Robbie Williams says a hitman was once hired to kill him

Robbie Williams has claimed a hitman was once hired to kill him.

In a new interview with The Mirror published yesterday (January 16), the singer said that he had “a contract” put on him to “kill” him at the height of his career.

“I’ve never, ever said this, but I had a contract put on me to kill me. I’ve never said that publicly before,” he said.

“It went away. I have friends. That stuff is the unseen stuff that happens when you become famous.”

He continued that he was “ridiculously famous” at that point in his career. “Michael Jackson-style famous”, he added.

“I became famous when I was 17, doing a boy band when I was 16, the boy band took off,” Williams said. “When I was 21, I left, and then I had a solo career, sold 80 million albums, held the record for the most tickets sold in a day for a tour and blah, blah, blah…”

The former Take That singer also spoke about his struggles with anxiety and depression brought on by “extreme success”.

“Extreme fame and extreme success meets with anxiety and depression and mental illness,” he said. “There’s a few levels of fame and what it does to you. The first one is ‘fuck’.

“There’s a couple more I can’t remember but the fourth one is ­acceptance. You sort of rally against your privacy being taken away from you and you rally against it by trying to be normal, trying to be normal but also I’m gonna be small so people don’t beat you up. Like, ‘I’m a dickhead, don’t hurt me.’”

“I want to go to all the normal places I can’t go because people want to kill me. It takes a while to get to acceptance.”

The singer, now 47, also spoke about how meeting strangers gives him anxiety, describing it as a “trigger”.

Williams now lives in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles and added that he enjoys a lower profile stateside, as he has “no anonymity” at home.

He last released an album in 2019, titled ‘The Christmas Present’, and is due to play a headline show in Munich, Germany this summer.