INTERVIEW:Take That are all grown up - one of them has already hit 40 - but, as they prepare for a tour that will take in Croke Park next summer, they haven't forgotten how to turn on their boyish charm or belt out their brand of boy-band pop, they tell Fiona McCann
WHAT WOULD DRIVE a handful of hacks to board a flight to London in the early morning, pile out of Heathrow airport into the back of a taxi, crawl through city traffic to a posh hotel where they will spend less than an hour, climb into a taxi back to Heathrow and take off for Dublin again? Fifteen minutes with Take That is what. Or 14 minutes and 22 seconds, to be precise. It may not sound like long, but it only takes a minute, girl.
Despite the hype and the flurry of jealous messages from friends when they found out about my upcoming assignation at the Soho Hotel, and the whole jetting-across-the-water-for-a-quarter-of-an-hour thing, nothing has quite prepared me for the moment when I come face to face with the biggest pop sensations of the Nineties - and now the Noughties, too.
Walking - or, more precisely, being escorted by a gaggle of female minders - into their spacious hotel room, it becomes clear that this is not the tete-a-tete I had been expecting. With managers, assistants, PR people and journalists abounding, it is initially hard to even spot the talent in the throng. It takes me more than a minute to realise that the boyish figure hovering to my left as I was swept through the room was none other than a delightfully self-effacing Mark Owen being squeezed into the bathroom by the entering entourage. Small and smiling under a pushed-back fedora, he introduces himself almost abashedly, as if he and I are spectators rather than participants in this bizarre media circus.
By then the piercing blue eyes of Howard Donald have swum into focus, as he and Jason Orange bear loftily down, all chiselled of jaw and shiny of teeth. Gary Barlow is suddenly before me, too, as the crowds part and, one by one, the four pop princes shake hands and smile their dazzling, money-raking smiles while asking after my health in the most incongruously unglamorous Mancunian accents. "All right, yeah?" More than all right, thank you, Messrs Pop Legends.
There's a lot of milling around the ludicrously large hotel room until, after a very obliging photo shoot with me, the foursome split, with Howard and Jason retiring to the sofas for one interview. I'm corralled into another corner with Gary and Mark - or, given that they're now all grown up, Barlow and Owen - though both look remarkably fresh-faced and boyish, as if being a member of the quintessential boy band comes with a Peter Pan ticket to an age-free existence.
They may be older, with Mark the baby of the band, at 36, while Grandpa Howard has already hit 40, but they're raring to go, having just announced a stadium tour to promote their next album, The Circus, an apt title considering the furore that seems to follow them even into hotel rooms. "I don't want us to lose that," says Barlow when I mention that they may have outgrown the boy-band title. "It makes me feel young," Owen chips in, adding that it'll "all be over" the day they lose their defining epithet. "It has come up, but we keep sort of patting it back down," he says, laughing and gesturing over his shoulder as if to keep the years at bay.
The tour includes a hotly anticipated Croke Park appearance, which the two lads proudly announce will be their biggest show. "It's going to be a gig and a half," Owen says with glee, clearly unconcerned about the physical demands of such an undertaking. "In the old days we used to do backflips to Gary singing A Million Love Songs," he says. "Now we've found a way to move only when required."
Barlow is quick to step in and give a less self-deprecating reason for any changes in how they perform. "The design of the show is different," he says. "The new material is not really music you dance to, so you come up with a new flavour." A new flavour so, and new music to boot, but doesn't it feel different being on the road now, compared with touring as the teenagers they were when it all began, almost 20 years ago? "It does feel different," says Barlow. "The first time round I don't know about everyone else, but I was very blase to it all. I sort of took it for granted a bit." He strikes a serious, almost reverent tone. "This time round I just feel quite privileged."
You can see why, given how things have turned around for this Manchester foursome. After huge success as a five-piece boy band, producing a string of number ones and stealing the hearts of a generation of teenage girls, it all seemed to go a bit Pete Tong for Take That, with the departure of Robbie Williams precipitating the break-up of the band in 1996. While Williams rocketed to superstardom, attempts at solo careers by Barlow and Owen did not lead to similar world domination, though they did clock up a few chart-topping singles, something Donald didn't manage with his own solo effort, while Orange, like a good lad, went back to college instead. It seemed that, apart from occasional requests for comment on reported tiffs with Williams, the other members of Take That were to be consigned to the also-ran pop pile.
That all changed in 2006, when, 10 years after their split, the foursome reunited for an 11-date arena tour to promote a greatest-hits album and bravely took to the stage without their famous fifth member. The fans couldn't get enough. Buoyed by their touring success, Take That got together for a whole new album, Beautiful World, which sold more than two and a half million copies in the UK alone, making it their most successful record to date.
With a new album, and some seriously catchy new tunes, such as Patience and Shine, to promote, Take That hit the road again. "I had the best time ever," Barlow says of the Beautiful World tour. "There wasn't one show that I went on and thought, oh no, we've got to do this again." His only regret was that they didn't play Dublin, a point that leads to some confusion as Owen interjects: "Have you finished the point?" I wave my Dictaphone back in his direction. "Not if you want to chip in," I answer politely, not wanting Owen to feel he didn't get his share of the 15 minutes. "No, but have you finished the point?" I'm not sure if he's thick or just plain rude, so I make it clear that I will stay on the point if he really wants to make one himself. He turns in equal confusion to Barlow: "It is called the Point, isn't it?" Oops. We all have a grand old laugh as he kindly explains that the reason Dublin was overlooked last time was because the closure of the Point left them without a suitable venue. This time, Take That make clear, there will be no such oversight.
They're so disarmingly polite in covering my gaffe that I have to keep reminding myself that I'm talking to sex symbols. "I keep reminding my wife about that," Barlow laughs when I mention that many would consider them such. "I tell her: 'Eh, I'm a sex symbol. Just remember that, girl.' But she will not have it." Owen is equally self- effacing. "I keep mentioning that I got best haircut of the 1993 Smash Hitstour," he says, which apparently gets him nowhere with his other half. "When we get home it's all back to normal."
Back to normal for Owen involves pottering down to the studio at the end of his garden, where he "tinkers around" with songwriting, or heading into the studio to work with his colleagues, where, he assures me, they write the songs collaboratively. Given that songwriting is not a pastime generally associated with a manufactured boy band, the fact that the band members had any input at all always provided Take That with a credibility lacked by some of their peers. Still, it is only since the band's reunion that each member has got a songwriting credit; Barlow had been the only one cited in their previous incarnation. There's a concerted effort now to show that things are different this time around. "We're four people in this band, so when we go and record an album it's not one or two people recording, it's the whole band in there, and there's some part of everybody on every song," says Barlow diplomatically. Owen's version of how The Circusevolved is a little more revealing. "There were a couple of keyboards and a couple of guitars, and we were all on different parts, getting different chords, trying to be heard and get our ideas across," he says.
Wait a minute: they play instruments? What kind of boy band is this? One like no other, according to Barlow. "I really do feel that where we are right now, no one else has ever been before," he says without self-consciousness.
So does he resent the comparisons with other boy bands, such as our own Westlife and Boyzone? "I'm really good friends with Ronan [ Keating], so there's no rivalry at all between me and him," he says immediately. "I don't think any of us feel any of that at all." It's all happy families in the boy-band world, then, with even Williams included after he and Barlow finally put their 11-year stand-off behind them at a recent meeting in Los Angeles. Are they really back to good friends again after all that public acrimony? "You know what? We are," says Barlow. "We spent a lot of time with him when we were out in LA. I probably met him five or six times. I had an e-mail from him last night. We played him the album, actually, and he loved it; he really loved it." Owen chips in again with an impish grin: "He had to say that, though. We were all stood around him."
It will be for the fans to judge come November 24th, when the first single, Greatest Day, is released, followed by the album The Circuson December 1st.
Barlow has managed a separate top-10 hit through his collaboration with the comedian Peter Kay on the winning song for the spoof reality show Britain's Got the Pop Factor and Possibly a New Celebrity Jesus Christ Soapstar Superstar Strictly on Ice. "I had a lot of fun," says Barlow. "He e-mailed me all these lyrics, and I just made it into a song . . . I didn't know he was going to do a single. I thought it was just for the show."
My time is almost up, with Donald and Orange, who have wound up their own interview, teasing their band mates for rattling on. Barlow makes an unequivocal gesture to shut them up as Owen finishes his point about how even a multimillion-making pop band can't ignore the changing economic climate. "You can definitely feel what's going on," he says, while admitting his own privileged position. This time around, he insists, Take That have their feet firmly on the ground. "When we were young we didn't really know the rest of the world. This time I think we're going to a public who's not that whole world apart from us." Which is hard to believe as a PR person approaches to say, in no uncertain terms, that my 15 minutes with fame is up. Yet Owen is clear that he does not take any of it for granted. "It's the best job," he says with a sincere, infectious enthusiasm.
It's clear that Take That are having the time of their lives - and won't be pulling another disappearing act any time soon. With a tour and a new album on the way, and the key to eternal youth - or at least some damn fine anti-wrinkle cream - in their possession, it's easy to believe that Take That, the kings of the catchy pop tune, are back for good.
• Take That play Croke Park, Dublin, on Saturday, June 13th