Robbie Williams wants to go back to school and re-sit his GCSEs

Robbie Williams is looking to head back to school and hit the books, he has revealed.

READ MORE: Robbie Williams and director Michael Gracey on their bananas, CGI monkey- featuring biopic ‘Better Man’: “It’s healing”

Williams, who joined Take That at the age of 16 while preparing for the GCSEs, has shared in a new chat with The Sun that he’s been weighing his options in re-sitting for his exams, having left school without any qualifications.

He told the publication: “I’ve been wanting to set up a university but, actually, I wouldn’t be able to attend if and when I do, because I didn’t get any GCSEs. I got nothing higher than a grade D, and everything else I failed or I didn’t turn up for. I really want to go back and get them.”

He continued, explaining that he hadn’t been diagnosed with dyslexia, dyscalculia and ADHD at the time: “All my life I’ve felt really stupid because we didn’t know about ­dyslexia in the seventies and eighties in Stoke-on-Trent. I’ve got dyslexia, dyscalculia, ADHD, but we didn’t have those then, so I left school thinking I was a dumb-dumb and it’s taken ages to get over that. And now I just wanna go and prove a few people wrong — I’m not thick. Now that I’ve said that, I’m shitting myself…  maybe I am!”

Besides wanting to re-sit his GCSEs, Robbie Williams is also entertaining the though of a TV show about his journey back to school: “I can’t remember my English teacher’s name, but I was thinking there might be an interesting TV show in it, where I have to go back to school… but obviously in an age- appropriate way.”

Williams revealed his numerical dyslexia diagnosis in 2020, causing him to be unable to do simple math equations and has had a larger effect on his daily life: “I always get in trouble because I don’t know my kids’ birth dates and I don’t know our anniversary and I don’t know my wife’s birthday. I can’t even remember our house in Los Angeles. It has four digits for the start of the address and I can’t ever remember what those digits are.”

Despite his dyslexia, ADHD and poor education, Williams has made a success of himself, turning his time with Take That into a formidable solo career that has spanned decades. He’s now the subject of the biopic Better Man, where he’s portrayed as a CGI monkey.

Speaking to NME about the film, Williams reflected on seeing his life story depicted on film: “Tears. And triggering. And grief. And healing. And ego. And: ‘Look at what’s happened to me!’. It just depends on which version of me turns up for the screening on that particular day – and how much sleep I’ve had.

“At the minute, I just wanna take all of this in. I wanna drink every moment that I can, because I’m now in a place where I can derive joy from life. I couldn’t derive any joy from life for such a long time. And I feel as though I’m getting lucky again and I’m getting another bite of the apple.”

In a three-star review of Better Man, Jordan Bassett wrote for NME: “Better Man begins like a John Lewis ad and swerves into an R-rated hodgepodge that somehow does too much while also barely skimming the surface of Robbie Williams’ career. This is ‘Rudebox’ on film: some of it good, some of it very bad, all of it a bit of a mess. Still, the monkey musical is a big swing that no-one else would have taken. You can’t fault the chutzpah or the ambition. If it makes back its reported budget, we’ll eat $110m worth of bananas.”

The post Robbie Williams wants to go back to school and re-sit his GCSEs appeared first on NME.

Robbie Williams wants to go back to school and re-sit his GCSEs

Robbie Williams wants to go back to school and re-sit his GCSEs

Robbie Williams wants to go back to school and re-sit his GCSEs

Robbie Williams wants to go back to school and re-sit his GCSEs

Robbie Williams wants to go back to school and re-sit his GCSEs