Robbie Williams has claimed that a hitman was once hired to “kill him” when he was at the height of his fame.

Recalling the alarming incident, the Angels singer, 47, said: “I’ve never, ever said this, but I had a contract put on me to kill me. I’ve never said that publicly before.

“It went away. I have friends. That stuff is the unseen stuff that happens when you become famous,” he added in an interview with The Mirror.

Describing himself as having been “Michael Jackson-style famous” at one point in his life, Williams admitted that fame has taken a toll on his mental health.

“I became famous when I was 17, doing a boy band when I was 16, the boy band took off. When I was 21, I left, and then I had a solo career, sold 80 million albums, held the record for the most tickets sold in a day for a tour and blah, blah, blah…,” he said.

“Extreme fame and extreme success meets with anxiety and depression and mental illness. There’s a few levels of fame and what it does to you. The first one is “f**k”,’ he continued.

“There’s a couple more I can’t remember but the fourth one is ­acceptance. You sort of rally against your privacy being taken away from you and you rally against it by trying to be normal, trying to be normal but also I’m gonna be small so people don’t beat you up. Like, ‘I’m a d**khead, don’t hurt me’.

“I want to go to all the normal places I can’t go because people want to kill me. It takes a while to get to acceptance.”

Williams accepted that he doesn’t like “meeting strangers, but strangers want to meet me, and I feel really uncomfortable about it.

“Thinking about it actually gives me anxiety. It’s a trigger,” he confessed.

It should all make for interesting viewing in Williams’ upcoming biopic, which was announced last year.

Titled Better Man, it is set to explore Williams’ humble beginnings, rise to fame in boyband Take That and demons as he battled substance abuse during his chart-topping solo career.

The Greatest Showman’s Michael Gracey is attached to direct.