British singer Robbie Williams was forced to stop singing only a few songs into his set at the PinkPop festival in the Netherlands on Sunday, saying he was exhausted from Long Covid.

Before moving onto his song Monsoon, the 49-year-old asked his band to pause, saying ‘No, stop stop. I’m f**ked. I’m f**ked.’ ‘It’s long Covid, I’ve got long Covid. It’s not my f**king age, you f**kers,’ told his audience on the Landgraaf country estate.

After a short pause, Williams went on to perform 16 other numbers, including hits such as Angels and Rock DJ. However, Dutch media reported that Williams appeared out of sorts for the rest of the set.

“He cannot sing two songs one after the other and… leaves the choruses largely up to his backing singers or the public,” the AD said in its review of the show. There were also lots of pauses and long chats with the audience in between numbers, the Telegraaf reported.

Williams has had Covid twice, the Daily Mail reported: in April 2020, when he was home in Los Angeles, and in January 2021, while he was on holiday on the Caribbean island of St Barts with wife Ayda and their four children.

This weekend’s was the 52nd edition of the Pinkpop, which is seen as the unofficial start of the Dutch festival season. Pink, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Queens of the Stone Age were among the festival line-up, which took place over two days.