The Ego soars in first solo flight

Robbie Williams lands in Canada with a Brit reputation to back him up

Robbie Williams, Britain's pop star of-the-moment, appears to be a born performer.

Of course, having an audience helps.

And in this case -- during an interview yesterday in a Toronto hotel room where Williams is stretched out on a couch while enjoying the first of several smokes -- there's me, whom he jokingly calls "his therapist," and his cousin, Jonathan.

"He's jolly good company and he's a damn good shag!," said Williams, 25, of having Jonathan around.

Ostensibly, Williams -- winner of three Brit Awards last month -- is here to promote his first solo album in Canada. The cheekily-titled The Ego Has Landed will be released Tuesday and is actually a collection of songs from Williams' first two U.K. releases. It's already been shipped gold here (50,000 copies) due in no small part to the strength of the first single, Millennium. It's a frothy confection of pop, hip-hop and classical that borrows the John Barry-composed strings from the James Bond theme You Only Live Twice. The eye-catching video also features Williams, a dark, good-looking lad with intense green eyes and a mischievous smile, as Bond, right down to the retro black tux and bow tie.

"The biggest thrill for me wasn't getting a No. 1 in England," said Williams, "it was selling 40,000 albums in New Zealand 'cause I've never been there in my life. And no one knows me there, but they bought it 'cause they like the music. And I think that's what's happening in Canada."

Williams has actually been to Toronto once before, "in a previous life," in the early '90s when he was a member of British boy band Take That, a group that was huge in England but never really translated across the pond.

"Thank God," commented Williams, who was either fired or quit the group, depending upon who you ask, amid a "booze-and-drugs" controversy. "I think that I won't have to deal with the preconception that people have of me in England."

Which is? Well, actually, it's changed.

In the initial post-Take That days, "everything I did was s---," said Williams. "And then everything I did was absolutely brilliant, even by the same papers that said it was s---."

Williams said the idea of him as a "walking, drunken, shagfest, nasty bastard" changed after a number of appearances, including his inspired duet with his hero, Tom Jones, at the 1998 Brit Awards -- in which he wore black leather pants, sans underwear.

"So many people are so f---ing worried about how cool they've got to look, or their image, which is fine if you take it that seriously, and I get lots of enjoyment out of lots other bands," said Williams, whose throwback style of showmanship is refreshingly different. "But my life and the way I go around, I'm not doing art. It's 'F--- it! C'mon! Get out of your seat! Have a good time!' And I'm not scared of looking like a prat."

Now Williams, who's had an on-again, off-again engagement to All Saints member Nicole Appleton, can't walk down the streets of London without being followed by TV cameras.

"It's like The Truman Show," he said. "It's really pretty suffocating and it's very scary and it makes you go a bit mad because your grip on reality gets a bit looser."

So how is he dealing with it?

"I don't," said Williams. "I'm not dealing with it very well at the minute. No, not at all. I'm not on about drink or drugs or anything like that -- I can get them at any time I want them -- just my general mental well-being at the minute is suffering a little bit."

Which makes you wonder if success in North America is what Williams really and truly wants.

"I'm in a Catch-22 situation where I think my ego is much bigger than the timid side of me that just wants to run away and hide," he said. "It's just like, I think you cut yourself just to see how much it hurts, which is a weird way to look at it. And I'm not of good mind. I don't see why anybody at all, with the sort of attention that I've got in England, would want to have that all the way around the world. Yet I'm here. I'm promoting my album and I've come to do what I've got to do. And it is s--- scary man. I'm scared to death."