Williams to publicly apologise to Nigel Martin-Smith

News, Records

Nigel Martin-SmithRobbie Williams is to issue an apology in court to former Take That manager Nigel Martin-Smith over claims in a song that he stole money from the band.

The multi-millionaire pop star is also expected to pay damages and legal costs running into six figures. A hearing at the High Court on Wednesday will bring to an end a long-running feud between the two. Manchester music mogul Martin-Smith put Take That together and made them into one of the biggest-selling pop groups in history. But after Williams suddenly quit in 1995, Martin-Smith successfully sued him for breach of contract. Williams last year released the album Rudebox. One of the tracks, The 90s, claimed Martin-Smith ripped off Take That over tour payments and detailed how Williams fantasised about gouging out his eyes.

He was forced to re-record the song after Martin-Smith instigated legal proceedings shortly after the album’s release in October 2006. Wrangle

After a long legal wrangle, Williams’ lawyers are expected to read a statement in London’s High Court including an apology to Martin-Smith on behalf of the singer. It is expected to say that he did not intend the lyrics to be taken seriously or as representative of the views he holds about Take That’s former manager. Williams’ solicitor, Keith Ashby from London firm Sheridans, refused to comment.

But Martin-Smith, speaking exclusively to the M.E.N, revealed: “Robbie has agreed to make a public apology and will pay damages. That will be the end of the matter.”

It also emerged that Williams could have avoided paying substantial damages if he had agreed to meet Martin-Smith face to face.

Martin-Smith revealed: “I told Robbie I didn’t want damages and that I would happily waive them if he would meet me face to face to chat about what has happened and put all this negativity behind us.

“I said we should just be friends again. But he refused to meet me. I then said I would accept him giving me a written undertaking to read a letter I would have written setting out my thoughts on everything that had happened. But he refused once again.

“So now he has to pay me damages. It’s a real shame it has come to this.”

… And more:

NIGEL Martin-Smith leans back in his chair and looks around at the gold and platinum Take That discs decorating the walls of his Manchester office.

He’s trying to sum up how he feels now his long-running legal dispute with Robbie Williams is about to come to an end.

“Robbie’s just upset,” he says with a shrug of his shoulders. “They say there’s nothing worse than a woman scorned, but there is – the worst thing is a pop star scorned.

“You tell a little boy they can walk on water and they think they can. Then, for someone to say they are wrong…”

It’s no secret that pop svengali Nigel and his erstwhile protégé do not see eye to eye.

The rumours started all those years ago when Robbie dropped out of Take That. But this week’s apology to Nigel – to be read out in the High Court on Wednesday by Robbie’s lawyers – marks a particularly dramatic finale to what has been one of the longest-running feuds in modern pop history.

As for when that feud started, Nigel can’t pinpoint exactly what made the eager teenager from Stoke, who turned up with his mum for an audition, turn against him.

Talk

“The Manchester Evening News ran this piece saying I was putting together the UK’s answer to New Kids On The Block – that’s why he came to see me with his mum,” recalls Nigel. “He had lots of talent. I thought, `Let’s get his mum out of the office and we can talk’.”

The act he was creating was Take That, and Robbie was a dead cert to make it with his cheeky attitude. As for the rest of the band, he says it all came together quite by accident during those heady days in 1990.

Mark Owen had been picked out from modelling classes after his cute looks had left girls in the class weak at the knees; Howard Donald was also doing a bit of modelling alongside his vehicle-spraying job, while Jason Orange has been spotted dancing on The Hitman And Her.

Gary Barlow turned up with a shock of bleached blond hair and a cassette of songs he was touring around miners’ welfare clubs in Wigan, and the rest is pop history.

A week today, four of those young boys – now grown up and reunited as Britain’s most famous “man band” – make a triumphant return to the city that made them for a record-breaking 11 concerts at the M.E.N. Arena, with little hope of Robbie joining for the encore.

As far as Nigel is concerned there was a rift from the beginning.

Even in those early days, rehearsing in the Peaches Dance Studio in Manchester’s Northern Quarter – “it was cheap, £10 a day, cash,” laughs Nigel – there were signs that all was not well.

“We had a year of dancing and singing lessons,” he explains. “I took them to this dance studio to rehearse. They were there to dance but that’s when I had all the run-ins with Robbie.

“He was out smoking fags and turning up late.”

Whatever was going on behind the scenes, all the rest of the world saw was a massive hit.

Before long, the fab five ruled the charts, thanks in no small part to a semi-naked video. But it’s Robbie’s suggestions of what life inside Take That was like that really caused the rift and Nigel has little time for tales of hardship.

Champagne

“He had the time of his life,” he laughs. “He had all the girls he wanted – I was organising the champagne for the girls in his room and paying the bills.

“He created this idea that I was horrible to him but he doesn’t say what it was I did. Did I lock him in a cage or stick pins in his eyes?

“I asked my lawyer if I could sue him. He said `no’, but that one day he would cross the line. When he did, I said to throw the book at him.” Today, with costs and damages adding up to a six-figure sum and an apology coming his way from the man who was, for a time, the biggest British solo artist in the world, Nigel is philosophical.

Yes, he agrees, mud does stick and he’s well aware of the opinion some people must have of him.

In truth, it’s hard to marry that almost mythical tough pop mogul image with the chirpy guy sitting having a friendly gossip over tea and biscuits.

Full of tales of his two-up, two-down upbringing in Didsbury, above his mum’s hair salon, he’s still sure he’s got the Midas touch when it comes to making and shaping a band. But, after all the bitterness and recrimination, would he really want to do it all again?

“Gary is like my younger brother. But I sometimes wonder could I manage them now? Last time they were in Manchester, they asked me to go back stage, but I just saw the show and left.

“I gave them a career and they ran with it,” he adds. “Then politics comes into it, other people get involved and the wheels come off.” (copyrights: Manchester Evning News)

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4 comments

  • Nigel is a criminal of the sickest type, the type that don’t make it long in prison, It’s a shame Robbie and Take that and the music companies have to keep the truth about Mr Nigel from the world and the tragedy that Nigel is being given a payment instead of a prison sentence is proof of the Injustice that exsists in the world today.

    In fact if not for Robbie and take thats talent back in the 90’s Nigel would have been charged and improsined for many sick crimes besides theft, however as a result of Take that and Robbies future potential NIgel escaped punishemnt and prosecution, so as not to cause scandal.

    Keep your children away from Nigel and your money, he is not above using thugery and violence to get what he wants and that is your cash and your kids.

    Take me to court Nigel—-Jo-Michelle

  • As for the way he treated the members of Take that, Don’t believe a word they earned their right to success for the cruel and unusual punsihments and abuse Nigel dished out in their early years, This man deserves to go to prison…….

    Nigel is guilty and should be exposed for the animal he is, Still to this day he is riding on their success and still taking any opportunity to hurt them and take money from them…….

    the conditions he kept those boys in was disgusting and the way he dominated and abused them was worse than human slavery….

    It must be very painfull them to have to put up with this nonsense so many years later.

    Nigel-One day-Nigel

  • what made Robbie turn against him- Really Nigel you have to ask, you are such a creep, you are not only a thief but you are a liar and your like all peadophiles still trying to harm your victims, if no tphysically then emotionally, how disgusting you are, you never allowed the boys to entetrtain girls, you told me how jealous you were of them and how you wanted them all to yourself, and the rooms you put them up in the DIVES you booked them into, you couldn’t fit another person in those rooms, they don’t serve champagne in the dumps you booked for them, they didn’t have room service…….

    Their all grown up now, not to your taste anymore, and while you may be able to still use the memory of your disgusting brutality and abuse against them to hurt them, you will be exposed, enjoy your cash Nigel you will need it to find a rock to hide under

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