I know, it seems like I only ever go to London. But that's kind of been true for the last couple of years... I still love to go new places, but I'm 100% OVER the actual mechanisms of travel. So most of my plans end up cancelled when even the tiniest hint of a hassle comes up -- flight time change, weather, me waking up with a sniffle -- and the ones I keep are ones where I don't want to miss the event. So mostly when Robbie Williams is involved.
My summer 2025 trip to London was exactly that. Rob's tour for his upcoming Britpop album included two London stadium shows on successive nights, so I got tickets for both.
The trip was just a quick one, arriving at Heathrow on Wednesday afternoon, seeing the popstar Friday and Saturday night, and back home Sunday, so I didn't have time to do much else. I was also hindered by having sprained my knee just one week earlier. By being a klutz walking down the street.
I was on my way home with bags of groceries in each hand, about a block from home, walking super fast like I always do, when I tripped on uneven pavement and became a cartoon character flailing wildly, trying to catch my balance against the weight of the bags and forward momentum. But I failed, and fell flat on my face in the middle of the sidewalk, with my left knee taking most of the impact. After picking myself up and limping home, I took an ibuprofen, put an ice pack on my bruised and swollen kneecap, and went about my day... albeit seated. Once the pain and swelling subsided on the bashed up part of my knee, I noticed that the LCL side was showing all the signs of a sprain. I was a dancer until age 20, and have been clumsy my entire life, so trust me, I know from joint sprains. This one seemed pretty minor, so I dug out a knee brace from one of my previous injuries, went about the same home treatment I've done a dozen times before, and assumed it'd be fine in time to travel.
Another quick side story here, since I'm already off topic anyway... The first single of the new Robbie album, Rocket, was released about a week before I gracefully injured myself, a couple weeks before I left town. As part of that promotion, Karl Brazil (Rob's drummer, musical director, and frequent collaborator) posted a photo of its four songwriters -- Robbie, Karl, Tony Iommi, and Tom Longworth -- looking super rock and roll, but also, ya know, not 25 years old, saying something like "name this band." I replied with Dad Sabbath, which I found hilarious, but which got no response on Instagram at all. So imagine my surprise when, on my way to London a short time later, I heard Karl Brazil on the Robbie Williams Rewind podcast making a joke about his band Dad Sabbath, and getting a good laugh. He did give credit to it being an IG comment, but still... between that and Robbie Williams himself repeating a joke I'd told him to all his Insta live viewers (a much longer story that happened during the pandemic lockdown), I think I've earned the right to put Comedy Writer for the Robbie Williams Band on my resume.
But back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Despite the many hours of travel that limited my ability to put my leg up the way I really needed to, my knee wasn't in too bad shape when I arrived in London, but I wouldn't say it was in great form either, with only a week of healing done. Not the best way to find myself in a city where I normally walk several miles every day, where you can't get far without having to climb up or down stairs, and where I had standing tickets to two (at least) 2-hour concerts.
Nevertheless, I persisted.
For both nights of the Britpop show, I timed my travel to get to the stadium about 45 minutes before Rob was set to hit the stage, because I didn't want to stand any longer than I had to on my bad knee, especially since the trip there and back included lots of walking. Luckily my ticket was especially for the front of stage section, so even arriving that late, I had a pretty good view for both.
Both shows featured Lulu joining Rob to 'reclaim' Relight My Fire, her duet with Take That, for which Rob was originally supposed to do the lead vocals, but during recording they gave it to Gary Barlow instead. They sounded great and it was super fun to see them together. Friday night also featured a song by 90s British boy band Five, which Rob started, and Five finished -- the group's first performance on stage together in 25 years. Having not grown up in the UK, I didn't know the song, and only knew a little about the band, but the crowd went wild and I could appreciate the moment nonetheless. On Saturday night, instead of Five we got three grime artists doing their grime thing with Rob. I didn't know who they were (not well versed in the genre), and the internet's feelings on the guys were mixed when I went to find out, so.. shrug emoji, I guess.
The only other thing that was different at the Saturday show was getting drenched. It was cold and grey all evening, but right as the band came on stage, it started bucketing down, and continued to soak us for the first 2 or 3 songs. It then switched to more of a drizzle for a couple songs before it quit for the rest of the night, but it was still enough that I hadn't fully dried by the time I got back to the hotel nearly 3 hours later.
But even soaked with a sore knee, I had a smile a mile wide. And that's why these are the trips that never get cancelled.
