INTERVIEW

Robbie Williams’s wife Ayda: ‘It was hard to watch him drunk and slurring’

As the singer’s new Netflix documentary reveals, his life had gone off the rails until one woman saved him. Ayda Field Williams explains why she sacrificed her promising Hollywood career for love

Ayda Field and Robbie Williams in 2015: “It took me by surprise how uncomfortable it made me to see him with other women”
Ayda Field and Robbie Williams in 2015: “It took me by surprise how uncomfortable it made me to see him with other women”
GETTY IMAGES
The Sunday Times

Ayda Field Williams is still reeling after binge-watching the four-episode documentary about her husband last night. “I woke up and said, ‘Rob, I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck,’” she says, looking perky nonetheless. “I definitely cried several times. I went through all sorts of rollercoasters of emotions.”

It’s hard to know where to begin with the Netflix Robbie Williams deep dive: his drug addiction, his depression, his Take That divorce or his doomed romance with Ginger Spice. There is, thankfully, some happy stuff in there too. The documentary is 208 minutes of Williams curled up in bed in his Los Angeles mansion, watching seemingly endless footage of his superstar life in the Nineties and early Noughties.

In one painful section he watches