In the early days of British pop group Take That, singer/songwriter Gary Barlow was known to be a wholesome music star, steering clear of the excesses of drugs or sex. In 1992, however, Barlow has revealed that when Take That’s creator/manager Nigel Martin-Smith wasn’t around, he didn’t shy away from his eager female fans.
“Nigel’s spies weren’t with us,” Barlow told Q magazine. “In Amsterdam I slept with a fan. A chubby Dutch girl. And carried on from there…On a scale of one to 10 I did alright. I didn’t go out looking for it every night. It lands on your doorstep. Every time we went away for two or three weeks I’d have a little run of relationships on the way… We just had a lot of fun. I don’t feel any guilt when I think about the amount of sex I had.”
Take That’s Howard Donald, Jason Orange, and Mark Owen also confessed to the temptations of being a teen idol in the early 1990s and the hypocrisy of their wholesome image. “I remember throwing lots of condoms out into assembly at schools,” Donald said. “I felt a bit stupid, to be honest. One minute we’re rubbing jelly all over our arses [in the video for “Do What U Like”] and the next we’re telling teenage girls not to have sex.”