Revealed: Inside story of how Robbie Williams and Nicole Appleton turned ‘extraordinarily shut’ once more – and why the troubled singer’s emotional tribute to his ex-fiancée at premiere of recent biopic was simply the tip of the iceberg…

When the credits rolled at the European premiere of Robbie William’s blockbuster biopic Better Man on Wednesday night, its leading man insisted the night wasn’t over for his celebrity friends.

Guiding his glamorous crew from the Odeon Leicester Square to the nearby cabaret club Lio, he took to the stage for an intimate hour-long set of his back catalogue.

There, under the show lights, Robbie gave thanks to all those who had supported him through the film’s production.

After all, the movie was a deeply intimate undertaking which forced him to reflect on past mistakes – of which there have been many: profound, destructive addictions to cocaine and alcohol, not to mention an almost repellant arrogance at the height of his fame.

But there was a clue as to what still bothers Robbie the most, of all his past misdeeds.

Because he then gave a particularly emotional tribute to the woman who had been his rock throughout this most difficult of projects.

However, the woman in question was not his beautiful American wife of 14 years, Ayda Field. Rather, it was his ex-fiancée, All Saints singer Nicole Appleton, who was recipient of Robbie’s adoration.

Consulted on the film, which recreates the moment record bosses pressured her into terminating the child she had conceived with Robbie, it was all too clear that this was as much of an emotional rollercoaster for Nicole as it was for 50-year-old Robbie.

Leaning into the microphone, he said: ‘A round of applause for Nicole Appleton. Nicole Appleton is f***ing brave for allowing us to tell that story.’

He then launched into the familiar lyrics of his most famous romantic hit: ‘I was her, she was me/ We were one, we were free/ And if there’s somebody calling me on/ She’s the one.’

One can hardly imagine what loyal Ayda – the mother of his four children, aged between 11 and four – must have made of it.

But I can reveal that Robbie’s very public declaration for his former girlfriend is just the tip of the iceberg.

For some 25 years after they split, both have now become extremely close again.

A source who worked on the film told me: ‘Everyone was surprised at just how closely Nicole was involved in the movie. Robbie clearly has a huge amount of affection for Nicole and was fiercely protective of her.

‘Robbie spoke to her throughout the entire production, referring to her affectionately as Nicky. They were often on Facetime reminiscing, and he made sure she saw every draft of the script, and watched multiple different cuts of the film.

‘Their rocky romance came at such a pivotal time in their lives and it is something they have never forgotten.

‘It was clear that this film was Robbie’s way of saying sorry to Nicole for just how badly behaved he was to her in the past.’

As Robbie admitted himself this week, much to his ‘great shame,’ he was a ‘f***ing awful boyfriend’ to her, while she was a ‘complete angel’.

He told an intimate audience of industry figures in Los Angeles: ‘The most difficult bit is watching Nicole and what we went through, because she was instructed to get rid of our baby. That’s the most difficult bit of the film for me.

‘I FaceTimed her straight after she came out of the screening and it was just a blubber fest. It was just tears, tears, tears.

‘Everybody else in the movie, they did something bad to me and I don’t mind throwing them under the bus.

‘But with Nic, I did the wrong thing. It wasn’t that bit, wasn’t the abortion – I didn’t make her do that – but I was a f****ing awful boyfriend, like, really awful, and I was in the height of my addiction and alcoholism. And it breaks my heart every time I watch it, because she’s a complete angel, and there is still shame attached to who I was then.

‘But then she’s incredibly wonderful, incredibly kind and incredibly brave and also wants her part of the story shown too.’

Indeed, Nicole was on the red carpet for the London premiere of the film glistening in a sequinned dress.

Now a mother of two, she had already seen an early screening of the film – in which Robbie is portrayed by a CGI monkey, a creative decision he describes as being down to the fact he was ‘less evolved’ in his younger days.

Unlike most fawning celebrity biopics, Robbie’s film shows him, as one reviewer detailed, ‘as a s***** boyfriend, a thoughtless son, a terrible friend and an unpleasant person to work with’.

And it was in this period of peak dislikeability, during his early days as a solo artist after leaving Take That, that Robbie fell for Nicole, now 49, after they met on Top Of The Pops in 1997. They soon began dating, and Robbie proposed the following year.

The moment was captured on camera and shows a young Robbie sat on bed calling up Nicole on his brick-like mobile phone.

‘Nicky, will you marry me?’ before giving a thumbs up to the camera to indicate she said ‘yes’.

Watching the footage back on a Netflix documentary last year, Robbie said: ‘I guess that I’m trying to convince myself that I’m the kind of person that is ready for that kind of commitment, I know I’m not.’

The Let Me Entertain You singer, then in the throes of terrible addictions, added: ‘I couldn’t look after myself. I was in no fit state to offer myself as a partner.’

When Nicole, then 25, discovered she was pregnant in 1998, Robbie was thrilled and hoped it would give him the impetus to beat his addictions.

She later wrote in her autobiography: ‘Robbie put his hand on my belly and told me, ‘This baby is saving my life’.’

But four months into the pregnancy, she gave in to her record company’s demands to terminate.

She wrote: ‘I couldn’t believe what I had done. I wanted to kill myself. Afterwards, everyone pretended it hadn’t happened.’

Nicole said the abortion happened when she was four months into the pregnancy and took place in a private clinic in New York.

The experience, she said, left her feeling suicidal: there were no checks on whether she had retained any tissue from the procedure, no proper counselling or even advice on travelling in advance of a tour she then made. Traumatised, she lost two stone.

‘My life had been in the hands of a doctor who had taken less care of it than he would a stray dog’s,’ she later said.

This harrowing chapter, then, is right at the heart of Robbie’s new film, and the emotional ripple effect of Nicole’s termination can be seen throughout his turbulent life.

His emotions were particularly high when Nicole chose to write about the abortion in her 2002 autobiography Together.

Shortly afterwards he shocked guests at an explosive recording of his BBC One concert, when he shouted ‘screw you’ before singing ‘Sexed Up’, a bitter song he wrote in 1998 when his relationship with Nicole was on the rocks, which includes the lyrics: ‘Screw you, I didn’t like your taste. Anyway I chose you and that’s all gone to waste.’

However, Robbie later claimed he had given his blessing for Nicole to write about the sensitive topic in the book, but admitted it was difficult to see in ‘black in white’ and that it ‘tore me apart’.

He said: ‘I spoke to her probably eight or nine months before the book came out and I was completely behind her.

‘If there’s something that’s so deep-rooted within yourself that it would feel better to you that you exorcised it and got it off your chest, because secrets can make you sick and secrets can make you feel terrible… then I’m completely behind her. But it was upsetting to see it written in black and white.’

Somehow, though, they remained friends. After their split, Nicole went on to marry Oasis singer Liam Gallagher, with whom she had a son, Gene, now 22.

When their marriage broke down in 2014 after Liam fathered a child with another woman, US journalist Liza Ghorbani supported Nicole.

Speaking at the time, Robbie said: ‘I have a very big soft spot for Nic because she’s a very decent person. I feel sorry for her as she deserves to be in a good place, in a happy marriage, and I thought she was with Liam. But it would appear that they weren’t.’

Nicole has since found stability with Stephen Haines, a director at tech giant Meta, whom she married in 2021. They have a daughter, Skipper, four, and he was firmly by her side at the film screening.

As for Robbie’s spouse, Ayda, what does she think of Nicole being centre stage in her husband’s life once more?

‘Well it’s part of his story. I was comfortable with it,’ she said this week.

‘Listen, you can’t edit out the past. We all have exes. I have exes. I am not a jealous type and she seems lovely.’

She added of her husband: ‘God… he was kind of a crappy boyfriend. I am very proud of him being honest. I am grateful he is going to tell his story and not just sugarcoat it.

‘I would have tried to rescue Rob when he was younger but he would have totally cocked it up. So I think I met him at the right time.

‘But I am always going to try and rescue him.’