For Gary Barlow, life as the frontman of Take That has brought decades of fame, packed stadiums and a level of public recognition that can make ordinary family life difficult to maintain. But behind the touring schedules and television appearances, Barlow says his wife and three children remain his most loyal supporters.
Speaking to HELLO! magazine, as reported by Sophie Hamilton, the 55-year-old singer described his family as his “biggest fans” while acknowledging that his celebrity status has not always been straightforward for his children.
Barlow has been married to dancer and choreographer Dawn Andrews, 56, for 26 years. The couple have three children: Daniel, 26, who works in medicine; Emily, 24, who studied physiology; and Daisy, 17.
“My family are definitely still my biggest fans,” Barlow told HELLO!.
That support, however, has existed alongside the less glamorous reality of growing up with a famous father. Barlow said his children have experienced periods when they would have preferred him to be less recognisable in public.
“They have those years when they sometimes wish they had a ‘normal dad’,” he said, adding that they would sometimes rather not have the attention that comes with being recognised.
As they have grown older, Barlow said, their perspective has changed. He believes his children have increasingly come to appreciate the positive side of his unusual career and the enjoyment he gets from performing.
“They all come to a lot of the shows, and as they get older, they seem to get more involved,” he said.
That evolution has given Barlow a chance to share more of his professional world with his family rather than keeping his career and home life completely separate.
A family connection on the road
The connection between Barlow’s family and his working life became particularly visible during Take That’s recent stadium run, The Circus Live UK. The five-week tour brought the group back into the large-scale live environment that has long been central to its career.
For Barlow, one of the memorable aspects of the tour was not simply performing for thousands of fans each night but seeing the next generation of the band around the production.
“One of the great things about this Circus tour was the number of Take That kids we had on the road with us,” he said.
He recalled children moving between dressing rooms and joining the adults for meals, creating what he described as a family atmosphere behind the scenes.
That environment is not unique to Barlow’s family. His Take That bandmates Mark Owen and Howard Donald also have children. Owen, 54, is a father of three, while Donald, 58, has four children. With the three band members together, the touring family included seven children between Owen and Donald alone, alongside Barlow’s own children.
The presence of their families offers another perspective on what it means to sustain a long-running pop career. Take That emerged in the early 1990s and became one of Britain’s most successful pop groups, while its members have subsequently balanced their public careers with family lives that have largely remained away from the center of the spotlight.
For Barlow, that balance appears to have become less about shielding his children entirely from his career and more about allowing them to participate on their own terms.
From stadiums to New Zealand
Barlow’s family comments come as another part of his career takes him away from the concert stage and into food, travel and television.
He is returning to screens with the third instalment of his Food & Wine Tour, this time exploring New Zealand with comedian and friend Jason Manford.
Previous editions of the series took Barlow to South Africa and Australia. The New Zealand programme continues the format by combining travel, food, wine and encounters with local people while placing the two friends against the country’s distinctive landscapes.
The trip included a welcome from the Auckland-based Māori tribe Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei, tandem biking, and visits to olive groves and vineyards.
Barlow said the experience was notable because the friendship with Manford extended beyond the formal filming schedule. Rather than spending the day filming and then retreating separately, the pair remained together throughout the journey.
“It wasn’t as though we were filming and then went off to our trailers – we did actually spend every waking hour together, and it was great fun,” he said.
The relaxed nature of the trip also appears to have influenced what Barlow brought home.
Why Gary Barlow returned with photographs, not souvenirs
Travel television often produces the expectation of souvenirs, gifts and objects that can be carried back from distant destinations. Barlow had a different problem: luggage.
Because the journey involved moving between locations by trains, buses and cars, he said he had to travel with hand luggage. That left little practical room for presents.
Instead, he returned with photographs.
“We’re moving around so much on trains and buses and cars that I have to pack just hand luggage,” Barlow explained.
Rather than bringing physical gifts home, he showed friends and family photographs from the trip, even admitting that he made people sit through them “slide by slide.”
His enthusiasm for the journey was especially strong when it came to New Zealand’s South Island. Barlow said some of the most spectacular scenery he encountered was there, and his response to the landscape went beyond simply enjoying it as a visitor.
The trip left him with an ambition of his own: bringing Take That to New Zealand.
“The one thing I personally took back with me was the ambition to take a show to New Zealand,” he said.
Barlow said he would like Take That to perform across both the North and South Islands and suggested that he had persuaded his bandmates to consider the idea.
“I’d love Take That to play the North and South Islands… and I think I’ve convinced the lads, so watch this space!” he said.
His comments do not amount to an announced Take That New Zealand tour, but they do reveal how strongly the trip affected him. Any future performances there would represent an expansion of the group’s international live footprint rather than an event confirmed by the comments themselves.
A different side of the Take That frontman
The contrast between Barlow’s two recent projects — a major stadium tour and a television journey through New Zealand — illustrates the breadth of the career he has built beyond his role as Take That’s lead singer.
On stage, his professional life is defined by rehearsals, touring, production and thousands of people watching from the crowd. Away from music, his television work has increasingly placed him in settings where conversation, food, travel and friendship are the focus.
Yet family remains a thread connecting those different worlds.
His children may have experienced the frustrations that can accompany having a famous parent, particularly during the years when fitting in can matter more than standing out. Barlow’s comments suggest that this relationship with fame has changed over time, with his older children increasingly able to see their father’s career not simply as a source of public attention but as something he genuinely enjoys.
The latest Take That tour appears to have brought that understanding into sharper focus. With children of the band members sharing the road, the touring environment became something of a wider family gathering rather than simply a workplace.
And while Barlow’s New Zealand adventure took him thousands of miles from home, his instinct was still to bring the experience back to the people closest to him — even if that meant making them endure a lengthy slideshow instead of opening a suitcase full of souvenirs.
For someone whose career has been built around performing for enormous audiences, the picture Barlow paints of family life is considerably more intimate: children who have grown up with an unusually visible father, a wife who has shared more than two decades of marriage with him, and a family that continues to follow his work even while understanding the complications that fame can bring.
His next television adventure may have ended with a desire to return to New Zealand with Take That, but for Barlow, the more immediate pleasure of returning home remains remarkably simple.
Asked what he does first after coming back from a trip, his answer was not another performance or a grand celebration.
“Make a nice cup of tea,” he said. “A cup of tea when you’re home is always the best thing.”
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Source: Owink
