How Robbie Williams’ wife Ayda Field transformed his life by becoming his career adviser, drug counsellor and ‘rock’
THESE days, wherever Robbie Williams goes his wife Ayda Field is there too – and that includes The X Factor.
In a highly unconventional move, the husband and wife team are on the verge of signing as judges for the reality TV show.
X Factor supremo Simon Cowell has long believed that his old friend Robbie, 44, could prove the adrenalin shot that saves his ailing format.
And after a decade-long pursuit, the deal is all but done now that Robbie’s one condition has been met — that Ayda, 39, his wife of seven years, joins him on the panel.
Given she has no background in music, the job is highly unusual. The American actress was unknown here before hooking up with Robbie, but she is now a popular panellist on TV’s Loose Women.
Show insiders hope the prospect of the inseparable double act showcasing their unique relationship will breathe new life into an ITV institution which has lost its way.
Ayda has already been Robbie’s saviour when it comes to his health and lifestyle — could she be the one to save The X Factor too?
It is no exaggeration that she has performed something of a miracle with troubled Robbie.
The singer, who has a history of mental illness and problems with addiction, is hugely dependent on Ayda in his daily life.
She accompanies him on all his work commitments. Last Sunday she was at his Soccer Aid match in Manchester. Today she is in Russia, where Robbie is to perform alongside opera star Aida Garifullina at the World Cup opening ceremony.
Pals close to the couple say Ayda is also Robbie’s unofficial manager, career adviser, best pal, dietitian, carer and, crucially, his “rock”.
She has transformed him from a lost soul consumed by the trappings of fame into a tee-total vegan family man who has maintained an incredibly successful career.
When abnormalities were found in Robbie’s brain last year, it was Ayda who overhauled his diet and got him into yoga and Pilates.
She cared for their daughter Teddy, five, and son Charlie, three, in LA while he had treatment in the UK.
Recalling that time, she said: “It was tough because you’re in a completely different time zone and you don’t know what’s happening, you just want everything to be OK.
“Everything is OK now, everything is great.
“My big monkey is doing really well. He’s still got the jazz hands and is still ripping his clothes off!”
For his part, Robbie, who has an estimated worth of £155million, has said: “She makes me want to be a better person. And in the process, I have become a better person.”
In Ayda, Robbie has found his perfect match, a woman who not only changed his life for the better but who gets his zany sense of humour.
She even tolerates his pranks with good grace. A video he posted this year shows him sounding an air horn to wake her up.
Ayda, who made her name in the US soap Days Of Our Lives, met Robbie at a mutual friend’s party in 2006, when he was living in LA.
The timing was not great. Robbie, who had dated Spice Girl Geri Horner, model Rachel Hunter and singer Andrea Corr, was about to go into rehab for the second time.
Recalling how his first date with Ayda got “messy”, he said: “So I got tucked into a lot of drugs. Anyway, I took a turn for the worse because I started to cluck like a chicken.
“So I was in the Jacuzzi with a very, very hot girl in Hollywood, doing a Hollywood thing, but then I got ill, started to cluck, had to leave, embarrassingly.”
Far from being put off, Ayda moved in with Robbie for three weeks to take care of him. Their enduring double act was born.
They got married four years later but their path to true love was far from smooth. Robbie split up with her three times, until one night he was discussing their relationship with actresses Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore.
Cameron told him: “Sounds like it’s not over.”
Robbie said: “In that instant, something clicked. It was like Sliding Doors and I thought we should get married. So I got in a car and went to her door and that’s the moment I committed to her.”
Robbie still has health issues. Last October he had to cancel his Heavy Entertainment Show tour due to a spell in intensive care.
Four months later he talked about Ayda being so crucial to his health on Australian TV.
He said: “Fortunately and unfortunately, left to my own devices, I’m inclined to sabotage everything.
“I’ve got a disease that wants to kill me and it’s in my head, so I have to guard against that.”
Yet, with Ayda by his side, he soldiers on. Indeed, the couple, who divide their time between their homes in LA and West London, make a formidable duo.
In return for keeping him on the straight and narrow, Robbie has helped Ayda to forge a TV career in the UK.
Since March 2016 she has been a guest panellist on Loose Women, sharing often hilarious anecdotes of her life with Robbie.
Earlier this month when he gatecrashed her interview with Simon Cowell to bring her a cup of coffee, viewers caught a glimpse of the chemistry between the trio. Simon’s girlfriend Lauren Silverman has grown close to Ayda, too.
Ayda has also revealed that Robbie didn’t know what a cucumber looked like until he met her, and that when she took him to a supermarket — aged 42 — it was the first one he had been to.
She said: “He is like a 15-year-old boy, just frozen in Take That time. He was like ‘This is amazing! They have everything!’ I was like, ‘That’s what you do at a supermarket’. It was a revelation for him.”
Forthright Ayda has also told the lunchtime show she would not have looked twice at him if she met him during his lothario days.
She said: “He would have completely screwed it up, he would have been off his face, he would have cheated.
“That’s the tip of the iceberg really, he would have ruined it’.
“We wouldn’t be married with kids. It was meant to be this way.”
She has also left him red-faced after revealing she faked orgasms and he sampled her breast milk.
Perhaps it is all payback for the prank he pulled while she was in labour with Charlie in 2014.
Robbie live tweeted the whole thing from the US hospital delivery room. While she lay agony, he belted out his biggest hits and danced around. In on the gag, Ayda wore Louboutins throughout.
It is this sort of humour and camaraderie that X Factor bosses are hoping will boost the show’s flagging fortunes. Just 4.4million viewers watched the finale in December, down from its 20million peak of eight years ago.
MOST READ IN TV & SHOWBIZ
The deal to bring them both to The X Factor is worth around £10million and part of the biggest shake-up in the show’s history.
The Sun revealed in April that judges Nicole Scherzinger, 39, Louis Walsh, 65, and Sharon Osbourne, 65, all faced the axe. Simon backtracked on Sharon last week — she will now fly in for the live shows.
The last person on the panel, which also includes Simon, has yet to be decided, although Mel B and Gloria Estefan are in the frame.
But whoever it is will have a tough job stealing the limelight from Robbie and Ayda.