Читать книгу Take That and Robbie Williams - Emily Herbert - Страница 5

On 15 July 2010, after years of speculation, the most popular boy band ever was about to re-form. Well, re-re-form, actually, as they had already done so as a highly successful foursome, but now it was truly going to happen. Take That was to be a five-piece again. Robbie Williams was coming home.

In truth, it had been in the pipeline for years. In the aftermath of his departure from Take That in 1995, Robbie had forged a stellar career, whereas the others hadn’t. But in more recent years, Take That had staged one of the most successful comebacks the world of entertainment had ever seen, while Robbie’s career hadn’t glowed as brightly as once it had. At the same time, hostilities were largely over: the rivalry between Robbie and his old bandmates, especially Gary Barlow, had cooled considerably. Indeed, they all looked set to be the best of friends once more.

As far back as December 2008, it had become clear that a reunion really was on the cards. Robbie was waxing positively lyrical about his old friends: ‘The thing that struck me the most was how much fun they’re having,’ he said. ‘It’s more rewarding when you’re a gang. Ever since I left Take That I’ve wanted to be in a band. We got together a lot over the summer. It was amazing. We’ve all matured a lot since we parted. I’m very pleased to say the differences we’ve had have just melted away. I celebrated by getting a Take That symbol tattooed on my right arm. I’m proud to know the boys and I’m proud to have been in the band. I’d love to be in the band again but I’ve got some unfinished business of my own.’ And anyway – there were a few legalities to be ironed out first.

But still, a new tattoo of Take That’s symbol? It must be serious. Gary clearly thought so, too: ‘We will [reunite] one day,’ he said. ‘I just don’t know when.’ Although no dates had been announced, behind the scenes the wheels were being put in motion: Robbie’s people were talking to Take That’s people and all the interested parties were gradually edging back towards the fold. In March the following year, Robbie attended the opening of We Will Rock You in Manchester and came out for the idea more strongly still.

‘I’m in regular contact with them, even Gary, and it’s looking more likely by the week,’ he observed. ‘The lads all seem up for it and some people think it’s a done deal. I think it would be fun. Let’s see what happens, but my head’s in the right place, so the timing could be right if Gary calls. I think it would be fun. It would be good. We’ve matured now. We’d have a laugh.’

In September 2009, the rumour mill went into overdrive. Robbie and the rest of the boys had reportedly been spotted in Electric Lady studios in New York. Was it possible that new material was on the cards? That had been one major sticking point last time around – that Gary was getting all the credit for songwriting (not least because he had written all the songs) and that Robbie hadn’t been allowed to do his own thing. That issue clearly had to be addressed if the boys were to be together once more.

Robbie was ‘back with Take That in the studio and they’re all writing together again’, said one source. ‘Robbie wouldn’t be happy performing old Take That songs that he has had no part in. But if they can pen new tracks that they’re all happy with, they’ll record them and he’ll be back with them on stage.’

A spokesman for Take That, however, would not confirm that they were working on any new music and instead said the band was finishing work on The Greatest Day, their first live album, which was scheduled for release in November 2010. With neat timing, Robbie was also due to release a new album, Reality Killed the Video Star, the same month, but there was nothing like the potential rivalry there would have been had the two events coincided a couple of years earlier. Everyone was wishing one another well: it had become a veritable love-in.

There were rumours, although ultimately they came to nothing, that Robbie was interested in joining Take That on their spectacular ‘The Circus Live’ tour, which had been a knockout, both with the critics and with the ecstatic crowds. Finally, in November 2009, all five appeared on stage together for the first time in 14 years at a Children In Need concert at the Royal Albert Hall. They didn’t actually perform together, however – they just embraced between numbers. The closest they came was when Robbie and Gary took to the mike together – with everyone else on the stage – for a rendition of ‘Hey Jude’.

By this time, Gary was sounding every bit as enthusiastic as Robbie. ‘It was lovely for us all to stand arm in arm and take a bow,’ he said in an interview about the night. ‘We’ve been in sort of real, proper contact for about a year now, and we’ve been hanging out and spending the evenings together. And when this night came up, I actually thought of Rob, and thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could get him there?”’ It had clearly been an emotional experience and there was more to come, with Gary saying they wanted to get back together and do something, but not just as a one-off. ‘We want it to be a bit more substantial.’

Just how substantial was becoming increasingly clear. The following summer, in June 2010, the two were present at a charity football match for Soccer Aid at Old Trafford, England v Rest of the World, where they hugged in front of the wildly cheering crowds. Robbie was playing in the England team, alongside Ben Shephard, Bradley Walsh, Jamie Theakston, Ricky Hatton, Teddy Sheringham and Jamie Redknapp, while on the other side were Ryan Giggs, Zinedine Zidane, Woody Harrelson, Mike Myers, Jens Lehmann, Gordon Ramsey, Shane Filan, Ronan Keating and Joe Calzaghe, with captain Michael Sheen. The match was a 2-2 draw, with the Rest of the World finally declared winners after a penalty shoot-out, but such was the intensity of the speculation surrounding a Take That reunion that the hug overshadowed everything else.

It seemed they had something to celebrate. Shortly after the match, it was announced that Robbie and Gary were to record a duet entitled ‘Shame’, which would be written jointly and would appear on Robbie’s album In and Out of Consciousness: The Greatest Hits 1990–2010. That did, however, muddy the waters slightly for, although the two were evidently on excellent terms again, this was Robbie reunited only with Gary, not with the rest of Take That. Admittedly, the rivalry had been very much between the two of them but, briefly, the announcement deflected attention from the bigger picture. But not for long.

The release of the album was another indication that Robbie was looking back over the past and reviewing his life. Being a compilation, it encompassed his time with Take That as well as his solo career, and was bound to cause a period of reflection. All the boys were older now, closer to 40 than 30 (in the case of Howard and Jason, they actually were in their 40s), and if they wanted to sing together again, there was no time like the present. Time was moving fast.

Robbie clearly felt so. ‘It’s incredible to listen to the album and realise that it’s already been twenty years of making music and playing gigs,’ he said. ‘And the great thing about the album is that it’s not only a celebration of my past but also a bridge to the future. The fact that part of the future includes a name from my past makes it all the more poignant for me.’

There was disappointment in some quarters, however, that the other members of the band were not to be included. That soon evaporated when the announcement that everyone had been waiting for was finally made. On that hot day in July, a statement was put out: ‘The rumours are true… Take That: the original lineup, have written and recorded a new album for release later this year. Following months of speculation, Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, Jason Orange, Mark Owen and Robbie Williams confirmed they have been recording a new studio album as a five-piece, which they will release in November.’ That meant another single was on the cards, this one being ‘The Flood’.

Everyone – not least the principal players in the drama – was absolutely delighted. ‘I get embarrassingly excited when the five of us are in a room,’ said Robbie bashfully. ‘It feels like coming home.’

‘Getting the five of us to be in a room together, although always a dream, never actually seemed like becoming a reality,’ Mark chipped in. ‘Now the reality of the five of us making a record together feels like a dream. It’s been an absolute delight spending time with Rob again. But I’m still a better footballer.’

‘I’m over the moon that Robbie’s back with us, however long it lasts,’ added Jason. ‘I just want to enjoy our time with him. Life is beautifully strange sometimes.’

It wasn’t long before they all got to work. They were all seen filming a promotional video, rowing on the Thames at Runnymede, Surrey, amid much merriment. ‘They were having a great time – it was just five friends having a laugh,’ said an observer at the scene. ‘Robbie and the boys clearly got on very well. It was just like old times. They were mucking about and having fun. When they finished filming on the first day, Robbie decided he needed to cool off. He jumped straight into the lake and had a little swim. No one else had the guts to join him – it was freezing! The boys were stuck in a five-seater rowing boat wearing old-fashioned white rowing kits bearing a custom-designed Take That crest. They were told to paddle like the professionals. They were joined by a second boat with lookalikes and filmed pretending to race – only the band was being pulled by another vessel carrying the camera crew. I think they found it quite hard. If you haven’t done it before, sculling can be pretty difficult. There were lots of little kids around and at one stage they all started singing “Angels” and Robbie was pretending to conduct them.’

All sorts of other outcomes were being predicted as a result of this reunion. Robbie famously suffered from stage fright but there was speculation that, once on stage with the rest of Take That, it would disappear. ‘With the boys there the stage fright won’t be an issue,’ said a friend. ‘I know he suffered from that earlier on. But he’ll have all that support of his band of brothers. It’s so wonderful that he has joined Take That again.’

Of course, despite all the lovey-dovey, no one was willing to take too much for granted. The original split, 15 years earlier, had been highly acrimonious and, for all the recent public hugging, Robbie and Gary had done their fair share of slagging each other off in the past. It was decided that the reunion would be for one year to begin with: that at least meant that there was an end in sight should the stresses of touring together prove too much. But there was real happiness surrounding the announcement as well. Robbie and his fellow band members did not just have an army of fans – they had a special place in the national psyche and there was real cheer that they would soon be working together again.

It was a welcome distraction from other issues that had been dogging the band, too. Take That had been one of the squeaky-cleanest outfits of their generation but, in the months leading up to the reunion with Robbie, they had been rocked by one revelation after another, suggesting that behind the scenes quite another story was playing out. It started with the cleanest living of the lot, Mark. In October 2009, he had married his long-term love Emma Ferguson, with whom he had two children: Elwood, three, and Willow Rose, one. In March 2010, the marriage was rocked by revelations that he had been unfaithful with at least ten different women, and that he had a drink problem. Worse, one affair, with Neva Hanley, had been going on for years, although Mark had not seen her since tying the knot.

There was nothing for it but to own up and apologise, and Mark did. Indeed, no one was harsher on him than he was himself. ‘I have been an idiot, a dick head, a knob head,’ he said. ‘All of the above and more. It’s about me, my mistakes. Nobody else is to blame. I don’t know how many girls there were in all. Maybe ten.’

Indeed, he sounded quite beside himself at times. ‘I have been living with the guilt,’ Mark continued. ‘It has always been there – you carry it around with you. It held me back in my relationship with Emma. I wouldn’t have done any of this if I had my time again. I am halfway through my life now and this, in a way, is a lesson. You’ve got to learn and that’s what I am going to do. Emma is really strong and I know she will do what is right for her and the kids. I support that and I really appreciate that. She loved me – she still does love me – and I have let her down. That’s the truth of it. You realise what you have done when you face up to it and the mistakes you have made. And I have really let her down. Friends, everybody. I feel like I have let everyone down. I wish I had told Emma about this before we got married and come clean then. I’ve done it now. It wouldn’t be a second chance, it would be the hundredth chance she has given me.’

The last time Mark had seen Neva had been in September 2009, before he’d got married, and it appeared to be something of a wake-up call. He had also provided Neva with some financial support and felt the need to explain that, too.

‘When I met Neva in September, it was because I was having a tough time with Emma,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t feeling very good about myself or the future and I went down my phonebook, found her number and we met up. After that last meeting I realised I had to try to sort my life out. I had to change the person I was. The wedding for me was a new slate and a new start. In my head, there was never a time when I was doubting getting married. It was a chance for me to put it all behind me and not make the mistakes I had made in the past.’

In some ways, Mark had been quite generous to Neva. She, alas, ended up feeling rather embittered about the whole affair (perhaps not surprisingly) but, whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, Mark had helped her when she’d been in trouble. ‘She phoned me the week before I got married,’ he said. ‘She said she had lost her job and was going to lose her flat, and asked if I could help her out. I have known her for years so I said, “Of course.” In all I paid her about twelve k, the last one just last week. When I have been in a bad way, when I have needed a bit of support, she has been there for me. All the other girls were one-night stands. On tour. When I was away from home on wild nights out, which was every night. I’m not in contact with any of them. It wasn’t the girls’ fault, it was mine. I would be up for it and looking for it. I wasn’t thinking straight. The next day I would think, “Oh fuck.” It was regret – disappointment in myself. I had been drinking. I wouldn’t have the nerve to talk to a girl when I’m not drunk.’

Increasingly, it became obvious that drink had played a big role in all this, and that Emma had had a fair amount to put up with. ‘I denied to her I was having an affair when things were going on,’ he said. ‘It was getting better and better, me and Em. We met and, within a year and a half, she was pregnant with our first beautiful boy, Elwood. And when you have kids, things change. I feel like I am getting to know Em more and more every day. I love her to death but our relationship hasn’t always been great, because of me. She has tried really hard to support me. Life was hard, I guess. I let Emma down. I was selfish and stubborn. Everything that has happened to me I have brought on myself. If ever we argued it was down to me.’

Since the wedding, however, there had been no one else. ‘I’m proud of that,’ said Mark. ‘I know that sounds really stupid but on our wedding day, for me the ring is really important and I want to be true to my word. It was a big change for me to be able to do that. It was a big moment for me, my wedding day. On many levels it was a fresh start and that was how I was looking at it. I have noticed a change since I stopped drinking, but I am quite difficult. It wasn’t the sunshine Emma was hoping for but it is better. I have always liked a drink and I am a party man.’

Emma, not surprisingly, was livid, but the marriage survived, with Mark swearing it would never happen again. But it was still a terrible shock to the fans, who were used to thinking of Mark as the clean-living one, not a man with a drink problem who’d had a series of one-night stands. And just as the fans were reeling from those revelations, more stories started to come out.

It emerged that Howard had had an affair in 2008 with a married Dutch fan, 28-year-old mother of one, Merith van Onselen. Howard had been DJing in a club in Berlin at the time: he and Merith had had an eight-month fling while her husband Dave stayed at home and looked after the couple’s three-year-old daughter. ‘He has a very high sex drive,’ said Merith, sounding utterly unrepentant. ‘He wanted exciting sex and he sure got what he was looking for.’

Dave sounded less than thrilled. ‘She was a fan,’ he said sadly. ‘Not many women would turn him down. She didn’t.’

Could it get any worse? Yes. Now another Dutch woman came forward (although she insisted on remaining anonymous) to talk about an encounter with Gary who, she said, had taken her virginity when she was 17. ‘The band Take That has a special sex manager who takes care of ladies for the band members,’ she claimed. ‘An interesting blonde woman made me find my way to Gary over and over again. The sex was very tender at first, but it didn’t take long for him to show me what he had on offer. I was so naïve. The one time I came round without any help of the sex manager, I found him busy with another girl.’

And yet another Dutch woman had had a fling with Mark. ‘Just like I was, Merith must have been mesmerised,’ she said. ‘We can’t blame her for her actions.’

Indeed, Mark had been pretty busy. Yet more revelations came out, this time from an unnamed fan who said that Mark had persuaded her and a friend to have a threesome when they were just 16. The two were staying in the same hotel as him, which turned out to be very convenient indeed. ‘He asked what we were doing,’ the fan recalled. ‘We said we were tired and about to go to bed. He said, “Want to come to a party in my room?” He told us to go up to the top floor in half an hour. It was clear that he was drunk. We walked into his room but there was no one in there, just the smell of incense. Because he was in Take That, I just thought they were trustworthy and nice. [But] he kept saying, “I want sex with you both,” but I said I didn’t want to. He even got condoms out of the bedside drawer.’

Activities ensued, although not, it would seem, full sex, and the girls returned for a second night. ‘We felt obliged to please him,’ said the fan. ‘We did things to him and he did things to us. He kept on asking for sex, saying, “Come on, let’s do it. It’ll be safe.” But we both refused.’

By this time, the revelations surrounding the band – especially Mark – were causing such ructions that they led to the postponement of the big reunion. Robbie’s own domestic situation was still unsettled, on top of which the scandal would have totally overshadowed any announcement, so the plans were put on ice. ‘All they care about is Mark at the moment and it wouldn’t feel the same all of them practising for their comeback without him,’ said a source. ‘All excitement about the future is very much on hold because Mark’s got to get better first.’

Several months on, of course, the reunion was announced, and a great deal of positive sentiment it evoked, too. However, with less than helpful timing, Neva Hanley finally went public with her side of the story about her affair with Mark. It didn’t overshadow matters in the way it would have done had she spoken out earlier but it did serve to remind everyone that, behind the squeaky-clean image, there was another side to Take That.

Neva had, in fact, been in India since the scandal broke and only got back just as the reunion was announced. ‘Great timing, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I spent months trying to get Mark out of my head. I come back and Take That are everywhere. I look at Mark in the papers and on the telly and he’s this sweet, smiley boy and I find it really hard to equate that with the Mark I knew. I thought I loved him. I was very young. Now I feel used. He used to phone up and, like an idiot, I’d be there. I never demanded anything. I protected him. I lied for him. The one time I really needed him, he wasn’t there. He couldn’t care less.’

Neva had first met Mark when she was just 19, at Preston station, and didn’t have a clue who he was. ‘I was heading home to Chester,’ she recalled. ‘This guy standing next to me said, “They take ages, don’t they?” – they were prepping the train. He was small, smoking a cigarette and wearing a woolly cardigan.’

Perhaps the fact that Neva didn’t recognise him until he was asked for an autograph was part of the appeal. ‘He asked me to sit with him and paid for an upgrade as he was in first class,’ she said. ‘To be honest, I only vaguely recognised him from Celebrity Big Brother. He seemed like a nice guy. I had to get off at Crewe; he was going on to London. He scribbled his number down and said to keep in touch. I got off in such a rush, I didn’t really thank him for the ticket so I texted him, then didn’t think any more of it.’

Inevitably, Mark got in touch. ‘I didn’t recognise his voice,’ said Neva. ‘He said, “Hiya, it’s Mark … from the band.” We spoke about football – he’s a Liverpool fan and so am I. He started calling a couple of times a week. I didn’t fancy him. I liked him. After a few weeks, he asked what I was doing at the weekend. I said, “Nothing.” He said, “I’m in LA – come and visit me. I’ll book you a room and pay for the flights.” I would never do anything like that now but I thought, “Why not?” I called the hotel to make sure he really had booked a room, then booked flights. I made sure they were flexible so that if I wanted to leave quickly I could.’

It was a little while before anything happened but when it did, it did. ‘He just grabbed my arm, turned me round and kissed me,’ said Neva. ‘I was really shocked. I hadn’t seen it coming. I think as you get older you get more attuned at picking up the signals but I really wasn’t any good at that. Later, when we went out to dinner, he held my hand and I thought,” OK, so I didn’t just imagine that.”’

The next day, the relationship was consummated. ‘We started kissing and ended up sleeping together,’ she said. ‘It sounds awful, happening so soon. But for three days, we had spoken to nobody but each other. It felt right. It was very calm and easy. The only odd thing I remember was the next morning, Mark ordered tuna for breakfast.’

Unbeknown to her, Mark had already started seeing Emma but, even so, he invited Neva to his Lake District home. ‘It was really beautiful, in the middle of nowhere,’ she said, sounding rather wistful. ‘There was a huge stone table in the dining room, which was all very dramatic. There were two kitchens, a study, a breakfast room, the blue room with his piano and spiral stairs to the main bedrooms. There was a huge copper bath in one bathroom and a wraparound shower in another. There was an orangery, which was freezing because it was November. I do remember thinking it was huge for just him, his two cats Coco and Basque and his pet crab. He’d had a tank full of fish but it had leaked when he was away in LA and only the crab had survived.’

To Neva, things all looked very promising. ‘We talked for hours,’ she said. ‘There was a lot of kissing and touching. It was nice. I didn’t really think about what our relationship was. We were friends but we had sex too.’

Although Neva was unaware of Mark’s relationship with Emma, she was beginning to suspect. ‘Another time, I’d had a rotten day temping and wanted to vent,’ she said. ‘I called Mark but he said he was in London and couldn’t talk. Now I know that he was staying with Emma. If I’m honest, I had a feeling right then that there was someone else. There was a definite shift from that day on. He called only a couple of times a month and I only saw him now and then.’

In 2005, though, Neva moved to London and saw a bit of him then. For the first time, she began to realise that he might have a drink problem. ‘It was about ten-thirty [in the evening] on the day I moved in,’ she said. ‘Mark called. He was very drunk. He said he was at the K West hotel [in West London] and wanted me there. I’d never seen him that drunk. He was needy. He wanted cuddles and kept asking if I liked him. I ordered him bread on room service and put him to bed. We didn’t sleep together; he wasn’t capable. The next day he was so sorry. That became the pattern of our relationship.’

In December 2005, now sure that Mark was seeing someone else, Neva received a round-robin text message announcing that Emma was pregnant. ‘I wasn’t even shocked,’ she said. ‘I just thought, “So she’s called Emma.” For some reason, I’d imagined her as Julie. The most upsetting thing was I’d been honest with him and he had this whole part of his life that he hadn’t spoken about. I didn’t respond to the text and we never, ever spoke about it.’

Life began to take off for Mark then. Take That had reformed and he was building his relationship with Emma – but he continued to see Neva from time to time. ‘Mark craved attention,’ said Neva. ‘When he was on tour I could tell you the days he slept with other people. He would ring me, drunk, eight or nine times. When I said I wasn’t going to him, he would go to the hotel bar and pick someone up. Every time he did that, he was taking a risk of being found out. I would worry when he called drunk. It’s hard to break away from someone completely. I didn’t see him that much then. He was too busy sleeping with the rest of the planet on tour. I saw him in October 2007, then January 2008, then nothing until a text in April.’

Finally, though, the cracks began to appear. ‘Mark called me to tell me he was getting married,’ said Neva flatly. ‘I didn’t react. I didn’t love him particularly. I didn’t want to sway him. It felt like there needed to be an end to it really.’

However, there was one more one-off. ‘I regret that night completely,’ said Neva. ‘It was reckless in every way. Mark met me in front of the hotel, we went up to the balcony and stayed there drinking and smoking for five, six hours. Mark said Emma didn’t like the person he was. I said she was probably stressed because she had two kids and a wedding to organise. He kept saying, “You like me, don’t you, Neve?” He said I hadn’t changed from the day we met and that he loved me. He was just drunk. But I had changed. I was five years older. Then he started talking about his stag do in New York. It was bizarre. We ended up having sex several times. I left before he woke up. I left a note telling him he should go home.’

Eventually, of course, it all came out, but Neva’s attitude had hardened considerably by then. ‘He made his choices,’ she said. ‘When everything came out, he just threw me to the lions. He didn’t even call to see if I was OK. His manager wrote to make sure I was all right. Poor guy – sometimes I wonder how many other girls he had to write to over the years.’

Against all this, it was ironic that the reunion with the band’s original bad boy, Robbie, diverted attention from all these antics. And it wasn’t just the reunion that was capturing the public imagination. Just as his bandmates were having to put up with one shock revelation after another, Robbie, who had also had to deal with drink problems in his time, was at last settling down to find happiness with American actress Ayda Field. Indeed, he was so blissfully happy, he could hardly stop talking about it and, in August 2010, in the run-up to Take That’s big reunion tour, he married her.

The proposal had been an unusual one: Robbie handed Ayda four cards, each bearing one of the words – Will. You. Marry. Me. ‘Then he dropped on to one knee,’ said Ayda. ‘I said, “Yes.”’

There was a reason behind Robbie’s methods. ‘When we first started going out, this weird thing would happen,’ Robbie explained. ‘When I had a deck of cards, I would split the pack and always come up with a Queen of Hearts. Because I’m into mysticism, it filled my heart and made me stop worrying about whether I was with the right person.’

The wedding took place at Robbie’s home in LA. It was shrouded in great secrecy: guests thought they were being invited to a Casino Royale-themed party to celebrate Robbie’s 20 years in show business, and had no idea they were about to witness his nuptials. It certainly wasn’t your typical wedding: there was no best man and, rather than bridesmaids, the couple’s eight dogs accompanied Ayda down the aisle. Nor was there any alcohol: the toasts were made with cups of Earl Grey. But it was a truly happy affair, with Ayda looking stunning in a Monique Lhuillier dress.

‘Ayda looked like the most beautiful girl in the world,’ said Robbie, who was clearly beside himself with joy. ‘To be surrounded by family and friends and then see Ayda appear looking so radiant was almost too much to take. I’m the happiest man alive.’

And now, along with the Take That reunion, family life was on the cards. ‘I’ll probably have a couple and then adopt a couple, too,’ said Robbie. ‘I want one. Like Angelina’s doing, I want one of them. Adopt two and have a couple. It’s something we’ve talked about. When you go to somewhere like Haiti, it does make you feel like you want to help. I wanted to straight away – it’s the instant guilt thing you get when you go out there. It’s awful what has happened. Working with kids has made me want to have them. It’s on the horizon. I don’t know when. I’ve got a few things I want to do before that happens.’

One of those things was the Take That tour. The goodwill surrounding the band was as strong as it had ever been and their fans were now spanning generations. The original Take That devotees were now women in their 30s but who still adored the 5-piece, but they had also accumulated a whole new set of admirers who hadn’t even been born when they first started out. So just who were these boys that generated such affection and loyalty? Where had they come from? How had it all begun?