Robbie Williams explains his swear at World Cup launch

Laurence Mozafari
Photo credit: TF1
Photo credit: TF1

From Digital Spy

Robbie Williams has attempted to explain his antics at the World Cup opening ceremony, which saw him give the middle finger to the camera and, in turn, millions of people across the world.

"I thought to myself, it's really important that these kinds of things do not cause an international incident and you know what, I managed it," joked Robbie.

Photo credit: ITV
Photo credit: ITV

But This Morning's Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby pushed the former Take That star to explain more about the incident, which might have broken Russian law.

Robbie continued to poke fun at the situation and claimed he was simply doing a one-minute countdown on one finger... his middle finger.

He added: "It was one minute to kick off, I was under a lot of pressure, because there was one minute left and I didn't know how I was going to do half a minute, so I just did a one-minute countdown."

Photo credit: ITV
Photo credit: ITV

Cutting through the bumf, Phil quizzed the singer on whether he regrets his mistakes – y'know, little clangers like swearing at the world.

Robbie replied: "Yeah, yeah, of course, yeah. I can't trust me. I cannot trust me. You know, the last thing I said to my manager before we sat down on the sofa here was, 'What could go wrong?'

"I don't know what I'm going to do at any time. There's no, sort of, plan. The plan was, sing in key, don't fall over. That was the plan and 99% of the plan, I pulled off."

Photo credit: Getty Images
Photo credit: Getty Images

Nevertheless, Phillip was still aghast at the whole situation, as he exasperatedly asked: "Did it just pop into your head, 'I think it would be fun to do this'... why?"

Robbie replied: "Nothing actually pops into my head. There's a block between me and sense and the block… then something happens and then five minutes later, I'm like, 'Did I? Yeah, I did, didn't I?'"

Fox Sports issued an apology following the incident, which read: "The 2018 FIFA World Cup opening ceremony was a newsworthy event produced by a third party and carried live on Fox. As it was broadcast live, we did not know what would happen during Robbie Williams' performance and we apologise."

Meanwhile, it looks like we could expect to see more of Robbie's controversy-provoking behaviour on screens soon, as the popstar recently hinted that he and wife Ayda Field might be starring in their own TV show in the near future.

This Morning continues weekdays from 10.30am.

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