Rather than cringe, however, we’d call it charm – a charm that probably only Williams and his preternatural sense of cheeky chappy charisma could ever pull off, but therein lies the magic. In the first 20 minutes, he played approximately two songs of his own and 10 of other peoples’, flitting between snippets of Foo Fighters, Blur and Bon Jovi whilst delivering an opening, tone-setting speech. “Life is tough, the world’s gone mad, but we’ve come together to have a shared experience and leave the real world behind. You need to forget about being cool and just commit.” When trying to suspend the oncoming onslaught of cold, hard reality, it helped that Williams had just descended onto the stage upside down from a giant gold rocket, wearing an astronaut outfit.
