Paul Tweed

Mr Tweed, who has advised stars including Britney Spears, Ashton Kutcher, Sylvester Stallone and Justin Timberlake, told the Sunday Independent: “My firm has been consulted by Ray Heffernan and our lawyers are considering legal options for him.”

Pop impresario Louis Walsh, who arranged studio time for Mr Heffernan and Williams in Dublin in 1996, is understood to still hold the original cassette of their early recording, then titled Loving Angels Instead.

Mr Heffernan has long maintained he co-wrote Angels with Mr Williams. He believes a new EU copyright measure – the “bestseller clause” – gives him a chance to secure a share of royalties. The clause allows creators to claim additional remuneration for works that achieve major commercial success.

He has said he is seeking 33 per cent of the song’s future royalties.

Mr Heffernan has described how he met Williams in Dublin’s Globe pub at Christmas 1996, shortly after the singer left Take That. The pair agreed to collaborate, and Mr Heffernan contributed the first verse, part of the chorus and some of the second verse, written earlier that year in Paris after his partner suffered a miscarriage.

Mr Williams later took the song to Guy Chambers, who helped shape it into the final version.