“It’s the double act you didn’t know you needed in your life,” reckons Robbie Williams, and whether you agree with that or not, his cover of Blur’s Parklife alongside UK actor Danny Dyer at Hyde Park this weekend certainly felt like a moment of some sort.
The unexpected duet formed part of Williams’ set for his American Express presents BST show on Saturday, and saw Dyer playing to the geezer gallery as he reprised Phil Daniels’ spoken-word verses from the 1994 original. He and Williams were accompanied by a 44-strong brass band from the Coldstream and Welsh Guards.
Parklife wasn’t the only mid-’90s cover that Williams indulged in, either. As he remembered his famous 1995 weekend at the Glastonbury Festival - which saw him rubbing shoulders with Britpop royalty and marked the beginning of the end of this time in British boyband Take That - the star also invited Supergrass’s Gaz Coombes to the stage to perform 1995 hit Alright. This came after his take on Oasis’s Don’t Look Back In Anger, taken from the band’s 1995 (What's the Story) Morning Glory? album.
Support for Williams at Hyde Park came from Seal, Coombes, Shaun Ryder’s Black Grape and Kate Nash.
