Robbie Williams asks Michelle McManus for tour duet in Edinburgh

Robbie Williams has invited Scottish Pop Idol winner Michelle McManus to sing a duet with him on the primary date of his tour in Edinburgh.

The Rock DJ singer will embark on a highly-anticipated European tour which begins in Murrayfield on 31 Might.

McManus, who gained the televised singing competitors in 2003, was interviewing Williams on her Afternoons present on BBC Radio Scotland when he stunned her with the invitation.

He requested her: “Would you want to come back and sing with me in Edinburgh?”

She replied: “What, sorry? What was that?”

Williams repeated his query and McManus, from Glasgow, may be heard beginning to cry.

“Is that this a joke?” she stated. “For goodness sake, sure!”

“Let’s do it,” stated Williams. “We’ll type out what tune later.”

The singer is ready to carry out a few of his hottest songs on tour together with Angels and She’s the One, in addition to new songs from his latest biopic.

He has beforehand carried out duets with the likes of Kylie Minogue, Nicole Kidman and Taylor Swift.

Higher Man tells the story of Robbie Williams and his rise to fame – however he’s portrayed by an anthropomorphic chimpanzee.

The movie was launched in December and depicts the early days of Take That in addition to his struggles with drug dependancy and psychological well being.

McManus instructed BBC Radio Scotland’s Drivetime programme that she assumed Williams was going to ask her for meals suggestions in Edinburgh.

“At no level ever in my wildest goals did I believe he was about to ask me what he did,” she stated.

“I cried so much after it occurred. It is the enormity of being onstage in Murrayfield in entrance of about 70,000 folks with Robbie Williams.

“However it’s additionally the magnitude of the kindness. Robbie has been so extremely form to me on so many alternative events although he is such a megastar.”

McManus stated she obtained to know Williams within the early 2000s after she gained Pop Idol.

“Robbie had simply executed Knebworth and he was completely big with a solo profession,” she stated.

“He was getting quite a lot of actually horrible stuff written about him within the press. As quickly as Pop Idol got here alongside, I obtained quite a lot of that as properly.

“It was so intense on the time about how unattractive I used to be, about how obese I used to be. He was an enormous fan of actuality TV and observed that we had been each getting quite a lot of column inches.”

McManus stated Williams reached out to her after her time on Pop Idol with some recommendation on coping with the negativity.

She added: “I cried so much with him on the time and it by no means left me as a result of he gave me some nice recommendation and it actually helped me get by means of that preliminary interval.”

When requested what she want to sing with him, McManus stated: “That man may hand me the telephone e-book and I might sing it for him, I do not care as a result of it is Robbie Williams.

“Clearly I need to Lulu it proper up – however I do not suppose he’ll do Relight My Fireplace as a result of why would he? With the again catalogue that man’s obtained, I am not going to ask him to whip out a Take That quantity.

“I am going to give it my finest shot. He is aware of I am an enormous belter.”

She instructed BBC Scotland that it was particularly significant to sing in entrance of a Scottish crowd with somebody who has been “actually essential to me all through all of my profession”.

In 2014, McManus was invited to sing with Rod Stewart on the Hydro in Glasgow to rejoice 50 years of the Lisbon Lions – the Celtic group that gained the European Cup in Portugal in 1967.

She additionally carried out alongside Susan Boyle for Pope Benedict XVI throughout his go to to Glasgow in 2010.

However she added: “To get up to now 22 years after I gained the competitors, that is in all probability the largest factor I have been requested to do.

“I am nonetheless in shock. My coronary heart is bursting.”