It's been well documented that London is my #1 city, and Robbie Williams is my #1 popstar, so when it was announced that he'd be headlining a night of BST Hyde Park again in July 2024, of course I was there.
I landed at Heathrow on July 4th (because I love spending all the iconic American holidays in foreign lands), to spend a week in London with the Rob show right in the middle, carrying an unexpected bottle of wine in my bag. Along the way I had a chat with the flight attendant about wine, and she recommended a nice Bordeaux that I quite enjoyed, so she gave me a bottle to take with me. Gotta love first class!
Anyway. Aside from the music, I didn't do anything interesting... just a typical few days in my usual London haunts, so on to the show...
As a rule, I hate music festivals, and only Rob can get me to show up to one, even for just a little while. So for BST I did the same as last time and got a ticket that included the 'VIP Garden', giving me a more sparsely populated area to hang out in until I was ready to join the stramash at the front of the stage. I wasn't really interested in anyone playing before the Robbie closing set, so I arrived pretty close to his start time, to avoid awkwardly standing around as a solo VIP, sipping on overpriced beverages. I got there right about the time Seal started playing (the last artist before RW), and listened from the Garden area while I bought a t-shirt and drank a hard cider. I was never that big a fan of Heidi Klum's ex-husband -- I only know those 2 or 3 songs that everyone remembers from the 90s -- but he sounded pretty good from a distance.
When Seal finished and the masses started flooding back into the VIP Garden for the break between performers, I took advantage of the relative sparseness of the crowd to find myself a decent spot in front of the stage. Unfortunately the group of women I ended up standing next to were extremely drunk and kept bumping into everyone, while also being SO LOUD that my right ear hurt from their shouting by the time the show got started. But at the point that I realized I couldn't spend 2 more hours near them, the throngs had returned and I was walled in by humans on all sides. The drunken banshees were also convinced that Kylie Minogue was there as a guest, because they'd heard Kids during the soundcheck and were sure Robbie would never sing it unless she was there. Except that he does, at every show, everywhere, always, with Kylie's parts covered by the backup singers. Since the whole audience couldn't help but overhear, I noticed I wasn't the only one rolling my eyes at their antics.
Then we were given even more time to overhear intoxicated asinine shouting when the show started a bit late, because England had gone to penalties in a knockout game of the Euros, and everyone (most of the crowd, the band, Rob) was watching. So they waited to come on stage until the game finished... which England won, and put everyone in an extra good mood.
Maybe because of the football, or maybe just out of habit, Rob seemed to be having fun, and the performance was great, as always. He mostly did the same set he'd been doing on other shows at the time, but there were a few new things I hadn't heard live before... which isn't that easy to do when my list of RW concerts is in the double digits.
He had a special Hyde Park intro video at the beginning that hinted at his special guests for the night... none of whom were Kylie. In the middle of the show, he did sort of a 90s interlude starting with his cover of Don't Look Back in Anger that was standard in the set list at that time (including his Liam Gallagher impression which never fails to amuse me) and then going into the Supergrass song Alright with an appearance by Gaz Coombs (out of Supergrass). Then the Britishness went into overload, as the Coldstream Guards Band and Danny Dyer* joined him for a rendition of Blur's Parklife. Other new live experiences were Something Beautiful and Advertising Space (one of my favourites), along with Take That's Back for Good, which I'd heard recordings of in Rob's early solo days as a punk version, but this was the first I'd heard him do it in the original Gary Barlow ballad style. There was also a very sweet moment at the end during Angels where his wife and eldest daughter came on stage and shared a group hug that lasted for most of the instrumental section.
So yeah, always great to see our Rob, especially when he seems to be having as great a time on stage as we are, watching. Well worth the travel and the crowds, every time.
*Either you know why Danny Dyer was the perfect person to join on Parklife, or you don't, so I'm just gonna leave it there
