When GQ met Take That

To celebrate the news that Robbie Williams has rejoined Take That, GQ is republishing Alex Bilmes' interview with the former GQ Band Of The Year, pre-Robbie and on tour in Japan. GQ joins them in Tokyo for karaoke, cartwheels, Cognac and the inside story on the biggest showbiz comeback ever...

"What's the situation in Italy, Hiro?"

The accent is unmistakably Northwest of England. The tone is good-natured but urgent, the voice slightly raised. The speaker is a thickset man in his mid-thirties. He's nursing a Starbucks latte in his lap, sitting on a plastic chair, his legs splayed out in front of him, in a makeshift holding pen at Fuji TV's studios in Shinjuku, central Tokyo. He's wearing tight grey pinstriped trousers, a tailored, double-cuffed white shirt spotted with navy pinpricks, and a skinny white tie. This is his work uniform, selected for him by a stylist back in England and flown out in ten different variations on a theme (skinny black tie, skinny navy tie, skinny striped tie, etc). His hair, cropped short and highlighted blond, was just moments ago teased into shape by a slender, unusually tall Japanese woman called Rena.

In a few minutes, Gary Barlow will be leading his group in a performance of their comeback single on the long-running daytime variety show Waratte Iitomo (translation: It's OK To Laugh), but he'd like something to eat first, and we've been waiting for our pasta for what seems like hours. Speculation is mounting that it may have been delayed en route from Rome.

Here's Hiro, Universal Music's local promotions man, responsible for making sure Take That's visit to Japan runs smoothly. He's looking anxious, squinting bleakly at the screen of his mobile phone, willing it to ring with good news from the takeaway company.

"We don't need another Hiro," warbles Gary, to the tune of the old Tina Turner hit. (Other Hiro-baiting tunes have so far included "Holding Out For A Hiro" and "We Could Be Hiro, Just For One Day".)

Right on cue, a baggy-jeaned delivery man appears, weaving his way through the throng of well-wishers, headset wearers and prompt-card carriers, holding aloft plastic bowls of spaghetti arrabbiata and spicy Domino's Pizza. We follow him, Gary and me, to the band's dressing room where the Take That retinue - UK PR, international PR, security man, management representative, record label executive - look on as Jason Orange, Howard Donald and Mark Owen fall upon their food like vultures with particularly well-groomed plumage; there's a lot of hair to look after in Take That Version 2.0.

"Ooh, yes, Hiro," says Gary approvingly, stuffing a paper napkin into his shirt collar. "Job's a good 'un."

"Job's a good 'un," repeats Hiro, looking mightily relieved. It's Gary's catch phrase, one of a number Hiro had been taught the previous evening, over riotous teppan-yaki with various members of the band's entourage.

"Job's a good 'un," we all dutifully repeat, and Hiro receives a beneficent smile from his most voluble charge, the singer in the skinny tie.

Ten minutes later, I'm pressed against a wall, just out of shot, on the show's set. It's a bit like being trapped inside one of the pachinko slot machines that Tokyo salarymen spend their precious free time feeding: garish signage is everywhere; lights pulse; weird electronic klaxons blare; beaming humans in cartoon garb shout at each other in Japanese and make violent and, to me, inexplicable gestures, then collapse into giggles.

The host of Waratte Iitomo is an almost psychotically excitable middle-aged man called Tamori. He's accompanied today by a regular guest MC, Shingo Katori, a peroxided pop star in matching pink sweater and tie who announces on air that he's a big fan of Take That - news which is relayed to the band via an interpreter - but then seems utterly uninterested in their attempts to engage him in further conversation.

Commendably unfazed, Take That launch into song. It must be the sixth or seventh time in the past three days that I've watched them do this, on various TV shows, Gary emoting for all he's worth, Mark on his left, doing his jerky, almost Ian Curtis-like arm movements, Jason and Howard, the taller two, flanking them.

Their performance over, the band submit gracefully to the same series of questions they've been asked repeatedly since we all arrived here on Friday morning. It's now Tuesday afternoon. "How did you come to get back together?" "When will you be touring here?" "Have you got a message for your Japanese fans?" "Are you 'Back For Good'?"

Not for the first time, it occurs to me that the title of their first comeback single is appropriate. It's called "Patience".

The last time the members of Take That were in Japan as a foursome was in 1995. That was shortly after Robbie Williams had quit but before the remaining four went their separate ways for a decade. Back then, they were the biggest pop group in Britain, one of the biggest in the world. Now, in early 2007, they're back. Entirely unexpectedly, they're also the biggest pop group in Britain again, and it's not going so badly elsewhere, either. Over the five days I spend with them, they often refer to the strangeness of their current situation. Mark Owen says it's "surreal" being in Take That again. Howard Donald says it's "weird". Jason Orange says it's "really bizarre".

"We're a funny bunch, us lot, aren't we?" says Gary Barlow. He means funny peculiar, as well as ha-ha. And he's right. They are, both peculiar and ha-ha. "We're so eccentric. I hope you've noticed that. I hope you pick up on some of this, following us around. We're good company, I think."

It's invidious to make comparisons between the four current members of Take That based on less than a week in their company, but it's difficult to avoid. Howard, certainly initially, is the most diffident. "I'm quite a shy character," he tells me. But he soon warms up. A chatty, resolutely unpretentious Mancunian, 39 years old, possessed of a dry wit, he's the most physically imposing of the group, tall and thick-chested, but also the least confident.

"I suppose I kind of look up to the other guys," says Howard. "I do hate myself sometimes for being the way I am. I always sit back in group interviews and wait for someone else to answer because in my head their answer's always going to be better than mine. I try to pick my moments but they're few and far between."

Mark, the youngest at 35, and the most immediately recognisable (short, shag-haired), is instantly likeable. He's friendly, solicitous and sincere.

Gary, 36, is garrulous and smart and worldly and lots of other things I hadn't necessarily expected from his public image, which leads one to imagine an irredeemably naff blowhard. Still, there is something about him that puts one in mind of Peter Kay's Phoenix Nights; somewhere inside the international pop sensation there's a club singer from Frodsham trying to get out, or the other way around.

"It's interesting," he says, "because I am that. I am old-school showbiz. That's what I come from, and that's where I'm going to end up, where we're all going to end up. But Robbie is that as well. Only he does it in a kind of cooler way that I haven't mastered."

Jason, also 36, is softly spoken and gentle, but there's a steely self-possession about him. Whippet thin, soulful-eyed and always stylishly turned out, he's also very funny.

In group situations, he often sits apart from everyone else, keeping his own slightly mysterious counsel. On his own he comes alive. During our interview, under the origami glass ceiling of the band's hotel, the Park Hyatt, he laughs delightedly at my strangulated, jet-lagged attempts to summarise his career - "Mate! This is brilliant! You've really thought about all this!" - and peppers me with his own questions on all manner of topics: Have I ever been to Russia? Where exactly do I live and would I recommend it? What do I think of today's celebrity culture?

Each of the four was burned in different ways by the experience of being in Take That the first time around, and after the split they went their separate ways, seldom meeting or even talking to each other for close to a decade. "It's sad," concedes Mark, "but I do think that had to happen." While Robbie Williams went on to become the most successful British solo artist in history, the rest met with wildly varying degrees of professional success, and failure.

Widely touted as the next George Michael (though not by Robbie, who called him a "clueless wanker"), Gary launched an initially successful solo career that went belly-up after a disastrous second album.

"The first album was great," he remembers now. "It was after that, when all the Robbie stuff started, that it became like a soap opera. Being in competition with an ex-bandmate, and him saying your album's crap, it's quite upsetting, that. Once it started, I knew it was all over. And watching Robbie head off into the distance with hit after hit, it was just like, 'Where do you go from here?'"

Robbie's regular, vitriolic attacks took their toll emotionally as well as professionally.

"At the time it was really hurtful," says Gary. "It was like driving daggers into your side.

I'm not bulletproof to that stuff. I know some people are very thick-skinned but it always upset me. It still hurts me now when people write shit things."

Having said that, he concedes that "my second solo album was crap. And the reason it was crap was my state of mind. I was making an album for someone else, not for me. The times when I just used to sit at the piano and write what was there [points to his chest], that was gone. The confidence was gone."

Dropped by his record label, BMG, in 2000, Gary retreated to an enormous, trinket-filled Cheshire mansion where he slowly built a career as a songwriter and producer. It wasn't easy. "It's like having a disease," he says. "People don't want to know. And where do you draw the line? Do you go on Dancing On Ice? Do you try to restart your career that way? I couldn't do it. I couldn't go that low to be on I'm A Celebrity... So there was no other choice. I had to think of something else to do. There's no point banging on a door that's never going to open."

As for the conspicuous consumption, "Mate, you should have seen my house! It was this whole thing of, 'I'm absolutely massive now. I'm rich. I need a Cayenne.' No, you don't! We had a huge house, but I was forever extending it. It fucking got out of hand in such a big way. Such a cliché. The fact that I had three houses just fucking full of gear and I'd look at my bank statements and it was just all these numbers. And I'd think, 'Well, it must be right because it's written down here.' I lost control of my life. And then I thought, 'We've got to get rid of all this.' And I've been on a mission these last few years, shedding possessions."

Having chucked out his chintz in spectacular fashion - Barlow doesn't even have a car any more - he has moved south, to Kensington, where he lives with his wife Dawn, a former Take That dancer, and their two children, Daniel, six, and Emily, five.

"I feel lucky to have Dawn," he says. "I've found someone real in among it all. And when you do that you've got to hold on to it with both hands."

Mark was the first member of the group to release a solo album, which also met with considerable success, but his follow-up material was rejected as unreleasable and he too was dropped by BMG, in 1999.

"It's a big step going from being a backing singer and doing a bit of dancing to actually fronting something," he says. "I don't think I was ready vocally. I was a wreck, really, about singing. I was quite a nervous person.

I found it hard to feel worthy of everything that had happened to me. The next record, they weren't even songs, really. Ten or 11 minutes long, trying to go further and further away from Take That. That was my little battle, trying to find my own identity and not just be the cute one from Take That any more."

He moved to the Lake District. "You can waste years in the Lakes," he says. "I was down, really. I was in a bad place. I was struggling, probably drinking too much, not at my happiest. I didn't really have any direction. I think I was lonely. I'd cut myself off. I went through a period where I didn't have a girlfriend. And then I met a girl, and she was lovely, but I wasn't ready for that. I was staying up late, getting up late, not really seeing much light. I wasn't waking up before probably one o'clock.

And then just pottering around, listening to music loud, on my own with a bottle of wine, up until four..."

In 2002, he reappeared from his bibulous exile to win Celebrity Big Brother. "I think I had an unfair advantage because I was used to being in small spaces with a bunch of people," he says. "But it was important to me when I came out for that not to be my vehicle. I wanted to have my integrity." Signed by Island, he released an album, but was soon dropped again. In 2005, he released a self-financed record, How The Mighty Fall. He lives in south London with his girlfriend Emma, an actress, and their baby, Elwood.

Howard says that he was most unprepared of the four for the split. "I did think about killing myself," he says. "Pretty hard-core, isn't it? It was a two-minute thought. I'd had a bit of a run-in with Gary in the Conrad Hotel in London. This was early in 1996, when we knew we'd be splitting up. That tipped me over the edge. I went down to the Thames and I was going to throw myself in. I went to the wall and it was one of those mad things going on in my brain that lasted no more than five minutes and then I thought, 'What a fucking chicken shit to do something so stupid.' Maybe it's a weakness. Maybe I'm not particularly strong-minded. It would have been selfish and it would have affected a lot of people's lives."

Shortly after that, he recorded an album that was never released and then became a club DJ. "I was never solo material," he says. "Not musically - my album was actually a good album - but me as a person. I don't think I'm made to be singing on my own. My confidence level wasn't up to it. When you look at someone like Robbie Williams, he was made to be a solo artist. When you look at the way he acts and the way he was in Take That, he always stood out. He was brimming with confidence more than anyone in that band and I could have never done what he did. You give me 'Angels' or 'Let Me Entertain You' and I could have never done it the way he's done it. People love the way he is."

Howard now divides his time between Münster, in Germany, where he has a one-year-old child, Lola, with his girlfriend Marie Christine, and Bournemouth, where his seven-year-old daughter Grace lives with her mother, Victoria.

Jason briefly became an actor before temporarily quitting show business to study sociology and then going travelling for two years. "I believed in the lies I was told: 'You've got no chance of a solo career, you can't sing, you can't write music.' I believed that and now I don't."

"People identify who you are with what you do," he continues. "I was this guy out of Take That and then I'm this backpacker on this beach and I've lost a stone of weight, I've got a long beard and I'm looking a bit unkempt and I'm staring at the ocean. People go, 'Aw! Poor bloke. It's all gone wrong for him.' That's their presumptions. They think, 'Look at him, his career must be over.' They wouldn't think, 'Oh, maybe he's chosen that. Maybe he's happy like that.'"

Jason now lives alone in Primrose Hill, north London, and is the only member of the current line-up not to be a father.

Take That were formed in Manchester in 1990 by Nigel Martin-Smith, a former bit-part actor and the owner of a small casting and model agency, who saw a gap in the pop market and remortgaged his house to fund a British boy band to rival the waning American outfit, New Kids On The Block.

His first discovery was Gary Barlow, a 19-year-old who'd been singing and playing his keyboard on the working men's club circuit for five years. Crucially, he'd also been writing songs since his early teens.

Around Gary, Martin-Smith hired four good-looking young Northern men: Howard Donald, 21, a vehicle painter, model and DJ; Jason Orange, 19, a painter-decorator and dancer; Mark Owen, 16, a former child model; and Robbie Williams, also 16, the last to be found. "It was a weird place to try and grow up in," Mark says now. "That world is not a real world, is it?"

Initially the band promoted themselves by performing at gay clubs and under-18s discos. In September 1991, Take That signed to BMG for £75,000. Their first three singles flopped but in 1992, a cover version of Tavares' "It Only Takes A Minute" reached No.7 and they were away. Gary Barlow's ballad "A Million Love Songs" was next, followed by "I Found Heaven" and another cover, of Barry Manilow's "Could It Be Magic".

Their first album, Take That And Party, a mixture of Barlow-penned ballads and hi-energy dance tunes arrived, according to Smash Hits writer Sylvia Patterson, "like a silver brick through a teenage bedroom window".

Its sequel, Everything Changes, in 1993, produced four British No.1s and finally broke the band across Europe and Asia. Throughout that year, and on into 1994 and 1995, Take That were enormous. They were invited to tea with Princess Diana, they hung out with Elton John, they toured and performed and promoted relentlessly, accompanied by their ever-present screaming fans.

Their 1995 album Nobody Else was launched to huge fanfare, its Sgt Pepper-style cover reinforcing Take That's widely disseminated claim to be the biggest British band since the Beatles. "Back For Good" was their biggest single to date, No.1 in 31 countries and a hit in America, too.

It was around this time that Robbie Williams began to break ranks. In July 1995, he famously staggered across a Glastonbury stage during Oasis' set and shortly thereafter, he walked out.

"I had a night with Rob," says Mark. "We were in London and I remember staying up all night, talking and eating tuna sandwiches. It was the first time that he'd ever really said he was unhappy.

"The band was very regimented," continues Mark. "When we were rehearsing for a tour, it felt like being in boot camp. And as we got older, Rob started to notice things in the world that he found more interesting than being in the band. About six months after that night, he left."

For Gary, the memory of the early days is mostly happy, "probably because most things went my way". Howard, too, looks back fondly. "I think I have more positive memories than the others," he says. "I think at the time a lot of things went over my head. It's only with hindsight I was able to see how many things in the band were wrong. I don't think we looked after each other. We thought we did, and we thought we knew each other, but really we didn't know each other's inner feelings."

"I'm reticent about speaking negatively about Take That," says Jason. "Nothing makes me cringe more than reading a sob story from a pop star about how awful it all was. But there were so many things wrong about it. I think Robbie was very accurate with what he said: Take That was led by a hierarchy, there was lots of bullying going on. Robbie saw through the bollocks that comes with being in a band of our type, the hypocrisy and artifice of it all. He wanted to be more real and it's difficult to be anything but plastic in a manufactured boy band."

"I don't want to say clichés," he adds. "When Take That wasn't being ruled with an iron fist, when we weren't being divided in order that we could be conquered and therefore controlled, we were a real unit and I felt a genuine friendship."

"But being top of the charts, winning awards, that was always for other people. I didn't take gratification from it. I really didn't. I don't mean that in a modest way. For some reason, I just didn't feel it."

More than that, "I didn't feel involved, creatively or otherwise. I wasn't writing the songs, I was barely singing on them, I was the dancer. I went along with everything. I gave my power away, and that's the worst thing you can do."

Mark, too, felt insecure about his position. "Jason and Howard were definitely better movers than me," he says. "Gary was a better singer. Robbie was a better singer. I didn't feel like I was... I think I added something to the band... I don't know... I don't know what my role was... I was very, very fortunate, to be honest."

As for the dynamic within the group, "I don't think anybody ever felt we could actually lean on each other if there was a problem," says Mark. "If someone had a run-in with Nigel, we didn't back up our band member. We just all went a bit quiet. We didn't really know each other. We were more like workmates than friends. We thought we were friends, but we weren't really."

After Robbie left, the group continued as a four-piece until 13 February 1996, when they announced their split at a press conference in London. Take That's demise made the lead story on the BBC evening news and the Samaritans set up a special hotline for distraught fans. The group's final No.1 in that incarnation, a cover of the Bee Gees' "How Deep Is Your Love", accompanied a 1996 greatest hits collection, called Never Forget. In all, Take That sold more than 25 million records. None of the members ever expected to regroup.

It's a funny feeling, being screamed at. Or near, in my case. Especially after a 12-hour flight. As soon as we'd cleared immigration at Tokyo Narita, and made our way to the arrivals hall, it started. Take That are not that big in Japan (sorry, headline writers), but they used to be, and there are a lot of girls here, women now, who remember them. And those women make a lot of noise.

They race up to them at the airport, carrying cameras and signs saying, "We love Take That. Come back again please!" With what I will later come to see as typical graciousness, the band are happy to idle here, signing autographs, posing for photographs, chatting politely. One girl, unable to get to her favourite as he is bundled into the first of our convoy of grey Toyota minivans, gives me a carrier bag - "For Howard! For Howard!" - which I promise to pass on.

Later, when we unwrap the parcel, we find a teddy bear and a photo of what we guess to be the same girl and Howard together, 11 years previously. "It's different this time," he says, with mock chagrin. "Now all the presents are for our kids."

Take That are, to a man-boy, conscious of the slightly odd nature of their current situation. Are they a boy band? Are they a man band? Or are they just a grown-up pop group? Jason tells me that he heard Jonathan Ross on the radio saying that at the Brit Awards, Take That looked like "confused dads". "And I thought, fair enough. Because we are quite perplexed..."

Howard, as the oldest, has a particular interest in the question of ageing gracefully. "If we're still going in 2009," he says, "then I'll be 40, standing on stage, singing 'Babe'. Doesn't seem right that, does it?"

"Looks good though, Howard, for 45, doesn't he?" Gary asks an audience of bemused competition winners at the MTV Japan offices in Roppongi. They laugh uproariously, before one of them, apropos of very little, comes up with a question I wish I'd thought of myself. If you were a girl, she asks through a translator, which one of the band would you marry?

"I think Jason's the best looking," says Howard, gamely, "but I'd marry Gary - he's all cuddly."

"I'd love to be fucked off Howard," says Gary, to mild consternation from the international press officer. (He apologises to her later.)

"I think Gary," says Mark. "He's got loads of money. But I'd divorce him after two years and marry J."

"I think I'd go for a threesome," says Jason, diplomatically.

Once the questions from the floor are over, the MTV presenter, a curvy girl with bright orange bird's-nest hair and a matching tan, gets back to business. It's time for the old "Are you 'Back For Good'?" question. Followed by the time-honoured, "How did it feel being back on stage?" query.

Howard: "As we say in Manchester, we were shitting a brick."

The comedic potential in these Lost In Translation-style exchanges is not entirely wasted, and cautious hilarity is derived from the customary Japanese confusion between the English "r" and "l" sounds. (At one point, Howard tells me an anecdote from a mid-Nineties Take That trip to the country that ends with the memorable punch line: "Lobbie! Get in the rift!")

Take That are always generous and sincere with their interviewers (me especially), but further opportunities for silliness are occasionally too good to miss. Who are the best young bands in England at the moment, an earnest woman from a Japanese newspaper asks Mark. "There's a lad from Liverpool, what's his name? Macca something, he'll go far."

"And that young fella, Bob Dylan," adds Gary. "He's quite promising."

One incredibly long question, asked by a hipster from DNA Music, is translated as simply, "What's next?" Howard's carefully considered answer: "A tea break, I should think."

The four members of Take That were first reunited in 2005 to discuss the idea of a new greatest hits album, mooted by their then record label, Sony BMG. Then an ITV documentary was proposed to celebrate ten years since they split. To the others' surprise, Robbie Williams agreed to appear in the film, though not with the rest of the band. He recorded his interview separately, apologising for some of his past behaviour, particularly comments he'd made about Gary.

The documentary was a ratings winner and as a direct result, on 25 November 2005, Gary, Mark, Howard and Jason appeared at an official press conference to announce a British tour. They sold 560,000 tickets and the tour ran from April to June 2006, taking in 30 arenas and stadiums across the UK and Ireland. Again, Williams put in a virtual appearance, beamed at the audience as a 20-feet high pre-recorded hologram during performances of "Could It Be Magic".

Even at this stage, Mark and Jason in particular still had reservations. "I think it's fair to say I have an ambivalent relationship to fame," says Jason. Today, he still hesitates to say he's done the right thing by returning to the spotlight. "The answer is yes, I think I have done the right thing. But there is a 'but'. I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe it's just a feeling of, what goes up must come down again. Sometimes I do look at us and think we're going to get found out."

"Why did I do it?" wonders Mark. "I think we had to. After the documentary, the tour was not a question and after the tour, the record almost seemed inevitable."

On 9 May 2006, bowing to that inevitability, Take That signed a £3m deal with Polydor which, in what would turn out to be a very smart piece of business, had spirited them away from Sony BMG.

By this stage they had agreed, at Jason's insistence, but with the blessing of Mark and Gary and the acquiescence of Howard, not to pursue their association with Nigel Martin-Smith. Instead, they hired Mark's manager, Jonathan Wild, to look after their affairs.

That summer, they travelled to Los Angeles and co-wrote and recorded an album with the American producer John Shanks. "What was challenging," says Gary, "was we didn't even know what kind of music we'd make. What did people want from us? We never had a style before. It was just pop music. Do we go Justin Timberlake? Do we go country? Do we compete with Oasis? It could have been owt."

They settled, he says, on "classic English pop. And it all just fell into place. The album was dead easy to make. We knew quite early on that we'd cracked it."

The first single, "Patience", was released on 20 November 2006, and became Take That's ninth UK No.1 and a huge hit across Europe. The album, Beautiful World, came out two weeks later and also went straight to No.1, selling 1.5 million in the UK alone after just a month on sale. Happy days.

"The dynamic within the band now is completely different," says Mark. "We make the effort to talk. I think we can turn to each other now. We've got more in common and I think there's a lot more soul in us now.

None of us saw it coming. I don't think we even wanted it. It's not like one of us has been calling the others for years saying let's get back together. It was never going to happen. And now it's happening."

"This time I've really enjoyed everyone sharing decisions, discussing things," says Gary. "If we can move forward as friends and equals, then I think the world's our oyster. The important thing is not to fucking milk it. If we do another record, it'll be when we're ready. We've all got enough money."

On Valentine's Day this year, Take That played live at the Brit Awards and won the award for Best British Single for "Patience". On the same day, as almost no one failed to point out, Robbie Williams entered himself into rehab in America to battle an addiction to prescription drugs.

Two weeks later, Take That released "Shine", the second single from the album. The following Sunday, when we're all in Tokyo, Radio 1's afternoon chart countdown announces that "Shine" is Take That's tenth No.1 single. Mark, who is the lead vocalist on the track, wakes himself up at 3.30am to listen to the countdown over the internet, on his new laptop. "Might never happen again," he tells me the next day. "You've got to enjoy the moment."

The elephant in the room of the Take That story - this Take That story, and all the others - is an unusual specimen: burly, frequently bequiffed and covered in tattoos. His name is Robbie Williams.

Each member of the band has a different opinion on the likelihood of Robbie ever returning to Take That, in whatever way, and each, I sense, has a singular take on how desirable such a return might be.

Howard and Jason seem more sceptical, and less fussed, than Mark and Gary. "We don't know Robbie," Howard tells me. "I don't think it could ever be the five of us in Take That again. I don't know how that would work. It would be difficult for Robbie to come back into the band now, and difficult for us."

But neither Howard nor Jason, by their own admission, was ever particularly close to Robbie, while Mark was his best friend in the group, and Gary his nemesis. Unsurprisingly, it's Mark who seems most keen to have Robbie back in the band. Perhaps more unexpectedly, Gary seems keen too, at least in the abstract.

"I do feel very differently about him now," says Gary. "The place I'm at in my life now, as a 36-year-old bloke with kids, these things don't matter so much.

"Robbie's a much more interesting character than I am," he says. "He's wacky, he's off the wall, he's all the things I'm not. And all those things are what people love, and I accept that."

"My mates are worse," he says. "Every time anything good happens to me they go, 'Yeah, fuck Robbie!' I can't join in, me. I don't get any satisfaction whatsoever from that. I don't compare any of this that's happening to us against what's happening to him."

Interestingly, Gary feels at least some of the credit for Take That's triumphant return must go to Robbie. "If it wasn't for him going away and being successful for all those years, we wouldn't have got a look in now," he says. "He helped remind people that he was in a band called Take That once, and that's why initially we were able to come back and do this and be taken seriously. I really, really wish him the best now. I really do. And I've had contact with him. I've had e-mails and texts. But I'd like more, I guess. And I would like an opportunity to really talk about what happened nine years ago."

In England just before we left for Japan, there had been much speculation about the fact that just as Robbie's career seemed to dip, with poor reviews and unspectacular sales for his last album, Rudebox, so Take That were reborn as chart stars. It's ironic, isn't it, I tell Gary.

"Look," replies Gary, "He's had hits for ten years. We've now had one hit album and everyone's writing about how great we are. It's bizarre. But that's the media. Robbie understands that and we do. That's why it's not a problem."

Can he see a time when Take That will be a five-piece again? "I can on one hand, and on another, no, I can't. I can see a single or a one-off performance. But him here, today, doing this, no I can't imagine that. I think it'd be fun. But it's all the shit round it. We're working at a lower level. I don't think he could go back to that."

Having said all the above, Gary offers something telling: "I used to look at pictures and think, 'Oh, Rob's missing.' But not now."

CLICK ON THE NUMBERS BELOW TO READ ON

Mark does think there's something missing. He feels that Robbie is the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle. "We just need Rob to come back now," he says. "It's the last chapter isn't it, in a way? And I suppose it's the ultimate aim of all this. I think until Rob comes back and does an album or a tour with us, there's always a reason to carry on." I tell Mark that Howard and Gary believe that, simply for practical reasons, this is unlikely; that Robbie's success means it might feel like a backward step for him, rejoining Take That.

"But he'd laugh a lot if he did," says Mark. "Because it's fun. Sometimes I think Robbie would like to come and do it. Would he be able to? I don't know, contractually. But it would be great. I think our ideal, if we could have one and if there's a next record, is that he could get involved in the writing process of that, then come and tour with us. That would be perfect. I think he needs to come and do karaoke with us. I would love Rob to come back and I think, I think, I think he'd love it too."

Does Mark think it would help Robbie? He often seems in need of help, after all. He seems unhappy. "Is he unhappier than anyone else, or is it heightened?" asks Mark. "I don't know. A lot of people get depression. But there are a lot of people in this world who would kill to be in his position. He's not had a bad life, I don't think. "I know it's been a struggle for him and he's had conflict," continues Mark, "but I think he's done well. He became an inspiration to me, in a way. I know he's been going through a bad period. But I think he's dealt with it really well. He hasn't drank for years, he's not done drugs. I think that's great. If somebody said to me, you can't drink for a week, I'd be like, 'Fuck!'"

Have they spoken since Robbie's been in rehab? "No. I was shocked to hear the news that he'd gone in. I sent a message over and I got a response, just saying thanks for the message. I've heard through his people that he's OK. It's horrible because I hate talking about him. I don't think it's fair, really. But he is part of this story. I know that."

Robbie declined to be interviewed for this piece - to be fair, he'd only just come out of rehab while it was being prepared - but a member of his management team e-mailed that, "he remains in touch with [Take That] and is more than delighted with their success".

"Come on you boring bastards!" Howard Donald has come to collect me and Gary Barlow from our table in a Shibuya nightclub, where Gary is telling me about the fateful night in 1999 when he fluffed his performance at the legendary Arista boss Clive Davis' pre-Grammys party, and walked alone through pouring rain to his Manhattan hotel, conscious that his solo career was effectively over. It's a cracking story, but Howard's not in the mood for reflection.

It's karaoke time.

These, I think, will be my abiding images of Take That in Tokyo: Mark (white wine and water) offering a stirring rendition of "New York, New York", vagabond shoes and all; Howard (vodka and orange) pulling off an impressive "Hey Jude" without leaving his scatter cushion; Gary (Bacardi and Diet Coke) looking appropriately pained as the room lurches through a version of his most famous composition, "Back For Good"; Jason (ginger ale) cartwheeling across the room; and, yes, I'm afraid so, your correspondent (Cognac, for some unknown reason) wailing his own highly refreshed take on Elton John's "Rocket Man", with backing vocals from Messrs Barlow, Donald, Orange and Owen.

After the karaoke, we jump in a minivan and speed off in search of a better, louder, busier club. Topics under discussion along the way include: Is Clinton-Obama the Democrat dream team? (that subject introduced by security man James); will the London property bubble ever burst? (Jason); could 100 unarmed men take down a lion? (Jason again); and is a Komodo dragon effectively a dinosaur? (Gary). As we arrive in Shinjuku, Gary is embarking on a long disquisition on Sir Jimmy Savile. "Think about it," he shouts, incredulously. "An old man in a dressing gown, with a glass of whisky in one hand and an ashtray in the other, on children's TV. Fucking brilliant!" The nightclub is a sweaty, thrashing hydra of post-adolescent Japanese in skater gear.

We stand around for a bit, rather in the manner of Jonathan Ross' confused dads, trying to look enthusiastic, but frankly we're all a bit old for this. In fact, we're almost certainly the oldest people in the room. Anyway, it's gone 3am. I have to be in my hotel lobby in four hours to catch my ride to the airport and home, while Take That are off to Sydney, for another week's promotion. We say our goodbyes outside the club, hugs all round, and Gary, Howard, Mark and Jason head into the neon night in search of a late-night hamburger, maybe from the famous fast-food outlet known to Gary as "McDivans".

Are they back for good? Who knows? They're back for now, and that should be enough.

As Hiro might say, job's a good 'un.

Originally published in the August 2007 issue of British GQ.

Find out what happened when Take That won GQ's Band Of The Year Award and read GQ's interview with Robbie Williams.