Robbie Williams has opened up on being diagnosed with autism and pals are saying he is taking the diagnosis in his stride
Robbie Williams (Image: Getty Images)
Robbie Williams has revealed he has been diagnosed with autism, after seeking a professional assessment. He said he had been “feeling like there was something he was missing” about himself and wanted to get a professional opinion.
The singer, 52, is said to be taking the news in his stride, according to pals, and has started speaking to an expert.
“I’ve got ADHD. I’ve just found out I’ve got a bit of autism as well, which I f**ing love, because it explains so much, and it’s like a get-out-of-jail card now,” he said. “If I do all the weird s*** that I do, I go, ‘Sorry, I’m autistic.'”
Robbie also suffers from clinical depression and said he becomes “utterly obsessed” with creating “funny things”. “If I’m creating images and making what I think are funny things, I’m not thinking about ‘me’,” he said.
“My brain is incredibly creative, and it can be creative about everything in the world, including things that can cause you to panic or be scared.”
Sources told The Sun that while Robbie has known about his ADHD for some time, he has recently started speaking to an expert following his official diagnosis.
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, affects the way the brain works, particularly when it comes to tasks that require memory, concentration or being still.
“Like with everything life throws at him, Robbie is taking the diagnosis in his stride,” the source said, before adding the diagnosis has given the former Take That star a greater understanding of what makes himself him.
Towards the end of last year, Robbie told fans that he was sure he also had Tourette’s syndrome. He said: “I’ve just realised that I have Tourette’s, but they don’t come out.
“I was just walking down the road the other day and I realised that these intrusive thoughts are ‘inside Tourette’s’.”
Speaking on the I’m ADHD! No You’re Not podcast, he added: “You would think that a stadium full of people professing their love to you would work, but whatever it is, inside me, cannot hear it. This tour in particular, as a 51-year-old, I’ve approached it differently because I seem to be in the space to approach things differently.
“I have a very complicated relationship with touring and performing live. People say: ‘Oh, you going on tour? You must be really, really excited.’ Not really. I’m terrified. I mask, like I’m an Olympian at masking,” Robbie admitted.
“I will look full of bravado and look pompous and look smug and do these grand gestures, which have worked for me because they put my face on the poster and people still buy tickets but actually what’s happening is I feel like the opposite of that all the time, most of the time.
“It’s getting better. I would say it’s gotten better from 45 onwards. This particular tour that I’m now in, I’m very pleased to say, for me, is that I’m dead excited to do my show that I’m doing tomorrow and I was excited to do one last week.
“I said to the wife while I was rehearsing, I said, I’ve got that PTSD stuff about performance, whatever it was in the Take That years and whatever it was subsequently when I got to the top of the mountain and it didn’t fix me. In fact, it made things worse inside me. Whatever all of that stuff was, I still get triggered from it and it still affects me.”
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