My nights with Robbie Williams

If you can get past the strangeness of someone who is now married to Sir Clive Sinclair having once been Robbie Williams' girlfriend, there's much to - well, not quite enjoy, more absorb in Angie Bowness' tale of being Robbie's sort-of girlfriend.

His chat-up technique was to deliberately step on her foot:

He made a point of telling me he wasn't drinking alcohol and said he hardly ever went out to parties because he suffered panic attacks. Then he started talking about feeling 'socially inadequate'.

It's funny he should feel like that, given that he then suggested they slip away and instructed his bodyguard, Duncan, to get Angie's phone number. Summoned a few minutes later, she made her way to Williams flat, where he seemed to be living under the misapprehension that he was James Stewart:

Likewise, there was a giant telescope standing in one window.

But Robbie wasn't half as interested in stargazing as he was in the ordinary lives going on around him. He called me over and asked me to look through the lens. It was focused on the window of a flat across the river.

Inside, a couple were talking and, while I watched, Robbie started telling me the life story he'd imagined for them. Their names, their jobs, where they met, the things they argued about. He'd thought of everything.

He knew it was crazy, but he said he 'knew' a lot of his neighbours this way. God only knows what these people would have thought if they had known that Robbie Williams spied on them.

I think we can guess, can't we?

On a second date - after Duncan had more or less passed Williams like a baton to her, he invited her to spend the evening opening his fan mail.

It's all a bit of an odd story, and a sad one. It ends with what may very well be a raised eyebrow:

I wondered if it would ever work out for Robbie at all. I was beyond shocked when I heard he had got married. I thought he was destined to be a bachelor.

I wish him well and hope this relationship works out for him. But deep down I wonder what it is he wants from a woman. I can only hope the new Mrs Williams has worked that one out.

There's no explanation of how you move from dating the man who made Rudebox to being married to the guy who came up with Microdrives, which is a pity.