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Radio 2's Gary Barlow - We Write The Songs podcast sees the Take That star speak to fellow acclaimed songwriters, exploring the art of creating the perfect song.

Gary’s guests include John Legend, Paloma Faith, Sam Smith, and his former Take That bandmate and pal Robbie Williams.

"I’m very seldom asked about the songwriting,” Robbie reveals. “I’d be very interested to know what I actually think… I think people don’t believe or understand that I have a hand in these songs.”

As we take a listen to Robbie and Gary natter about songwriting, here are five things we learned …

For Robbie, songwriting is an outlet that he simply needs as a way of channeling his energy. He says: "I’m a very impulsive person and I have my addictions... I wake up in the morning and I am beaming some sort of energy and if it isn’t fostered correctly or taken care of - as we both know - it can go completely off the rails. It’s which wolf that I choose to feed. Sometimes it’s the songwriting wolf."

"When lockdown happened, I started to do art. I’d do art every day, 10 hours a day. I knocked out 30-40 pieces in about five weeks. And then that burnt out and I stopped being interested in it. That’s when I went back into the studio and I wrote 27 songs in three weeks.”

Robbie continues: "I love having a project and creating a brand new thing. I enjoy pulling off that project. For example, I’ll do my pop record, then I’ll do a swing album, then I’ll tour the swing album. I love the kernel of an idea and then I love putting it into fruition. But then at the end of a project, you’re knackered and you have to switch off for three weeks. They burn you out.”

For Robbie's latest project though, he's taking a bit of a leftfield turn: "I’m writing a dance album and I’ve basically taken the nod and the wink out of my lyrics.”

Looking back to when he first got in to music, Robbie says: "I was bought two records by my sister when I was eight years old. One was Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ and the other was ‘Street Sounds Electro 1’, a collection of hip-hop tracks. I put Pink Floyd on and didn’t get it at all, then put the electro music on and thought it was a bit of me.”

Robbie says that when he was old enough to buy his own record, he opted for Beastie Boys’ ‘Licensed to Ill' and Glenn Miller’s greatest hits. But it was also his parents’ vinyl collection - which included Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, Sarah Vaughan and Mel Tormé - that left an impact on him.

“My very essence is a mixture of old classics and hip-hop," Robbie says. "They are the two things that inspired me and continue to inspire me."

“Lyrically, the person that most inspired me - apart from rappers - was Ian Dury," Robbie adds. "He chooses to go off the beaten road and use words that are seldom used in pop records."

The pair note over the course of their chat that they are both very different songwriters but also similar in some ways. Gary notes that Robbie is very “picky” with lyrics and never wants to say something he’s heard in other songs, while he is a more universal kind of writer.

The similar, Robbie says, is that they both share "a killer instinct" - specifically "[the feeling that] it’s mine and I’m going for it and nobody is getting in my way… you can understand why a younger me and a younger you would bump heads. I’d be like, ‘it’s my game’ and you’d be like, ‘no, it’s my game… it’s my ball’”.

Writing songs for the first time together, when Take That reunited with Robbie in 2010, was enjoyable for all parties involve. Gary says: “When we eventually got to meet again and write again, I was probably one of the camp that thought ‘Guy Chambers [Robbie's longtime co-writer] did all of this, let’s see what this young lad’s got’. And I was wrong, I was absolutely blown away - not just by the songwriting and lyrics but your melodies - you come up with them so quickly. You’re equally a melodist as you are a lyricist… I was so impressed and happy and proud to be in a room with you… It felt like me and you were showing off to one another, it was so much fun… It was more than right, it was electric.”

Robbie admits that he felt he had something to prove to Gary: “If there was anyone on the planet that I needed to show and know and feel what I could do, it was you. I suppose because you are [like] my older brother, I desperately wanted that recognition from you. We got it and it was simple and easy. It was lovely and loving and all the best things you could want it to be.”

Going back to when he first went solo and started to work with Guy Chambers, Robbie remembers: "I had so much to say and I was bubbling with ideas. I just needed the perfect person to help me release those ideas. I was sent a list of songwriters and I just saw this name, Guy Chambers, and pointed to it. I didn’t know anything about him whatsoever. I went, ‘that’s him’... Within three days we had written ‘Angels’ and ‘Let Me Entertain You’. We wrote the first album in seven days. But that hasn’t happened since.”

On how 'Angels' came to be, he reveals: "I have a belief in archangel Michael. Whether he exists or not, he’s the angel I go to for protection. I’m basically singing and talking about real angels [in the song]. My sister was writing poetry at the time and one of the poems [had the line] ‘as the feeling grows, he breathes flesh to my bones”. I went, ‘I’m having that!’. I magpie-d that from my sister.”

While Robbie acknowledges that 'Angels’ is the song that “I love and adore for giving me the career I’ve enjoyed”, he says he is most proud of his 2002 single ‘Feel’, which he emphatically describes as the “gold medal” of his career.

However, Robbie also reveals that he is embarrassed to perform one of his most-loved hits. “‘Millennium’ does my head in," he says. "I’m on stage and I’m singing the chorus - I’m going ‘We got stars directing our fate’, but in my head I’m thinking, ‘have we?’”

For Gary, though, it’s Take That's 1992 classic ‘A Million Love Songs’ that makes him cringe a little. Although Robbie loves the song, Gary says: “I was 15 when I wrote that song, so of course it’s going to be really saccharine and really predictable.”