How Robbie Williams became a 'therapist' to indie band Lottery Winners

Thom Rylance, frontman of indie band The Lottery Winners, has experienced panic attacks since he was a child. But he'd never had one on stage... until last month.

"I've got this other, outgoing version of me that does the shows, and he just turns up every time," the singer explains.

"I don't really know him, and I think he's brilliant and quite handsome, but when we played Bournemouth, he just didn't come."

The panic manifested as "a tremendous sense of overwhelming dread", he says, accompanied by sudden shortness of breath and a racing heartbeat.

He isn't sure how, but he survived the gig without anyone noticing.

YouTube footage shows him goading people into singing Reef's Place Your Hands, and taking selfies with fans during the encore.

In his head, though, it was a disaster.

"I came off stage and I was really apologetic. I was like, 'Oh my god, I'm so sorry. I was awful. I couldn't speak'.

"And everyone was like, 'What you talking about? It was absolutely fine.'"

The reaction wasn't entirely unexpected. At the age of 35, Rylance has become adept at masking his anxiety.

It's a topic he addresses frequently (and movingly) on the band's new album, KOKO, whose title is an acronym for "Keep on keeping on".

The singer learned the phrase from his grandmother, who used it to comfort him when he was excluded from school.

"I didn't want to be bad or naughty, but there was something in me [that meant] I couldn't sit through the lessons," he recalls.

"I was expelled and taken away from all my friends, and it made me really sad – but my gran used to say, 'Keep on keeping on, Thom', and it stuck with me."