So next year’s Brit Awards is all set to celebrate the career of Robbie Williams.

 As has been the custom in recent years, organisers have revealed several months ahead who will win its Outstanding Achievement Award.

You can argue it is a bit previous giving him the gong now, when his career might well have a long way to run. Williams holds the record for most Brit Awards even before you take into account the ones he won as a member of Take That and might well pick up more on the night.

Then again, I can’t think of the award going to a more deserving guy. His first outstanding achievement was to launch a solo career in the first place. Already the boy band’s class clown, once Williams left Take That he sunk into a mire of over-indulgence that made Liam Gallagher look even-keeled. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, no one took him seriously when he set out as a solo artist, yet out of that period he recorded Angels, one of the most cherished songs of the past 20 years.

Obviously it has not all been plain sailing – Rudebox was a crummy attempt at outré electropop that sold poorly. Williams slunk off to the States and transformed himself into a beardie weirdie hunting UFOs in Nevada. So yet again, his comeback has been met with incredulity in certain quarters (hello, Daily Mail), encouraged by his flaky X Factor appearance. Williams is “desperately trying to re-launch his career after years in the pop wilderness”, apparently

Yet even a cursory reading of his biog to date should suggest you underestimate him at your peril. Indeed, Reality Killed The Video Star is as a fine an album as he has made. There might not be an Angels, but there is the warmth of You Know Me alongside the relaxed eccentricity of Difficult For Weirdos.

Such slickness, though, makes we wonder who really deserves the award. True, the performer has been brave to return to face down ridicule and cynicism, but he must have known he was backing a winner, his confidence aided by the presence by a man you can trust more than almost anyone to supply a guaranteed hit: Trevor Horn.

This veteran producer did it for himself with Buggles’ Video Killed The Radio Star, made a silk’s purse out of Scouse chancers Frankie Goes To Hollywood and fashioned a timeless album for new romantics ABC. All that, plus hits for Grace Jones, Propaganda, Seal, etc, etc. Horn has already been celebrated by the industry, with a star-studded tribute concert at Wembley Arena. All those aforementioned names made an appearance – alongside Dollar. Now he has led Williams back to the lush, big-sounding pop he is best at, while maintaining some of the star’s twitchy oddness.

Robbie will probably thank Horn when he picks up his latest gong, but will he thank the Brits? After all, look what happened to Oasis when they won the very same award…