Gary's got game

Gary Barlow is revelling in his new-found elevation to the status of unlikely sex symbol.

Online message boards and Twitter have been awash recently with posts from female fans drooling over the new X Factor judge. They have sprung up alongside a Facebook page titled, a tad optimistically: "I want to marry Gary Barlow... and always have done."

Even the avowedly heterosexual Essex boy and former X Factor runner-up Olly Murs has been breathlessly comparing the 40-year-old Barlow to none other than George Clooney. All of which is rather good for Barlow's ego, even if his first appearance on the show as a replacement for Simon Cowell may have divided the opinion of viewers over his suspect put-downs (Barlow told one returning hopeful that he'd "matured like a bad curry").

It is fair to say he is at least looking good.

Meanwhile, he and his Take That bandmate Robbie Williams, with whom Barlow is fiercely competitive, placed a substantial bet over who could lose the most weight in preparation for the group's record-breaking reunion tour across Europe this summer (in the end, it was a draw).

All in all, despite the brickbats over X Factor debut, Barlow — still tanned from a family holiday on a yacht in St Tropez with his wife Dawn, 38, and three children, Dan, 11, Emily, nine, and two-year-old Daisy — is feeling distinctly chipper.

A large part of which, one suspects, is down to the £35 million (Dh208 million) that he and his four Take That cohorts will share out following the end of their tour last month.

Not that the careful Barlow is one to splash the cash needlessly. He still counts his Air Miles and hires a run-around car rather than keep one at his second home on the French Riviera, which he only bought after establishing he could fly down using a budget airline.

For despite his success and vast wealth, which is now nudging £50 million, and a rumoured £1.5 million contract for his new role on the reality show, Barlow is painfully aware how quickly fame's golden ticket can be ripped out of one's hands.

"That's the reason he eventually agreed to do X Factor," says a long-time friend. "As well as genuinely wanting to nurture new talent, he also wants to prepare the contestants for the darker side of the business."

It is a subject with which Barlow is only too familiar. For it is only a few short years ago that he stood in front of the mirror at his then palatial Cheshire home and looked failure full in the face.

Matters weren't helped by the fact that along with the three or four packs of cigarettes he was getting through a day, he was also smoking up to 15 cannabis joints.

By early 2001, the much-vaunted solo career that Barlow embarked on when Take That had split up five years earlier was officially dead.

Disastrous

A critically-panned first album, Open Road, had been followed by another, the disastrous Twelve Months, Eleven Days, which barely scraped into the Top 30.

Much worse was the fact that Barlow's nemesis and former Take That bandmate Williams, whose own solo career had soared in the meantime with hits like Angels and Let Me Entertain You, could not resist kicking him while he was down.

In 2001, Barlow fled to Los Angeles for several months with his dancer wife Dawn and began writing songs for other performers, including Donny Osmond, Welsh singer Charlotte Church and girl band Atomic Kitten. He vowed he would never perform again, but in November 2005, Barlow and former bandmates Mark Owen, Jason Orange and Howard Donald announced they were reforming Take That.

Sell-out tours followed, together with hit albums Beautiful World and The Circus, which won Barlow back his crown as Britain's most successful songwriter.

The scene was set for an unlikely and historic reunion with his old enemy Williams. The Angels singer finally agreed to rejoin Take That in August last year, 15 years after being the first to walk out on the band.

The group's album with Williams, Progress, has gone on to become one of the biggest-selling of the century — and Take That's stadium tour of Britain and Europe this summer sold 1.4 million tickets in the first 24 hours after going on sale.

For his part, Williams is expected to join Barlow as a mentor in the coming weeks when The X Factor reaches its Boot Camp stage. But behind the apparently genuine public smiles of Barlow and Williams' rapprochement, there are signs that the tensions that once tore them apart so publicly are re-emerging.

It has led to a series of falling outs between Barlow, Owen, Orange and Donald on one side, and Williams on the other.

During their recording-breaking and money-spinning reunion tour, Barlow and the others were privately furious with Williams' lewd and erratic onstage behaviour.

At odds

They were angry that, despite several warnings to Williams that he was upsetting parents who had brought their young children to the shows, he insisted night after night on turning the air blue with a stream of four-letter words.

His loutish behaviour led to some families walking out in disgust.

Indeed, on one occasion at the end of June he "accidentally" exposed himself to the 82,000-strong audience at Dublin's Croke Park.

He also drew the ire of Barlow and the others when he publicly used the foulest of swear-words to describe journalists who wrongly suggested the teetotal Williams had been nursing a hangover when he pulled out of a show in Copenhagen in July suffering from food poisoning.

That outburst led even Barlow's normally mild-mannered mother to upbraid Williams privately.

Certainly, the tensions between Williams and the others have been steadily growing since they announced a year ago he was rejoining the band.

While publicly the reformed group has presented a picture of backslapping bonhomie, behind the scenes the animosity between Williams and the others has not been far from the surface.

Just after he rejoined, eyebrows were raised among their friends when Gary, Mark, Jason and Howard did not attend Robbie's wedding to American actress Ayda Field in California.

Tensions finally exploded when the group headlined The Brits in February this year, with Williams having a blazing backstage row with the others — which was heard by members of their entourage.

In subsequent days, each would stick to the agreed line that the bust-up had erupted so suddenly they couldn't remember what sparked it. What was undeniable, however, was that they were all shaken by how quickly they'd been at each other's throats.

It was a worrying return to the bickering that led Williams to walk out of Take That in the first place and launch a series of public attacks on former friends — and particularly Barlow, whose position as top dog Williams so coveted.

And certainly, the falling out at the awards ceremony was a world away from the genuine euphoria of Barlow and Williams' unlikely reconciliation three years previously that had brought to an end the years of mutual back-biting.

The pair had finally patched up their differences at an emotional meeting in Williams' Beverly Hills home, where he and Barlow spontaneously flung their arms around each other and seconds later were laughing and rolling around on the floor in a "man-hug".

No wonder the other three band members were soon ribbing them mercilessly about their fast-developing "bromance".

Even so, the truce between Williams and the other four members of the band remains fragile. And despite the success of their recent tour, Williams has still not officially committed to appearing on stage with Take That in the future.

In fact, he has hinted he plans to return to his once stellar solo career and tour by himself next year.