the times Saturday December 4 2021Body + Soul 9
TOMO BREJC; TIM RONEY/GETTY IMAGESHe loves a Christmas party. “Everyone
makes fun of my dancing, but I couldn’t
care who’s watching — I’m straight on the
dancefloor as soon as Earth Wind & Fire
come on.”
Christmas Day for him will be spent at
the family’s Cotswolds home with his wife,
Dawn Andrews, and children — Dan, 21,
Emily, 19, and Daisy, 12. “There’ll be a
turkey — all the traditional stuff. You don’t
mess with Christmas,” he says.
Barlow keeps grafting — albeit with
much enjoyment (he has just done a stint
as a judge on Simon Cowell’s new talent
show Walk the Line) — not only so he has
the means to play music, but also to give
his children an idyllic life. “The reason I’m
still here, wearing that sparkled shirt, is I
want them to have a good life,” he says. “I
have an extraordinary life that takes me to
places and lets me meet people you never
dream of. If they can enjoy some of those
thrills — come on board.”
Barlow’s equanimity is boosted by his
22-year marriage to Andrews, a former
Take That backing dancer. “I found the
right person in an industry where there’s a
lot of wrong people,” he says. “We’re a
pretty traditional couple: I’m the one who
goes to work, and my wife was happy giv-
ing up her job to bring up our kids. She’sI’ve never, ever
been cool in my life
The singer Gary
Barlow tells Julia
Llewellyn Smith
about his 22-year
marriage and
being a bad dancer
L
ike many of us, Gary Barlow is
looking forward to Christmas
with muted optimism. “We’re
playing Aberdeen tonight and
people are getting on with it,”
says the singer-songwriter,
who is in the middle of a solo
nationwide tour. “They’re having a good
time, but it is a bit worrying with all this
[omicron] doubt. I had a pang last night
watching the news, thinking, ‘Oh, please!
Don’t take everyone’s Christmas.’ ”
This aside, Barlow, 50, has the relaxed
aura of a man utterly at one with the world.
He became a boy band heart-throb 30
years ago as one fifth of Take That and
went on to sell more than 50 million
records, write 13 UK No 1 singles and win
six Ivor Novello awards. Yet this sense of
confidence, he says, only came to him
about three years ago. “The more years
under my belt, the more at ease I’ve been
with everything,” he says. “It means I didn’t
mind turning 50 at all.”
For years he was tormented by chart
placings and ticket sales. “It’s a funny place,
the music industry,” he continues in his
native Cheshire tones. “You never, ever
feel like your position within it is perman-
ent. But now my ambition is not for any
particular point, it’s just to continue.
I could probably say semi-confidently I
could do this for ever now and there’d be a
little audience there for me. That’s all I’d
need. And I’ve fought my way out of bad
times and I don’t think it could ever be so
bad again.”
After Take That split in 1996 Barlow
anticipated a glittering solo career, only to
be eclipsed by his former bandmate
Robbie Williams. Barlow’s second solo
album flopped and his record label
dropped him. But he clawed his way back,
masterminding two hugely successful
Take That reunions (one including Willi-
ams) and writing for everyone from Shirl-
ey Bassey and Elton John to Lily Allen.
Today he is estimated to be worth about
£90 million and has been voted Britain’s
greatest songwriter in a OnePoll survey.
Music Played By Humans, the album he
put together during lockdown, went
straight into the charts at No 1, and now he
has released a Christmas album, which he
began working on last year, when families
were separated for the festive season. “It
was a pretty rubbish Christmas; this was
my little antidote,” he says.
It consists of classics mixed with his own
compositions, including the new single
How Christmas Is Supposed to Be, a duet
with the musical theatre doyenne Sheri-
dan Smith, accompanied by a video featur-
ing Fair Isle jumpers and snowball fights.
It’s definitely more Shakin’ Stevens than
Barlow’s personal Christmas favourite,
Fairytale of New York by the Pogues and
Kirsty MacColl (“You don’t bother going
near that. That is perfect!”), but then
Barlow isn’t looking for street cred.
“Throughout my whole life I’ve never,
ever been cool — I wasn’t cool at school or
as a teenager,” he says. “It’s just never been
part of my world. I’ve always loved main-
stream music so it’s never been something
I’ve chased. The one thing I chase is being
successful.”never hit me over the head with, ‘You’re
never here, so what do you know?’ We just
love each other a lot.”
Do they argue? “We don’t. My mum and
dad were the same — they were 43 years
married and I never heard an argument in
our house. I know it’s unusual, but we’re
just very laid-back people — we look after
each other.” Seeing I can’t take any more of
the gloop, Barlow adds: “But the kids’ argu-
ments fill the gap. It’s no fairy doll’s house
we live in.
Dawn andI have come to the conclusion that toddlers
and kids are easy, but teenagers... ”
Still, the worst is almost behind them.
Dan is at university and Emily is about to
follow, so there is only one child left at
home. “And she goes off on play dates for
two or three nights, so Dawn and I are
rediscovering each other,” Barlow says.
“It’s really nice. We go out to dinner on
Friday night and on to a bar — it’s really
getting back to how it was before kids.”
Andrews supported him throughout
his bleakest post-Take That times when,
with his career in the doldrums, he
comfort-ate, at one point reaching 17st,
before succumbing to bulimia. It took the
chefs-to-the-glitterati sisters Jasmine and
Melissa Hemsley to persuade him to quit
the Canderel and low-fat snacks for non-
processed, locally sourced foods. “They
said it wasn’t about eating healthily, it was
about eating real food,” he says. “It’s so
incredibly simple — it sounds stupid, but it
was a piece of education I’d totally missed.
My kids know all about health. I wish I’d
known the same at their age.”
The son of a warehouseman, Barlow
grew up in a place and era in which only
hippies worried about diet. “They used to
make fun of Paul McCartney’s vegetarian-
ism — look at the age he is now [79], and
he’s still like a 19-year-old playing the
guitar.” Today, not only does Barlow cram
in the wholefoods, he also practises inter-
mittent fasting, restricting meals to a six-
hour window, and meditates and does
yoga three times a week. “Men need to
stretch,” he says. “They call the fifties for
men ‘snipers’ alley’ — it’s when you’ve got
to claw back a bit of the damage you did
when you were younger.”
It’s a very metrosexual outlook, I say, at
which Barlow looks faintly aghast. “For a
long time I thought I was too northern for
any of this. But the world’s changing.”
Do his Gen Z offspring preach this
message? “They are so far more advanced
than we were in our late teens,” he says.
“You see an evolution in your very own
front room. It’s beautiful.”
But this is the generation so often
dismissed as snowflakes. “I agree with that
as well,” Barlow says with a smirk. “Their
upbringing has been completely different
to mine. You could be a miserable old
northerner like I am and go, ‘When I was
a kid... ’ but that’s the way we brought
them up. When you really sit and listen to
their opinions, they’re the right ones.”
How Christmas Is Supposed to Be is out
now. Walk the Line starts on ITV on
December 12Gary Barlow’s
perfect weekend
Tinsel or minimalist decoration?
Tinsel
Diet or exercise?
Often I don’t eat anything before about
2pm. The amount of energy and the
amount of sharpness you have when
you do this is incredible
Champagne or cocktails?
Cocktails — I love negronis and
Manhattans
What’s your signature dish?
I make a really good curry
Shop-bought canapés or cook it all
from scratch?
All from scratch
Free-range parent or disciplinarian?
Free-range. I’m a pushover — they get
away with murder when mum’s away
I couldn’t get through the weekend
without...
Wine. I have my own wine brand and
we’re making a rosé at the moment,
so I’m tasting a lot of those — it’s awful
work, but someone has to do itGary Barlowh
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we live in.
Dawn andw l a m t “ f d a u t n a t t H n DTake That in the early
1990s. From left, Robbie
Williams, Jason Orange,
Howard Donald, Gary
Barlow and Mark Owen