Gary Barlow reveals why he still has 'beef' with Robbie Williams
Gary Barlow gets "annoyed" by how easily Robbie Williams can entertain a crowd.
The 50-year-old singer spends hours rehearsing and preparing for a show while his former Take That bandmade can pick up a song just minutes before he goes on stage and still gets a "better" reception.
He said: "My beef with Rob, and we still talk about this, is that I'll spend six weeks rehearsing a five minute piece to perfect it, every move and note I'll know what I'm doing. I'll go out and I'll get a great response.
"Robbie gets given a song four minutes before he goes out. He learns it and goes out and gets a better response. That's what annoys me about him. He's just got a gift. He always calls it the Freddie Star syndrome."
But the 'Open Road' hitmaker admitted he'd rather spend an evening with an audience, while Robbie favours brief cameo appearances.
He added to Jay Rayner on his 'Out To Lunch' podcast: "He loves going out and doing five minutes, the audience go crazy and he walks off and he's gone.
"I prefer a two-hour thing where I can warm people up, that's got highs and lows. I love that, an evening of taking the audience on a journey.
"It's a funny thing. To watch him and witness him, you can be a Robbie fan or not, when Rob walks in the room, there's a presence."
Gary always knew Robbie would be a huge solo star right from the early days of their time together in Take That and admitted he was always "in competition" with the 'Angels' singer to be at the forefront, whereas the rest of the group, Mark Owen, Howard Donald and, at the time, Jason Orange, weren't looking for the limelight.
He said: "I'd have identified him, definitely. He was talented very naturally, he was. It's possibly where we were in competition and the others weren't, really. Rob was wanting to get to the front. He had a great voice, very natural given talent he had."
'Out to Lunch with Jay Rayner' is available weekly on all podcast providers.
