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BARLOW's BATTLES
Gary Barlow talks about breakdown after the loss of his daughter, secret bulimia battle and how tax avoidance scheme was ‘stupidity’ in his most revealing interview ever
But as he reveals today in his most personal interview ever, the music superstar behind iconic hits like Back For Good, Patience and The Flood has spent the past two decades haunted by demons.
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Since his comeback in 2004, he has secretly battled bulimia, suffered a nervous breakdown sparked by grief from the loss of his daughter, Poppy, and his beloved dad, struggled privately with how to react to being involved in an aggressive tax avoidance scheme and even suffered a drug-induced collapse on live TV.
Gary has decided to open up now as he releases A Better Me, his raw and disarmingly honest autobiography.
More than 28,000 applied via our scheme to be one of 20 readers to watch the highly emotional interview recorded this week at News UK’s HQ in London.
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Here are the highlights of the chat, which you can listen to unedited and for free by subscribing to my podcast, The Dan Wootton Interview.
ON TRAMADOL
Gary had been using Tramadol, the highly addictive drug used by ANT McPARTLIN, because of a back injury the singer sustained while climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in 2009.
It even caused him to walk off a live TV interview on the BBC’s One Show last year because he was using the drug to get through Take That’s Wonderland Live tour.
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He says: “It was what I was prescribed. I couldn’t wait to get off that. It really made me not me. I wasn’t myself on that.
“James [Gary’s assistant] had caught me about five times that week fainting. I’d just go.
"So basically I’d just look at James and he’d go, ‘He’s going,’ and he’d grab me.
“But I was sat on The One Show, and I just looked at James and thought, ‘I’m going’. And I had to go, and literally as my foot went off the bottom of the screen we went over. Crazy.”
TAX
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Taking part in an aggressive tax avoidance scheme was “one of most stupid things I’ve done”, Gary admits.
He says: “I’d never had anything so serious before. This was like, it was time to grow up.
The thing was for me and my main concern is always our audience.
“I just thought, you know what, this is simple. What we’ve got to do is get out of here as quickly as possible and pay whatever we need to pay. Simple as that, job done.”
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Could he still become Sir Gary Barlow despite the scandal?
“Honestly, even before I got an OBE I don’t spend any time thinking about that stuff. For me, as I said earlier, the anchor is music. I’d love to continue.
“It’s about the ambition of what’s next. And awards, honours, they’re something I think most people don’t think about until they happen.”
BULIMIA
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In 2003, Gary had hit rock bottom when he weighed in at 17 stone and two pounds, prompting him to see a doctor about his obesity.
In a desperate bid to continue binge eating, Gary became bulimic.
He says: “I thought I know what I can do, I can eat with everybody, I can sling the food down, have a great time, drink as much as I want.
“As soon as I get home, I’ll find the furthest place away from my wife’s bedroom and I can go in there and I can get rid of everything.
“And I thought it’s really clever this is. And then of course, the one time becomes five times, and then you realise this has no future.”
BREAKDOWN
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After the stillbirth of his baby Poppy, loss of his dad and post-traumatic stress disorder from being caught up in the 7/7 terrorist attacks, Gary had a nervous breakdown in LA in 2016.
He says: “After my wife and I had lost our baby, I as a man, I sort of went into overdrive.
"I just wanted to look after everybody, look after my wife. I was taking on work to sort of fill my life up with things to do really.
“The busyness kept my mind off all the things you don’t want to think about, so while my wife was sort of dealing with that very, very well – although it was very difficult – she was tackling it head on. I was work, work, work, two phones on the go.
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“And I got to LA and I just completely crashed. And the funny thing was, when the doctor came the day later, I basically fell asleep for about 22 hours – I had one of those death sleeps.
"The doctor said. ‘Is there anything significant that happened in the last five years?’ and I just thought ‘I don’t know where to start.’
“You can tuck away in your body and your mind all these things, but someday it’ll remind you. It’ll come and find you.”
#METOO
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Even though he worked closely with Harvey Weinstein on the Finding Neverland musical, Gary strongly supports the #MeToo movement.
He explains: “For a father of two daughters, it’s a great thing cause their future is going to be a lot better because of all this.
“But this was someone I’d worked with quite closely for three or four years. Certainly we never ever saw it as part of our theatre company.
“He was an incredibly powerful man and you knew it when he walked in the room. So you can see how these things spiral out of control. But thank goodness we’re in 2018 and that needs to stop.”
JASON ORANGE
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Gary was aware Jason was not committed to Take That long-term from the moment they re-formed for the tenth anniversary of their split.
He says: “He’d only ever commit to an album at a time, which is fair enough, we’re all adults now.
“I know a lot of people in groups. Groups are unhappy places, they are, bands are unhappy because you’ve got all these members and some of them want a year off, some of them want to work like hell for a year, some want to go in this direction musically.
“It’s so hard to find a good equilibrium with a group. We’ve been quite lucky, we’ve always been a very ambitious and focused group, and we’ve always taken on each other’s ideas and made it into something.”
ROBBIE WILLIAMS
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Gary’s long-awaited reunion with ex-bandmate turned public foe Robbie was tricky when they met up for the first time.
He recalls: “We were all laughing and he just thought, ‘I can’t laugh until we’ve sorted this out.’
“We had a little seance round at his house and we exorcised the demons and we just had a good chat and it was actually a very simple conversation and an apology from both of us, and an argument over who acted the worst.
“And we wouldn’t let it go. Like, ‘No, I acted the worst,’ and it just went on for hours.
“We all worry about Rob a lot, we all know a lot more now about his mental issues.
"He fights with a lot of things going on in his head. Trying to keep the project on track was incredibly hard.”
DIET
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Gary’s life changed when he stopped dieting and joined the clean eating phenomenom where all processed foods are banned.
He says: “BEYONCE’s got nothing on me. I’ve done every diet possible. I know what they all do, I know the idea behind them. I even know how each one of them makes me feel.
“Actually the focus for me actually has gone off weight completely.
“The start was incredibly difficult because I had to give up sugar, gluten, grains, dairy, definitely no alcohol.
“That first three days was like, I honestly thought I was dying a slow death. It was the most surreal experience.
"It felt like I was walking on marshmallows. I was going blind at one point. There was one point I thought, ‘I’m blind, I’m blind’.
"It was the most crazy experience. I was coming off copious amounts of sweetener.”
QUITTING
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Gary says he is in the best place ever. He turns 50 in 2021 and is planning a year off to grow a beard and meditate. That also means the end of Take That as we know it…
He says: “The one danger as artists is that you start repeating yourself and we’ve done this – album/tour – every two years, we’ve done it for a long time now.
“For us and for our audience, we want to go and find something new. I don’t know what it is, I really don’t.
“But I think it’s really important to always ask those questions of yourself. The minute you’re repeating yourself, it’s all over.
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“We’ve got to always push forward and that’s what I mean by that statement. As we go into this next phase I don’t know when it’s going to be.
“I’ve tried to assure everybody it’s not a splitting up thing – we will never be announcing that ever again.
“But I don’t know what it is that’s coming but we’ll find something.”
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- A Better Me: The Official Autobiography, by Gary Barlow (Blink Publishing) is out now.
Wootton's Week
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