Los Angeles, Sep 10 (IANS): Singer Robbie Williams says he could easily have competed in an Olympic Games for "self-hatred" and still battle his natural desire to be morbidly obese.

The former drink and drug user, 48, added his substance abuse took him to "faraway places" and shared that his ego was not what some people think as he ended up convinced he couldn't sing and hating his body, reports femalefirst.co.uk.

He told The Sun in an interview to mark the release of his latest album 'XV', which celebrates his 25 years as a solo singer: "Drugs have taken me to some faraway places and, contrary to popular belief, my ego is the opposite of ego. I hated myself and I thought I couldn't sing and looked like s***.

"If anyone thought I was wandering round with an inflated sense of self-importance it is actually the opposite.A If there are a great deal of people saying, 'You're a c***, you start to think you are, even if you're like, but I'm not though'. If there was an Olympics for self-hatred I would represent my country."

Williams, who is clean and happier now partly thanks to his wife Ayda Field, 43, and their four children Teddy, nine, Charlie, seven, Colette, four, and two-year-old Beau, added about still constantly battling his weight: "I have lost weight but it is a constant fight. Inside me there's a giant person."

The singer, once branded "the fat dancer from Take That" by his former Britpop rival Noel Gallagher, added: "My whole being and my whole body wants me to go in the opposite direction and be morbidly obese.

"At the moment I am just eating less. It is a constant slog and it is not a natural way of being.

"For me, what is normal is being twice this size. Thank God for vanity, and thank God for my job, because if I didn't do what I do for a living I dread to think what I would look like and what I would become.

"For me, it is overweight and full of shame, and then you do something extreme to get to the weight you're happy with. But then you're getting calories in your body to sustain what it has to do and then you get fatigued.

"I have an addictive nature that finds a loophole in sugar. I have never been able to maintain a perfect adherence to an abstinence from sugar and refined flour and all that stuff.

"There is no balance - moderation doesn't exist. I do not have the ability to make that happen. It is either fat or thin."