BY rights, it should never have turned out this way. Yet here is Robbie Williams at London's Royal Albert Hall, pacing up and down in front of a black-tie crowd of media, celebs and well-wishers, and backed by a 50-plus full orchestra. Duetting with an actress who can sing (Jane Horrocks), an actor who can't (Jon Lovitz) and a singer who just happens to be his best mate (Jonathan Wilkes, now playing Jesus at a Godspell near you; so much for the pop career, then).
By rights - or at least according to the naysayers - Williams should have quietly gone his way when, in 1996, he was ousted from Take That, the boy band that spawned countless imitations. He could have stayed put with his then mates, Oasis, and remained on the charted course to self-destruction and self-absorption via drink, drugs and dodgy rock music. But he didn't; he checked himself into rehab, slimmed down, released his dΘbut solo single - a symbolic cover of George Michael's Freedom - and quickly became a pop star once again, albeit on his own terms.
So how does he come to be singing Sinatra/Rat Pack songs five years later in a venue that should have been specially renamed the Francis Albert Hall? And, not to put too fine a point on it, why? Williams is hardly doing it for the money, but his latest incarnation seems to smack of several things, one of which is indeed the gathering in of filthy lucre. With the Albert Hall show being filmed for subsequent BBC broadcast and DVD/VHS release, one would have thought that was incentive enough. Yet the gob-smacking price of the tickets (£200 a piece), allied to the fact that the show is sponsored by Lloyds TSB indicates a certain overt neediness in the financial department.
Money aside, though (and let's be honest, it's fair enough not to even think about this when you're an invited guest), Williams seems to be donning the suit of the crooner performer for more important reasons. Raised on a diet of Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Tom Jones - whom he regards as something of a hero - he was quoted as saying more than three years ago, when he was still a rising pop star, that he aspired to the Las Vegas entertainer ethic more than anything else. To doubt him is foolish, as anyone who has witnessed his unfeasibly engaging live shows in Ireland over the past two years will confirm.
Constantly referred to as an old-fashioned entertainer, Williams is adept at milking an audience until they're ossified. A cross between Norman Wisdom and a less sophisticated version of Morrissey, Williams's main charm is his laddish honesty.
He's a guy who can make sensible men and women laugh at mildly sexist jokes, someone who displays all the signs of paranoia but who gets away with it because he's got no small amount of charm. Cue the T-shirts on sale in the foyer stating that Williams is, ahem, "Well Swung" and the dedicating of The Lady Is A Tramp to some former girlfriends.
Perhaps the most telling between-song quote of the evening, though - which, like some of them, notably compere Rupert Everett's "Bonk me, Robbie, bonk me into eternity", will probably not make it into the BBC broadcast - was his comment on how little business he does in the US. If he had not said this, the underlying reasons for doing such a grandiose but wholly engaging show as this might not have been so apparent. But there it is: Williams pays tribute to Frank Sinatra ("the guvnor"), Dean Martin ("the don") and other people he regards as the "coolest men who ever lived".
He does this in the company of some of the coolest lounge songs ever written, with images of the iconic Rat Pack compadres and footage of Sinatra in the background, with hugely successful US comic Jon Lovitz and with Nicole Kidman (filmed the previous night at a grand rehearsal: their duet of Frank and Nancy Sinatra's Something Stupid). What's the betting on the concert being shown in edited form in the US before the end of the year? It would have been an exquisite exercise in bad taste, artistically as well as fiscally, if it hadn't all gone according to Williams's plan. The truth? Microphone-twirling Robbie pulled it off with good humour and a comparatively understated performance. Smart, impressive, a facsimile with heart and passion, if this was a pop star conceit then it was engineered in a way that underlined Williams's genuine talent for revealing his own vulnerability through the much-vilified pop song.
While no one is daft enough to proclaim that he fully captured the bourbon-tinged loneliness of lounge-song grandeur, his renditions of classic easy listening songs such as Mack The Knife, Mr Bojangles, Ain't That A Kick In The Head, Do Nothing 'Til You Hear From Me, One For My Baby and My Way connected with the Rat Pack ideology of tortured personalities peering into empty bar glasses.
He says that doing a concert such as this, and recording an album such as Swing When You're Winning (in the wood-panelled Capitol A studio in Los Angeles, where Sinatra himself recorded; well, you'd do it, too, if you had the money and the inclination, wouldn't you?) made several dreams come true.
If he's lucky, really lucky, then perhaps Williams's dreams of getting a foothold in, let alone conquering the US, might just come true, too.
From Take That to Look At This, from Ol' Blue Eyes to Ol' Big Head. Williams was once a teenager whose image was on duvet covers, dolls and pillowcases, but it now looks as if the boy has truly come of age, singing songs that will spread his profile even wider among the eight-to-80 demographic. His die-hard teenage fans? The next studio album of originals will sort them out. For now, Robbie Williams is on a smart, side-stepping career curve aimed to soothe, please and seduce the mums and dads (on both sides of the Atlantic) even further. Now ain't that a kick on the head?
The Swing When You're Winning CD is released on November 16th and the DVD/VHS is released on November 30th.