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BRIT Awards viewers were left horrified after Robbie Williams’ famous chimp appeared to ‘snort drugs’ live on air during a chaotic skit.
The unexpected moment came as part of a comedy segment featuring the primate from Better Man, the Angels singer’s biopic.
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Host Jack Whitehall, 36, had poked fun at Robbie’s previous struggles with drug and alcohol addiction as he introduced Myles Smith’s performance.
The comedian made a series of quips about the hitmaker sending his mascot to events he didn’t want to attend, with a man in the chimp costume emulating drinking bottles of Champagne and taking drugs.
He said: “Oh no, sorry, that’s the monkey from Better Man. I had heard Robbie has been sending the monkey to quite a lot of events he can’t be a***d with.
“Last week it did Loose Women, Jonathan Wilkes’ birthday and date night with Ayda [Field]. I’ve also heard, unfortunately, that monkey has gone off the rails a bit since it got famous.”
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The scene escalated as he continued: “It was chucked off the ITV2 show earlier for snorting a line of PG Tips and chimping Ella Henderson.
“And I don’t even want to talk about the videos I saw of it on that night out with David Coote,” he added of the referee’s cocaine scandal.
Fans were quick to react on social media, with many in disbelief over what they had just witnessed.
One user wrote: “The f*****g monkey doing a line,” along with a skull emoji.
Someone else added: “The Robbie Williams Better Man monkey just did a line of coke off one of the tables at the #BRITs i-.”
A third said: “No way did they just have that monkey racking a line up.”
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Robbie previously revealed why he’s played by a chimp in the film, telling the BBC: “Quite often, Rob will say, ‘I’m just like a performing monkey,’ or, ‘I’m up the back like a performing monkey.’
“It just sparked this idea of, we’ve got this chance to tell this story, not from the perspective of how we see Rob, but how he sees himself.”
Having initially planned to play the monkey himself, Robbie explained why he changed his mind.
He said: “I was going to, but it involved me leaving my family for loads and loads of months. And the thought of that was just too much for me to bear.”
Robbie has long been open about his addiction battles.
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The Take That star previously told The Sun he was so high on drugs the first evening he spent with future wife Ayda at a party he was in a Jacuzzi “clucking like a chicken”.
But instead of heading for the hills, she moved in with him for three weeks to nurse him.
Robbie told the story in his 2017 book, Reveal.
The musical icon also talked about his issues with anxiety, weight, stage fright and addiction.
The book details how, at different times, he was taking morphine, Adderall (used to treat narcolepsy and ADHD), Vicodin (pain killer) speed, Seroquel (used for treating schizophrenia) and cocaine combined, magic mushrooms and “a few more things”.
He turned to drugs and “sat on a sofa, ate potato chips and chocolate, got fat and grew a beard”.
A friend thought it would be a good idea for Robbie to hook up with mutual friend and actress Ayda Field, now a presenter on Loose Women.
Author Chris Heath, who also collaborated with Robbie in 2004 on previous book Feel, wrote: “What the friend had told Rob, words that would mess with his head for a long time, was, ‘I’ve got a friend for you, she’s f***ing crazy but she might be fun for an evening’.”
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Robbie recalled: “I googled her, she was obviously very attractive. But I was also doing a lot of pills that were making me antisocial. So we had plans but I flaked.
“I left her a message days, weeks, later, and it made her laugh. We made plans to meet. But I wasn’t leaving my house, so she had to meet me there, which freaked her out a bit.”
On his preparation for the date, Robbie said: “A dealer had come round that I was sleeping with and she’d given me all these pills. So I’d slept with the dealer, taken a bunch of pills.”
Ayda, who had been at a party, was dropped off at Rob’s house. Robbie recalled: “Porsche door opens and out of the back seat clambers this girl. She’s wearing a dress with pockets and it makes her look frumpy, and my first thought was, ‘Oh, she’s put on a lot of weight’.
“In she came, and she’s had a few red wines. I don’t think the situation suited her, being at a stranger’s house, coming from a party.”
Robbie decided to escort her back to the party. He said: “It’s a tech party with tech people. It was like Revenge of the Nerds.
“So I got tucked into a lot of drugs. Anyway, I took a turn for the worse, because I started to cluck like a chicken.
“There was a moment in the Jacuzzi where Ayda had gone and got changed and she came in wearing this Ursula Andress bikini, and she had a killer body.
“So I was in the Jacuzzi with a very, very hot girl in Hollywood doing a Hollywood thing. But then I got ill, started to cluck, had to leave, embarrassingly.”
Ayda went with him — and stayed at his side for three weeks.
They married in 2010 and have become inseparable, with two kids — daughter Theodora “Teddy” Rose and son Charlton “Charlie” Valentine.
Robbie Williams’ wild love life
Robbie Williams has bragged about bedding fans and ‘can’t remember’ how many women he has slept with. But Robbie has had some rather high profile relationships, too.
Mel C: Spice Girl Mel found herself dating her teenage pin-up in 1997. But their romance was short-lived due to their busy schedules. Melanie later admitted in her memoir: “Nothing came of it, and it broke my heart.”
Nicole Appleton: Robbie’s relationship with All Saints star Nicole was so serious that they even got engaged. But it all came to a painful end in 1999. Nicole later admitted she had aborted their baby, claiming she was forced to by her record company. They then split. Nicole wrote in hers and sister Natalie’s book Together in 2002: “After having my abortion I was in shock. I couldn’t believe what I had done. I wanted to kill myself.”
Andrea Corr: Robbie reportedly hooked up with The Corrs’ Andrea Corr in 1999. He sent her 101 roses, asking: “What can I do to make you love me?Andrea allegedly replied with a spiky cactus and a note reading: “Entertain me.” Andrea later denied that they had dated.
Geri Halliwell: Robbie was first linked to Geri after she was seen leaving his home at 1am in 2000. They later confirmed their relationship while on holiday in the South of France. Robbie has since revealed he ditched Geri after being told she was tipping off the press about their relationship – which was completely untrue.
Nicole Kidman: Robbie and Nicole were rumoured to have dated in 2001 after they duetted on Somethin’ Stupid. Both remained tight-lipped, although Robbie has since said of the claims: “As Bill Clinton would say, I never had any relationship with any of these women.”
Rachel Hunter: Robbie was quick to move in on model Rachel following her split with Rod Stewart. The pair dated for 10 months in the early noughties and it was the real deal. Rachel later admitted: “He was a very big love of my life.”
Kylie Minogue: Robbie was romantically linked to Aussie pop star Kylie in 2002. The pair had recorded a hit single together and were rumoured to be dating. He has since admitted he “messed it up” by failing to act cool around her. When asked if anything happened, Robbie said: “Not as much as I wanted to be unfortunately.”
Cameron Diaz: This one lasted as quickly as it had begun. The pair were spotted snogging on the beach in California in 2003…but it seemed to go no further.
Lindsay Lohan: In 2006, Robbie was linked to US star Lindsay Lohan. The pair struck up a friendship in rehab. Neither have confirmed if it went any further than just pals, however.
Ayda Field: Robbie finally settled down and married The One in 2010. He had met actress Ayda four years earlier and stopped sowing his seed elsewhere. The couple now have four children together and she laughs about his wild past. Speaking in his podcast, Robbie said: “Ayda says that every time we turn on the TV there’s a woman I’ve slept with, and it’s true. Luckily she has a great sense of humour. What happened before we met doesn’t interest her.”
