A 20-year wait ends at the Movistar Arena
Robbie Williams closed a 20-year gap with his first concert in Buenos Aires, performing at the Movistar Arena on Thursday. Beyond running through his hits, the British artist surprised the audience with a remark about a connection he said he had formed with a fan during an earlier trip to the country. Listeners immediately linked the comment to Amalia Granata and the short romance the two were said to have had in 2004.[S1]
After performing one of his songs, Williams addressed the long absence from Argentine stages and his health difficulties. He told the crowd that the 20-year gap was his own fault, apologised, and said he had needed to enter rehabilitation many times, adding that he was now doing well. He then delivered a line that drew laughter and reactions across the venue: he said he should not really be telling the story, but had just seen a fan with whom he had slept on his last visit, and that this person was not who people believed. The reference opened the way to a staged bit with someone in the audience.[S1]
Williams pointed out an attendee, whom the cameras picked up, and kept the scene going with humour. He said he had not recognised the man because he now wore a beard, confirmed he was there, called him a very tender lover, said he would know those eyes anywhere, greeted him as Diego and addressed the whole crowd. The joke stirred up the accounts of his encounter with Granata more than two decades earlier.[S1]
Granata, now a provincial legislator in Santa Fe, became nationally known in 2004 after meeting the singer, who had noticed her during an appearance on VideoMatch. According to the account that circulated at the time, Williams asked for her to be contacted because he wanted to meet her, and the two met in the presidential suite of the hotel where he was staying.[S1]
A hotel coincidence and a second recollection
Interest in the pair resurfaced on Thursday. The broadcaster Nazarena Di Serio recorded Granata entering the Hotel Faena in Puerto Madero, where the performer is staying, and the footage aired on TN Central. Sofía Kloter reported on air that the legislator had spoken with the channel's production team and explained that she was attending a birthday celebration held in the building, not a meeting with Williams.[S1]
Williams has two further dates scheduled in the country, on 2 and 4 October, also at the Movistar Arena. As he prepares for those shows, the coincidence at the hotel and the on-stage joke put a story that began in Buenos Aires in 2004 back into circulation.[S1]
Besides Granata, the journalist and presenter Maitena Aboitiz recalled in recent hours that she too received a proposal from Robbie Williams. She described it on her social media accounts and on her radio programme while revisiting an interview she conducted with the British musician in Mexico in 2005. Aboitiz travelled there in late November that year on assignment for MuchMusic to cover the presentation of Intensive Care. By her account, the meeting ran longer than a promotional interview normally would and turned into a conversation about public exposure and the loneliness the singer was experiencing.[S1]
The presenter said the artist told her that journalists' questions helped him reflect on himself, and she reported that he told her he had discovered he could come to know himself more deeply through the questions reporters asked him. During the conversation, she said, he also asked more than once when she planned to return from Mexico. After the interview ended, Aboitiz stayed in the hotel garden and said the singer approached her to invite her to extend her stay. She recounted that as she was leaving he caught up with her and asked whether she would like to stay one more night with him, at his invitation. The journalist said she turned the offer down and left.[S1]
