As the moon rose over Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria on Monday night, 60 000 heads bopped to the beat and twice as many hands were flung in the air. Robbie Williams closed the South African leg of his world tour with fireworks and a matching bang, thanking the crowd on his knees for turning up en masse. “Baie dankie,” he shouted to the explosive cheering and clapping.
Taking after his comedian father, Williams entertained the crowd with witty one-liners, imitations of Michael Jackson, and of a horny giraffe. He also had the stadium have a go at the world’s largest simultaneous burping session. “I bet they heard that miles away!”
The cheeky singer treated the fans, some of whom had been waiting for six hours, to new songs from his Intensive Care album, such as Sin Sin Sin and Advertising Space as well as to older chart toppers like Rock DJ, Feel — “I did that whole cowboy thing before Brokeback Mountain!”– and Angels. Williams even sang Take That’s Back for Good and wished his former band mates the best of luck with their recent reunion. “But without me it’s just not the same. Not Take That but more like … Ake That.”
Dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a black long-line blazer, Williams wowed Pretoria with his raunchy charm. “If I’ll shag you? Sure, come find me after the show,” he said to fans holding a banner before running across the stage to have a closer look at a girl baring her breasts. “Please do that again love,” and then, turning to the African sky, laughing: “Thank you for making your women so accessible.”
Williams praised South Africa for having the most beautiful people. “Everybody here is fucking gorgeous; girls, guys, everybody. I shot my new video for Sin Sin Sin in Cape Town the other day and had the pleasure to be surrounded by 17 of the country’s top models. Sadly every single one of them had a boyfriend … But luckily two of them didn’t mind for one night.”
The show was not all jokes, though. Williams got serious when talking about his first-ever love from when he was 16, and said he still loved her. Up-tempo tracks were followed by sensitive ballads, jokes were followed by genuine expressions of gratitude and heartfelt life stories.
Williams gave people what they wanted and then some. He sang, rapped and danced, improvising along the way. By the end of the two-hour extravaganza there was no man, woman, or child who did not believe they had not just witnessed a true entertainer.
It was the first time Williams had performed in South Africa but it will not be the last. Williams said he loved the country and called it “the world’s best-kept secret”.
“I will be back,” the golden boy from Stoke-on-Trent, England, promised before he was whisked off in a helicopter to his R11 000 presidential suite at the Westcliff hotel and the public went back to their cars and daily routine. Williams came, saw, and conquered or as an older gentleman on his way out put it: “Robbie sure had my stiff ass jumping up and down!”