TOWERING over the industry like a unit-gulping colossus, forgive Robbie Williams a snigger as this retrospective crashes into every record shop on the planet.

Rewind to 1995. As the nation wiped a disconsolate tear from its eye after Take That imploded, everyone's favourite class clown was doing his damnedest to wreck a solo career.

A memorably hedonistic Glastonbury, where he hooked up with the reclusive Gallaghers, saw Williams out-rock a band busy re-defining indie excess. What was a vital cog in a boy-bandwagon spectacularly lurched off the rails. With dyed blonde hair.

Fast forward to 2004, and with Oasis all washed up here's king smug with 18 (count'em) gold-embossed hits. Take that, Noel.

They're nearly all here, except for Freedom. Every track seeped in the social fabric. And like the greatest bands, Williams has a tune for every mood.

He may be a fantastic uber-arena showman but - and it's a gigantic Gary Barlow-sized BUT - in terms of musical innovation, he's nothing more than a thieving magpie, albeit with a cheeky smile and an astute former song-writing partner in Guy Chambers.

Robbing Williams mimics Sinatra (Mandalay) and The Who (Let Me Entertain You), apes Bond themes (Millennium) and Pet Shop Boys (No Regrets) and knocks off pastiches of Elton (Eternity) Oasis (Old Before I Die) and Ian Dury (Rock DJ).

This post-modern pilfering continues: a squirt of rock robotics can't mask the electro-pop stench of Gary Numan on Radio.

Whether fans continue lapping up his post-Chambers genre-hopping and let him continue entertaining them remains to be seen.

Updated: 09:05 Thursday, October 21, 2004