ALISON BOSHOFF: The Take That documentary that makes you wonder how so many parts of the 1990s pop culture passed the sniff test

We've all seen the early days of Take That – and looked back with more than a hint of cringe at the infamous jelly-on-bare-buttocks video and the stage outfits with metal crotch guards worn by boys who were still sweet-faced teenagers. 

Indeed, the further away you get from the early 1990s, the more you wonder how on earth some parts of popular culture passed the sniff test. 

A new three-part Take That documentary on Netflix cleverly plays on this reappraisal, not just revisiting now-hackneyed footage, but using previously unseen video and it’s striking just how young these boys were when they were first thrown together in 1990. 

Some of the documentary’s most fascinating moments are seen through the viewfinder of a shakily-held video camera, shot by ‘Howard “Steven Spielberg” Donald’ as a 16-year-old Robbie Williams calls him. 

It shows the budding stars becoming fast and genuine friends before they had tasted any success.

Here is Gary Barlow, 19, being mocked for his Calvin Klein pants while dancing in a small and dingy dressing room, with the others saying they make a change from his usual £3.99 four-pack.

You see Howard, the eldest at 22, proudly driving a Hyundai van, which is how they got to some of their earliest gigs, some of which involved just dancing and singing along to a tape in school halls.

The show, which starts streaming on Tuesday, comes almost exactly 30 years after the band’s first break-up. 

Now in their 50s, the three remaining members of Take That – Gary, Mark Owen and Howard – reflect on how being in one of the most successful groups of all time almost destroyed them.

Howard recalls that, at his lowest ebb, after the band broke up in 1996 when he was still only 27, he drove down to the Thames with the intention of killing himself. 

‘It hit me the hardest,’ he says, ‘simply because of the fact that I’m thinking: “Well, what am I going to do now? I’m only trained at being a pop star, you know, a bit of paint-spraying.”

‘So it hit me quite hard. You go home and you’re kind of in disbelief. The state of my mind at that time, I was seriously thinking of jumping in the Thames and thinking I wanted to kill myself, but I am just too much of a s***bag to do it.’

And it’s not just Howard. Gary opens up about his years of binge eating, which led to bulimia, as he tried to ‘kill the pop star’.

He says that for years after the band split in 1996 and later, when he was dropped by his record label in 1999, he would go to the studio in his house, shut the door and pretend to write music.

‘I’d literally sit there watching the piano thinking: “I used to write big hits on that thing.” Now, the piano was the enemy. I’d sit in there and I’d look at the clock, and I’d come out at four and go: “That was a good day.” It’s awful and it went on for years.’

Gary, now 54, says: ‘I remember the sharper bits of our story, and it’s only now we can look back and see what we have been through.’

They were formed, as anyone who was a teen in the 1990s can tell you, after Manchester-based impresario Nigel Martin-Smith posted an advert.

He wanted to make a British version of US boyband New Kids On The Block. Jason Orange, Howard, Mark and Robbie all arrived for auditions as strangers.

Gary was already in the band – a dedicated song-writer and singer, he had been performing in Royal British Legions and the like and had been talent-spotted by the manager who built a band around him. 

Martin-Smith’s vision was that the band would ‘break’ on the gay scene, but one day they were booked to play a concert for young teens and were mobbed by screaming just-adolescent girls. It was a ‘eureka’ moment.

But success came slowly, with a number of singles that didn’t hit. Then they were signed by record label RCA and told to leave their jobs and commit. Howard, who had been painting cars, recalls: ‘They told me to quit my day job. My mum was fuming.’

A run of No 1 hits was enough to placate all the mums with Pray in 1993 followed by Relight My Fire, Babe, Everything Changes, Sure and Back for Good. 

But already the cracks were starting to show. ‘Robbie was in the grip of something,’ says Howard. ‘On stage he had these bulbous eyes and energy. It did look like he was on something.’

Still, his leaving in July 1995, at just 21, was a shock. Gary and Mark recall that during a meeting prior to the tour, Robbie was told he should ‘pick it up’ – and Robbie said in that case, he was off.

Gary reflects: ‘I thought this was someone who didn’t give a s*** about all of us.’ He also thought ‘he would be back tomorrow’.

Robbie has said he was already a ‘raging alcoholic’ at 19 or 20 and couldn’t start the day without a bottle of vodka. 

The band went on without him, but at a press conference in February 1996, they announced that the rumours were true: they had decided to break up after an incredibly successful period in which they had sold 20million albums. 

There is footage of one devastated fan being carried off in an ambulance after collapsing at the news.

Howard was ‘angry’ and didn’t know what to do. He had no success in starting a solo career. ‘I knew deep down that it wasn’t for me,’ he admits. ‘You have to believe in yourself a hundred per cent and I never did.’

When Robbie’s success eclipsed Gary’s, he crowed, saying he had always known he was the better songwriter. Gary retreated to his house in Cheshire. In extraordinary detail, Gary then talks through his horrifying struggle with an eating disorder.

‘There were 13 months when I didn’t leave the house. I would eat and eat. If food came past me I would eat it. I killed the pop star. I would eat and then go off into a dark corner of the house and just throw up, and think it won’t happen again. But it was over and over.’

A turning point came in 2005 when the band, minus Robbie, reunited for the first time for ITV documentary Take That: For The Record. Robbie sent a video message to apologise for how things had ended, and for insulting Gary.

Reaction to the film was so positive that the four decided to reform – without Martin-Smith who, Gary reflects, played on all their insecurities to keep them in line. 

After a sell-out tour in 2006, they started to write a new studio album, Beautiful World, and all four received writing credits for the first time.

But there was a problem. As Gary recalls: ‘I felt if we were going to keep Jason, we would have to get Robbie. But Robbie was in a funny place at that time. He hadn’t left his house in about eight months and he was wearing these strange costumes like [1970s Greek singer] Demis Roussos.’

There was a meeting at his house in LA and over ‘20 or 25 minutes’ the two sworn enemies made up.

The way was then clear for Robbie to return in 2010 for the album Progress and its tour, which was agreed after Robbie turned up at Mark’s stag do in New York. 

All agree that they loved being on stage as a fivesome, but they also knew that the ‘magic’ would end at the end of the tour.

Howard says: ‘After the last show Jason said he was done, he was going to leave. I was really sad because Jason felt like my brother.’

‘It was a big moment,’ agrees Mark. ‘Going from a five to a three again, but we have now been a three for longer than any other version of the band. I can’t imagine my life without it. At the heart of my world is Take That.’

Unusually, the show does not feature a single ‘talking head’ shot of interviewees. Instead, their words are played over old footage. 

There is more music in this slickly produced three-parter than in most boyband-era documentaries, and it’s all the better for that.