Night TV host PATRICK MOORE?

Hmm. There's a slim possibility that Williams might - just might - discover something which suggests that humanity is not alone in the universe, with profound implications for our future as a species, politics, religion and ethics. On the other hand, he could make another record of eartosh. Do you want to check that you're ordering his priorities correctly, Gordon?

There's a strong argument that if other worlds send emissaries to Earth, you wouldn't perhaps want the gurning half-wit to be the one to meet them, but that's another question.

It's not clear why Gordon would be keen for Robbie to get back in the studio anyway:

He added: “I was lying on my sun lounger outside at night. Above me was a square thing that passed over my head silently and shot off.”

That was me, Robbie. I was launching copies of Rudebox at your gaff after 12 pints of Guinness...

If you're wondering why Smart might have lots of copies of Rudebox lying around in the first place, it's probably because his boss Victoria Newton gave the album such glowing reviews before she got into trouble with the lyrics of that one track and the column appeared to declare war on Williams.