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CLAIRE WORRALL started learning the piano at the age of nine, passed Grade Eight at fifteen, and was talent-spotted at a party when she was nineteen. Besides playing with Robbie she's working on her own stuff, as a follow-up to her first 'Planet Claire' album. 'The songs that are the hardest to write,' she says, 'are the ones that mean the most to you. But it's always been a way of getting stuff out for me. I've spent my whole life writing letters to people and putting them in a drawer.'
She has one life-threatening addiction: shopping. On tour days off, she will be found pacing remote districts of whichever city the band are in, nosing out choice bargains. Her dressing room nicknames are 'Champers' and 'Thumper', relating to her backstage fondness for the bubbly stuff and her shocking similarity to the cute bunny rabbit in Bambi.
'Planet Claire,' muses Robbie. 'She's absolutely in a world of her own. I think she is quite possibly the nicest person in the world as well; she hasn't got a malicious bone in her body. Another amazing songwriter; I want to record some of her songs.'
YOLANDA CHARLES first got into bass playing when she was fourteen, having run through recorder, clarinet, trumpet and guitar before that. 'I started picking out the bass lines on the guitar,' she says, 'that was the part that spoke to me the most.' She worked on the checkout in Sainsbury's to earn the cash to buy her first instrument. She was subsequently sacked by Our Price for choosing a gig over a stockcheck, but it looks now as if that could have been the right decision. 'We didn't hire her for her looks,' says Guy, 'we hired her because she's such an amazing musician. But it's a great bonus that she's also very sexy on stage.'
In the dressing room or hotel, you'll more often than not find Yolanda with her nose in a book. With two kids back home in Tottenham Hale, she doesn't get a lot of time for reading, so she makes the most of her time on tour. The other 'band beetches' nickname her Smutley, on account of her reassuringly filthy laugh.
'I had a reshuffle,' says Robbie, 'and this lady just came in. From Day One, she just fitted straight in. She didn't miss a step. It was like she's always been there. She looks amazing on stage.'
These short biographies are taken from the official Robbie Williams Page www.robbiewilliams.com