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Robbie Williams thinks fame “should come with a health warning”.

The 48-year-old singer is returning to Stoke-on-Trent for one-off homecoming concert at Vale Park and reflected on both the positive and negative sides of his career in the limelight – which started when he was a teenager in the boy band Take That.

In an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Robbie said: “I’m glad it happened to me when it did because there was nothing else happening to me.”

The ‘Rock DJ’ hitmaker did liken “extreme fame” to an illness and feels younger people are particularly vulnerable to the perils of stardom.

Robbie explained: “It’s something that happens outside of your own body, with people looking at you and behaving in a certain way, make you feel a certain way.

“If you’re not that au fait with feeling good about yourself it can have a severe reaction, especially if you’re not old enough to cope with it.”

20,000 fans are expected to attend Robbie’s gig on Saturday (04.06.22), which comes at the home stadium of his football team Port Vale, and the star confessed that he feels a mixture of excitement and trepidation about the performance.

He said: “I don’t know how Stoke’s changed really. I’ve got a gilded cage that I arrive and leave in. But out of the window things look quite similar.

“Where I’m from, you’re not allowed to have a big head.

“You’re not allowed to get ideas above your station. And even though the performance, the character I’ve played on stage really is full of himself, I’m not really – I’m Rob from Stoke.

“They say you stop growing the day you get famous and I kind of get it, I’m like a 16-year-old inside a 48-year-old.”