An Evening With... Robbie Williams

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Sterix

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« on: May 24, 2022, 09:44:16 PM »
So next week, Robbie Williams is doing a gig at Port Vale Football Club (he's a lifelong fan if you're wondering why that "stadium"!

 ;D

And his fate is now in my hands mwahahahah!

To elaborate. I work for a company that does the tech support for the football club and they wanted a couple of us on standby in case anything goes wrong. The hope is that nothing does and I get to enjoy a freebie. To be honest, if anything does go wrong, I'll just be the lackey. I'm not all that knowledgeable about networks so my colleague will have to pull all the mental weight if that shit goes south!  ;)

As a side note, I once met Mark Owen (a fellow Oldhamer) when he was in the glory days of Take That. He lived not far away and used to hang around outside his mother's house, chatting to a load of groupies. We were passing in the car one day and he was outside his house as usual, so my dad stopped the car and went over to him. At that time we had a number of teenagers over from our twin town in Germany and he asked if they could all come and meet him. He said great, bring them tomorrow. I'll have to see if I can pull out any photos...

Sterix

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« Reply #1 on: June 05, 2022, 01:31:15 PM »
Security personnel at these places are complete morons, btw. My colleague and I had done our jobs and got the okay to slip out home just before the end (by that time, the wifi going down wasn't a biggie - that was more of an issue when 25,000 fans were coming in and having their tickets scanned!).

Anyway we made our way out to the carpark we were in only to be told that they'd closed the roads for Robbie to slip away when he came off "in 5 minutes". My colleague was like "you serious?" he's only just started his encore - he'll be 20 minutes yet!". Needless to say security was adamant we wouldn't get out...

And so we were stuck there for over an hour - forty minutes after Robbie's convoy had left. A lot of impatient people in the queue (including, amusingly, the owners of Port Vale Football Club a couple of cars behind us!).

If they'd have let us out beforehand (they had plenty of time to do that without impacting on Robbie making his escape 20 minutes later!) it would have been a 50 minute journey back home. Instead it became a 1 hour 20 minute journey (that's from being actually allowed to set off).

After an 11 hour shift we were both shattered! I still am now!

On the fun side, after we eventually got our security passes (which they'd supposed to have mailed to us last week but hadn't actually created yet) we pretty much had more access than even security did! There were a few times we could see them looking at us and start to come over to us and then note our badges and turn around!

Only got to see some of the gig (although, from the "President seating" area directly across from the stage so it was a great view. Robbie was definitely on form though.

Funniest part of the night was the support act (some German - I presume - DJs playing a pretty crap set) when they tried to get the crowd going with the old "sing along to the next bit - you know it" thing. Silence the music and... silence from the crowd. Epic, EPIC fail!



MonnoDB

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« Reply #2 on: June 05, 2022, 10:57:22 PM »
Cool story @Sterix !

I worked in the music biz years ago (ironically, years before I ever wrote a song) and I was lucky enough to get an industry pass into a Robbie Williams gig in Slane Castle (FANTASTIC venue).. watched the whole thing from the castle (amazing gig actually - he's such an amazing performer - he had the whole crowd literally bouncing.. awesome to behold) and afterwards I was at an afterparty at his hotel and I got to meet him!

My lasting impression - he was quite uncomfortable with all the attention and he was MUCH taller than I expected!

K