Robbie Williams: One man brand

He's not exactly rock'n'roll but we like him. His dominance of British pop has earned him an £80m deal with EMI. But Stoke's finest seeks his fortune in dollars, and can he cut it in the United States?

In the 38 years since the Beatles stopped the traffic in Manhattan on their first visit to the United States, the number of British pop acts that could be said to have conquered America would fit neatly on to a single CD. The Rolling Stones, The Who, David Bowie, Elton John, Rod Stewart, Queen, Phil Collins, Duran Duran, George Michael. Is Robbie Williams about to join the elite?

EMI didn't shell out £80m on him last week so that he could merely consolidate his position as the undisputed king of UK pop. After all, as one critic observes, "There can't be anybody in Britain who is going to buy a Robbie Williams single who hasn't bought one already." The deal, the most lucrative in British pop history, might have had Williams screaming with avaricious glee – "I'm rich beyond my wildest dreams!" – but when he sits down and looks at exactly what he has to deliver in return, the famous Robbie grin might disappear.

In an effort to have control of the complete Williams brand, EMI included CDs, touring, publishing and merchandise in the package, with the holy grail that is the American market uppermost in everybody's mind. But whether Americans are suddenly going to buy into Williams's slick, all-purpose pop – covering a variety of styles but conveying an essentially British sensibility in which an element of pastiche recurs – must be open to doubt. It is not as if they haven't had plenty of opportunities to do so already, and there is a widespread feeling that the land of the real Frank Sinatra is never going to have much time for an ersatz version of him, still less one invented on the other side of the water.

"You do wonder what Robbie can throw at them that he hasn't already," says one record industry insider. "And whether it's not all money down the drain. Robbie might be celebrating now, but he's put himself under huge pressure."

This, after all, is the year in which a US Billboard chart appeared that, for the first time, included not a single British act. It is also the year that the UK charts have so far been headed by only three songs that weren't either re-workings of old ones or the product of entirely manufactured acts such as the Pop Idol winner Will Young. And it's the year in which EMI's fingers are still smouldering after it wrote off £38m by cancelling the contract of the commercially moribund Mariah Carey. "God forbid that should happen to Robbie," an EMI source says.

Pop's trends are flowing fast in one direction, with Williams attempting to swim hard against the tide. And if the climate surrounding the deal wasn't unpropitious enough, there were reports within 48 hours of his signing it that his long-time collaborator Guy Chambers, author of Williams's biggest hits, was pushing to take his talents elsewhere. EMI was resisting the move, knowing that without Chambers, Williams's chances of further success would be severely impaired.

But the fact that Williams, now 28, has never taken either himself or the record industry too seriously might be his best protection from negative forces. It also goes a long way to explaining how he has achieved popularity across all ages and social groupings. Williams has a wit and self-awareness not seen in any other pop phenomenon of recent times, and a personality that manages to exist outside the strict bounds laid down by an industry that now seems only to want to manipulate talent, never to let it blossom naturally.

As a 16-year-old member of one of the original manufactured boy bands, Take That, Williams knows all about that process. He's aware, too, that he made good his escape and went on to win a whole new adult market without relinquishing his hold on the imagination of pre-pubescent girls – and that that marks him out as one of a kind.

Tim Abbot was Williams's manager for the first 18 months of his solo career, and recalls that his initial impression of him was that he was a "no-hoper". The talented one in Take That, everyone agreed, had been the songwriter Gary Barlow, and it didn't help when the overweight Williams attempted to graft rough edges on to his image by hanging out with members of Oasis. "Here was this cheeky chappy doing his duck walk, and there was just something about him that was incredibly engaging," Abbot says. "I wasn't sure if he was going to be the next George Michael or the next George Formby." One critic explains that if Oasis's Liam Gallagher was the school bully, then Williams was head boy. "He was vaudeville, not rock'n'roll."

But as Barlow's career stalled, Williams's showbiz nous and sex appeal was winning him a new, older audience. A string of hits – "Angels", "Millennium", "Let Me Entertain You"– showed a mastery of different genres. He has notched up album sales of 20 million, duetted with Nicole Kidman, gone down the route of lavish orchestrations, and played to crowds of 80,000. "Charisma" is the word everyone uses in relation to his stage persona, and even his detractors acknowledge that he puts on a terrific show. Williams has become synonymous with the age of overblown celebrity, as no other pop star has.

The gift of entertainment comes down through his father Peter, who worked Northern clubs as a singer and comedian. But his parents, who ran a pub in Stoke, divorced when he was two, and Williams is still very much his mother Jan's son. He has an older sister Sally whom he has referred to as his "second mum", and the child in Williams remains a key component in his make-up. At school – where he was an academic flop – he always loved to perform, and the way he threw himself into his audition for Take That demanded his inclusion.

This open, emotional aspect of his character, combined with wealth, fame, and talent, have caused him the seemingly obligatory drink and drug problems, at the same time as it has made him as irresistible to his female peers as it has to his audience. Relationships with stars such as Denise Van Outen, Natalie Imbruglia, Geri Halliwell, and another Spice Girl, Melanie C, have turned Robbie into a fixture on the gossip pages, but he has claimed that what he really wants is to settle down with a wife and family.

His big love appeared to be Nicole Appleton of All Saints – at one time they were reported to be engaged – but it didn't last, and she was next seen in the arms of Liam Gallagher of Oasis. In the romantic La Ronde that is pop's aristocracy, Williams has now transferred his attentions to Rod Stewart's ex, Rachel Hunter.

Tim Abbot thinks Williams is a mixture of the little-boy lost on the surface, while underneath there is someone driven, calculating and very money-minded. "There's not a great deal of humility," he says. "He's sold his soul to entertainment, and I say good on him. I hope he survives." He thinks EMI might have been better advised to split the money it has lavished on Williams into much smaller sums in an attempt to unearth a new star. "I'm not saying that Robbie has plateau-ed, but he's certainly peaked, and it's a question of where you go from there."

Williams, Abbot says, will never be anything other than middle-of-the-road. But he does it consummately, and if hard work alone was enough to win over the vital American audience, then Williams should be able to look forward to celebrating coast-to-coast.