Struggling Robbie Williams forced to stop concert just a few songs after show started

Robbie Williams had to stop a concert halfway through while performing at the Pinkpop music festival in the Netherlands.

The Stoke-born singer and former Take That member had been performing on Saturday and could be heard telling the band to stop playing, saying: "No, stop stop. I'm f**ked. I'm f**ked."

ChrisB/YouTube

Robbie, 49, had been about to start his hit song 'Monsoon' when he had to take a break.

He put his exhaustion down to suffering from Long Covid, which can affect patients in a wide variety of different ways.

The singer cheekily said: "It's long Covid, I've got long Covid. It's not my f**king age, you f**kers."

Instagram / robbiewilliams

After a quick break to catch his breath, Robbie got the show restarted and performed 16 more songs before the concert finished. The show must go on!

Robbie has had Covid on two separate occasions. The first was in April of 2020 when he was at his home in Los Angeles. The second occasion was when he was on holiday in St Barts in the Caribbean with his wife Ayda and four children.

In 2020, Robbie revealed how he had found lockdown difficult, saying: "The mental struggle has been the hardest bit about isolation, making sure we don't slip into our own dark holes."

The long-term effects of Covid-19 are still not properly understood, though a few key effects have been identified.

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The NHS lists common symptoms as extreme tiredness, shortness of breath, anosmia (loss of smell), and muscle aches. However, there are also a large number of other symptoms which are connected with the long-term effects. These include brain fog, chest pains, insomnia, depression, dizziness and heart palpitations, among others.

Alarmingly, the severity of long-term symptoms does not seem to be connected to how ill you were when you first had the virus. Someone with a relatively mild case could suffer from more severe long-term symptoms.

In 2022, the Office for National Statistics published a survey suggesting that as many as two million people are living with the condition in the UK. Due to the huge number of different ways that Long Covid can impact patients, this presents a big problem for long-term care, as it will be difficult to pin down one way of treating Long Covid.