Robbie phones home

"Shhh! I seen a black triangle!"

Robbie Williams loves UFOs. He can’t get enough of them. And during his self-imposed exile in Los Angeles over the past few years he became an almost full-time UFO fancier, frequenting spooky websites and taking trips to Area 51 and the like and having several sightings of his own.

The UK tabloids loved it, painting him as a modern era Howard Hughes (admittedly the Grizzly Adams beard he grew – apparently inspired by a post-Beatle Paul McCartney – didn’t help); isolated, rich and crazy.

Sadly it’s now all over, with Sir Bob moving back to the UK and announcing, via his website, that he has decided to take a break from UFO watching so he can release a long-awaited new album. While I am delighted by the prospect of finally having some new material from him (he’s currently recording with legendary producer Trevor Horn), I am sad it has put a halt to his plan for an alien-themed TV show. (Yes, really)

The LA move came after the lukewarm reception to his last album Rudebox (which I have to say I really quite like) and he decided to disappear for a while.

“I looked for something else to do, something not to do with music,” he writes on his blog. “As you probably now know I’ve always been fascinated with the paranormal (and the people that surround it), still am, so I tried to make some in-roads and thought I’d maybe do a TV show with a paranormal theme, something like the Arthur C Clark shows that I loved as a kid (Arthur C Clark backed with Tales Of The Unexpected can really make for a terrifying Sunday when you’re eight). That's what the UFO thing was all about. But that’s been shelved for the time being on the grounds of I couldn’t really be arsed.”

Robbie proves his identity to fellow posters on UFO and conspiracy site Above Top Secret

The show would be worth seeing if only to hear Robbie tell the stories of his own close encounters.

“I was at the Beverly Hills Hotel and I was lying on my sun lounger outside at night, looking up,” he says of his first close contact. “Then, about 300 foot above me, there was this square thing which just passed over my head silently and then shot off.”

But the “square thing” wasn’t Bob’s only run-in with UFOs. Oh no. His love of the paranormal and relocation to the US had made him a veritable magnet for strange floaty things.

“The next one was the weirdest one yet. I'd just written a song called ‘Arizona’, and it's all about alien contact and I was playing that,” he pips. “I stood on the balcony and there was this big ball of gold light that turned up - we thought it was Venus or Mars or something. Then the song stops playing and it disappears. But then we put ‘Arizona’ on again and the ball turned back up. It happened four times. After that a massive electrical storm started and these two big massive balls of light started dancing in the sky. It was like a whole light show for about an hour."

It doesn’t end there kiddies! Course not. The aliens (it should be pointed out that Robbie never says they are aliens, and rather UFOs. I just felt a need to mention aliens as it seems more alarmist) love his music so much they even visited him in the recording studio in the form of a “big strip of black light”.

“It was three inches thick and it shot from one end of the room out of the window,” he chirrups. “It's absolutely bonkers. It’s something to do with LA.”

Now he’s remembered he’s a pop star it may be some time before we hear more alien (sorry, UFO) shenanigans from Sir Bob. I just hope to see some spooky flying shapes should he perform “Arizona” at his next concert.

Scott Keenan
I seen a UFO but nobody believes me o'clock