A Morrissey and Robbie Williams duet? It's hard to imagine, but according to the latter's new memoir 'Reveal', it almost happened.

NME reveal in an extract from the book that Williams (who has expressed his admiration for Morrissey in the past) was approached to collaborate live on one of Moz's songs, but there was a (presumably tongue-in-cheek) caveat - namely that they share a Madonna/Britney-style kiss at the end.

Read the excerpt below in full:

"He’s not sure where the initial idea came from, but he was told that Morrissey wanted to duet if Rob would agree to Morrissey’s two stipulations:

‘We sing one of his songs, which was great, it’s a song called “I Like You”. And at the end he wanted to kiss like Britney and Madonna.’

Perhaps Morrissey imagined that this second request would automatically kill the idea, but of course Rob immediately agreed.

‘I was bang up for that. Kissing Morrissey! That would have been great. Because he’s just got, like, a fiercely brilliant face. You know, watching the idolatry that surrounds him, thousands and thousands of straight men I think would sleep with Morrissey. And I might not sleep with Morrissey but I’d have a cuddle and a kiss. It would have been amazing.’

But it was not to be.

‘I think he was probably maybe a bit bluffing. Maybe. But I wasn’t. I’d have wrestled him to the floor. And dominated him. I don’t even know if I’d get a kick out of thinking that he tried to call my bluff. But I’m un-bluffable when it comes to stuff like that. I think it might have been something that he considered that day, then quickly rescinded. Like he does.’

All that remains, instead, is the assessment of Rob that Morrissey gave to The Word magazine two years before that.

‘A fantastic quote about me,’ says Rob, ‘even though it was horrible.’

What Morrissey said was this: ‘Personally I think that almost everything about Robbie Williams is fantastic … apart from the voice and the songs. He seems to have everything in place, the photos are fantastic, he’s reasonably amusing, he’s undeterred and he’s not precious about what he does. I admire all of that.’

‘Except,’ Rob says, laughing, ‘the voice and the songs.’"