Take the offer and party: (from left) Mark Owen,
Jason Orange, Gary Barlow and Howard Donald
Photograph: Ian West/PA
The outlines of the story are familiar enough: band breaks up, fans break down, world continues turning. The Beatles were the first, Busted were the last. Take That were somewhere in the middle. They were a boyband or something, weren't they?
Being a callow teenager (male) at the time, it's fair to say Take That's demise didn't impinge greatly on my oxygen supply. I now realise I was, typically, not wise to what was going on.
Today's announcement that TT intend to reform has seized the nation. Sky News presenters even took time off from talk of pensions reform to run the special press conference, before debating which one they fancied most. Bit too jokily for my taste: do they not realise that once-teenage hearts throb to a different beat where Take That are concerned? This is a grave business. Samaritans helplines and all.
Business, naturally, it is: PA reports that each band member is being paid up to £1.5m for the eight-venue tour around the UK (old hits only; wisely, no new material is mentioned). It seems the only reason Robbie hasn't leapt at the chance - apart from the suffocating smog of naffness cloaking the whole enterprise - is that he can well afford not to.
Last week he managed to break the world record for speedy ticket sales, selling 1.6m of the things in a single day for next year's world tour. Jason Orange, last heard from enrolling at a local college, does not have that luxury.
According to the BBC, Gary admitted as much: "Robbie has been included in the offer but I don't know what he thinks. But we would do it without him. I think we'd have to. Financially it's a very tempting idea and I know a lot of our fans would like it."
But what will those much-invoked fans think? Glancing at fansites - I don't recommend it - doesn't turn up all that much. Some websites, the estimable Take That Appreciation Pages excepted, seem to have all but shut up shop, stuck in a weird mid-90s torpor of neon graphics and coloured wallpaper. Others are, undeniably, mainly in German.
But the euphoria of revival is in the air, and 90,000-plus punters (who snapped up the greatest hits CD in its first week of release earlier this month) can't all be wrong (they can, but that's democracy). But over to you. The fans. You are there, you know you are.
