What's my experience of their loveliness? They are good-tempered. They're interested. They're engaged, curious in a scattergun way. They want to know what I think about god, the cruelty of contemporary celebrity culture, conspiracy theories and the possibility that we're now living in the future. Orange asks lots of questions. 'I need to know who I'm talking to, before I start telling you all about me. Makes sense, doesn't it?'

Is it important to you to be liked, I ask him.

'Very. Very. I want to be loved by everybody,' he says. 'Sad, isn't it?'

Is being liked more important to you than it is to the others?

'We're all people-pleasers. All of us.'

Even Barlow?

'Gary probably less so. He's probably the most secure in himself. Us three... fucking wombling bumbling idiots in the background, are not as secure. Not compared to rock Gary.'

They are also, fortunately, tolerant. In January, I wrote 400 words for Grazia magazine detailing precisely how much I fancied Howard Donald, on the assumption that he'd never read it. He did, and now he's sitting in front of me. He makes it easy for me; he teases me, he laughs, he switches to asking me very straightforward questions about my job when he sees I'm getting flustered. 'Are you disappointed now you've met me?' he asks. He genuinely suspects I could be. Only Donald is beautiful in an uncomplicated way; he is not remotely disappointing. 'No,' I say. And then: 'No no no no no.' Because I am that cool.

So I buy their loveliness. I am less convinced by Take That's pretensions toward being ordinary. They're very attached to the idea that they are ordinary, but... how can they be, possibly?

Donald insists that he has had a normal life. No, you haven't, I say. 'Of course I have! I only joined this band when I was 23.' You're 40 now, that's 17 years of extraordinary - and, PS, you're wearing Dior and you've barely noticed. He won't have it. 'I did YTS [a government youth training scheme] for two years, I was on the dole for two weeks, between leaving the YTS and the job.' He was a vehicle painter when Martin-Smith offered him a place in the band. His parents couldn't understand why he would walk away from £140 a week for something as nebulous as a stint in a boy band. 'I went out, I walked round to every car firm asking for a job. I got my job that way.' He laughs. 'Oh, your heart bleeds for me, doesn't it?'

He pauses. 'I wasn't made to be a pop star. My confidence levels just aren't high enough.'

Gary Barlow is less attached to ordinary. You can tell by the way he says: 'I am a prolific songwriter,' with no apology whatsoever. Within the past few months, as well as working on The Circus, Barlow churned out the songs for ITV1's shiny new tween-luring musical drama Britannia High, and also co-wrote Peter Kay's X-Factor spoofing 'The Winners Song'. I've always been quite fascinated by him; he is such an odd collision of middle-aged dad-ishness, naked ambition and glamour. He is Peter Kay doing Elton John; he wears designer cashmere and talks Saturday night TV. 'Hey! Isn't Saturday night busy? You've got Strictly, you've got X Factor... oh, but Dancing on Ice, that's my favourite! Eh? I've got to prepare for two years' time, when I'm on it.'

Mark Frith says you're the best pop stars in the world, I tell him. 'Pop star? Isn't that great? Isn't it? I love that. "Pop star". How brilliant that I'm a pop star! Me! Was it all I ever wanted to be? It's all I still ever want to be! "Pop star".'

How's your ego, I ask. Barlow seems to have adjusted to the new regime, but you never can tell. He was the group's focus for a long time, after all.

'It's all right! It's under control! We've all got egos. We wouldn't be doing this if we hadn't. But it's knowing it and dealing with it. I check myself a lot. I can be the most overpowering of us four.'

I wonder if he is as ambitious as ever. He was always considered to be the most ruthlessly focused of the lot; he'd been touring the northern club scene for two years when Nigel Martin-Smith got his hands on him. It was Barlow who disbanded the group to pursue a solo career; Barlow who entered into a feud with Robbie Williams, when they were bidding for chart success simultaneously; Barlow who suffered public humiliation when his career failed, and Williams flourished. Has all of that affected him?

'Um, I'm ambitious still, but it's controlled a little bit more these days. In my twenties, I'd have stepped over anybody to get where I need to be.'

Were you cut-throat?

'Oh yeah. Me and Robbie used to play terrible tricks on each other. I took Robbie's album back to a music shop once and...' He laughs. 'Stupid, stupid things! Things you wouldn't dream of doing as a 37-year-old bloke. Quite seriously I'd do it, as well. It wouldn't be as a joke. '

What calmed you down?

'Life. Life did. It just happened. And one of the big things was, when I was out of work for a few years, I really missed it all. I missed it terribly.'

He's certainly not without vulnerability. Barlow is an emotional eater. He put on five stone after Take That ended and his record label dropped him. His wife Dawn packed him off to see a doctor, who told him he'd die at 52 if he carried on. He's slimmed down and toned up and he looks good on it; the early, craggy stages of middle-age suit him. But he is terrified of getting fat again. 'I weigh myself every morning. I have a once-a-month therapy thing. I really, really enjoy therapy. It's another opportunity for me to talk, to talk about me and about food.'

Jason Orange - formerly a painter and decorator by day, a dancer on Pete Waterman's The Hitman and Her by night - isn't ordinary either. He's too complicated. Too eccentric, too mannered, too thoughtful, very funny. He doesn't translate brilliantly into print. 'My introspection gets mistaken for self-absorption,' he says. 'Which, to be fair, sometimes, it is.'

He's arch, he's mischievous. I'm never sure if he's serious. I ask what he does for fun, and he says: 'I don't go out to clubs all that much. I'm 38. Nightclubs are great if you want to dance, get drunk, or cop off with someone. And I love doing all three, so I'd get found out straight away.'

He is single and inclined to say things like (when I ask if he fancies any of Girls Aloud): 'Only in as much as I fancy all girls, all the time.' But then he says he wants a wife and babies, because that's the whole point, isn't it?

Do you like being in Take That?

'Sometimes.' He speaks incredibly softly. 'It is nice, now. It's really nice. But... I was fighting it a bit, when we first got back together. It felt the strangest to me, I think.'

Why?

'Lots of reasons. I was fighting it, I was not sitting that comfortably with it, and I didn't notice how nice it was. I think they noticed - particularly Gary and Howard - they were revelling in it, enjoying it. Especially Gary, who had it taken from him, in such a big way. So to be handed it back, he relished it and relaxed with it a lot quicker and more easily than I did.'

Take That talk, with varying degrees of willingness, about the first time, the highlights of which, according to Jason Orange, were: 'Playing on stage. Hotel capers. Running through the corridors early hours; having food fights, having people in your room, emptying the minibar, every other rock'n'roll cliche - we gave it another pop. In our own little innocent way. There's more but I'll only tell you that when you've turned your tape off.' (He doesn't.)

They got rich, which was nice. 'Money's never been an issue, thankfully,' says Gary Barlow, with what I can only assume is understatement, given how often their songs are used on ads for supermarkets, and to crank up the tension at crucial moments on TV talent programmes. 'It's good,' says Jason Orange. 'Help your family out. Buy your mum a house. Great feeling. Every kid wants to buy their mum a house.' There's a naughty pause. 'Especially 'cause we didn't put it in their names. Put it in your name, so when they pop off, it's your investment. See?'

And there were the girls. 'Ah,' says Mark Owen, who was the most adored of the group, on account of his prettiness. 'It was all a bit chaotic really.'

'I just never understood why they were all... always... screaming,' says Howard Donald. He looks genuinely confused. 'And they were so young. Fourteen, 13, 12... and... just... screaming. I thought it was... stupid, really.' Then this 40-year-old man smiles. 'And Mark had the most fans, and that really didn't make any sense, didn't understand that one...'

Were you selling sex, I ask Mark Owen. He doesn't like the question.

'Yeah. Or, erm... I didn't... see it, in that way, then. We were sexual. We had a lot of energy, and it was a great feeling. I didn't look at it as... what's the word? As calculated. As cynical. As "selling sex". Now, though, when you look at it...' He tails off. I think of the 1991 video for 'Do What U Like', in which they had jelly eaten off their semi-naked bodies by Lycra-clad models. 'At the time, I thought we were just having a laugh. But Jay will probably stand here for an hour and talk about, were we selling sex? He'd love it.' (Orange is not so sure, in fact. 'What do you mean? We weren't doing pornos!')

How much easier is it to get girls when you're a pop star? Statistically?

'Oh, 100 per cent,' says Gary Barlow. 'Hundred per cent.'

'I don't think it's any easier,' says Jason Orange. 'Really. I don't. Put it this way. When I was at the height of my fame, the first time around, I've got five brothers - and at least three of them had many more girlfriends than I did. I was grafting my nuts off on the road, getting a little kiss here, and a little cuddle there, while them... they were sorting women out, left, right and centre.'

Take That talk, with surprising alacrity, about Robbie Williams. When Williams left, he was vitriolic about the band, particularly Gary Barlow and Nigel Martin-Smith. He dedicated 1998's bitter (and brilliant) 'No Regrets' to all of them. Although he participated in For the Record, the 2005 documentary, he wouldn't meet the others in person; he sent them a video filled with apologies and good wishes instead.

'My regrets about re-forming are... absolutely none,' says Mark Owen, 'except I would have loved for Rob to have come and done it with us. He should be here, having a cup of tea. Having a laugh. The good thing, though, is that, originally, I wanted him to come back so that we could make something right, something that had been wrong. Back in the past. But I think we've done that now.' They all met up on a recent trip to LA; they had dinner together. 'Really, all Take That is is a therapy session. One long therapy session.'

Gary Barlow, who had the hardest time with Williams, will only say: 'I don't feel... anything about Robbie now.'

Aren't you even a bit pleased that your situations have been reversed; that your career is flourishing while Williams's falters?

'I feel really good about what's happening with us, I feel good about it all; but not at Robbie's expense. Not at all.'

The next time we meet is in an antechamber of London's fashionable Soho Hotel. Jonathan Ross is weathering the Russell Brand phone prank storm in the lobby, Nancy Dell'Olio is taking tea in the drawing room, and Take That have assembled to announce a stadium tour next summer.

They are delighted and daunted by the prospect, they say. They wrote the whole album with a view to performing it, but 'there's always a bit of dread,' says Jason Orange. 'Or maybe trepidation's a better word.'

Are you confident it'll sell out, I ask. 'No problem. Job done,' says Gary Barlow. 'No doubt at all. Our fans always pull it out the bag for us.'

They're on their way to Manchester to play The Circus for their families; they're nervous about this because it'll be the record's biggest audience so far. Howard Donald's dad, in particular, is a harsh critic. 'He heard "Greatest Day" [the first single] on the radio the other day, and he says: "I can't hear you lot. I can only hear Gary singing." I thought, "What do I say to that? I know, dad! You're right!"'

Does it matter that people like it, I ask.

'Out of us four, nobody else,' says Barlow.

'Ultimately,' says Orange, 'I agree with Gaz. If no one likes it, we got it wrong. That's OK. Except we won't be special any more and we'll have to go back to school and get proper jobs.'

'It's really important,' says Howard Donald. 'I'll be so disappointed if they don't. I want the world to like it.'

'I've done that whole thing of: I don't care what people think,' says Mark Owen. 'And it's a whole lot nicer when people do like your record. Even knowing you've got a record out is a whole lot nicer than not knowing you've got a bloody record out.'

Take That didn't need to re-form. They didn't need the money, and they'd all made peace with their lives outside of the band - found other things to do, things they'd enjoyed. Three of them had children. (Barlow has a son and a daughter with Dawn - they're expecting another child later this year; Owen has a son with his long-term girlfriend, Emma Ferguson, who is expecting their second child; Donald has two daughters with two ex partners, and maintains a close relationship with both girls.) But they got back together again anyway, because there's something unique in this collection of men. They started off as a contrivance, as the flight of Nigel Martin-Smith's fancy, as a business proposition; they ended up defining tightness as a band.

'As individuals,' says Donald, 'we're all right. We're talented, in our ways. But as a group, we are a force. We are a bond. "Force." Ha! Sounds big-headed. But... you know what I mean.'

I do. Take That are fun to watch, to be near. They whisper, they gossip, laugh, wind each other up. They are flagrantly pleased by each other; by what they've got back, in terms of friendship.

'Have you seen how we have a laugh?' says Jason Orange. 'All of us, having a laugh. Bunch of lads. Mates. Men don't... men aren't that good really. Blokes find it harder than girls, to chat. It's well known, isn't it? But because we're in close proximity a lot of the time, we're forced to talk about things. We learned how to be close, without having to go to a football match to do it, or having to go to the pub to get pissed to do it.' In fact, three of them now live within 500 yards of each other in west London, while Owen lives in south London. 'We're sorting our own little world out, together.'

Is that one of the best bits?

'It's the best bit. Better than anything. Better than the music.'

I wonder how far they want to take it this time. They've got the country at their feet again - in a less frenzied but perhaps more convincing way. The Circus will go to No 1; the tour will sell out (I'll be screaming in a front row, even though I'm almost as old as they are).

Gary Barlow shouldn't really get the last word any more, but he's an old pro, so I give it to him anyway.

Are you ever going to get tired of this, I ask him.

'No,' he says, 'I can't see it. I can't see it. This will be our fourth Christmas with product. I think we're all aware that maybe we should just back off the records for a little bit now. Because I think, pretty much, we can come back whenever we like. Can't we? And it's a lovely feeling, that.'

I see Take That revivals and rebirths spiralling off into the future, and I think: yeah, that is a lovely feeling.

• 'Greatest Day' (Polydor) is out on 24 November; The Circus follows on 1 December. Take That tour the UK in June 2009
Out of this world: What Robbie did next

Back in 2006, there was no reason to believe Robbie Williams's Close Encounters tour referred to anything more than proximity between an increasingly peculiar star and his public.

Now the country's most noted UFO enthusiast, Williams has emerged as a kind of boy band Fox Mulder. 'I'm stopping being a pop star and becoming a full-time ufologist,' he told Joss Stone during a radio show in March. Less than a month later, he was taking Guardian journalist Jon Ronson to meet alien abductees and explaining the connection between extraterrestrials and pop. 'Joining Take That was like leaving on a spaceship,' he said, 'and coming back and all your friends going, "He's weird now."'

Not that Williams cares what anyone thinks. He's too busy with UFO and conspiracy theory website Above Top Secret (slogan: 'deny ignorance'), posting on its message boards as 'Chrisonabike'. It's possible that far from seeking a pow-wow with ET, he's after something else, misplaced during his long, strange trip through the parallel world of celebrity. 'ATS is part of my search,' he told the website. 'It's good to get a bit of balance but I still want to believe in the wonder of everything.'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music....illiams

Меня зовут Джей...

не, чем больше красоты, тем лучше- в буклете будут другие стильные фотки

*THANKS FOR THAT NIGHT, SUN *