Oasis’s reunion is a moment of joy – but I won't be buying tickets (2024)

As someone who was around pop stars from a very young age, I’m not inclined to get over-excited about them. I learnt to play it cool the day the pre-Pretenders Chrissie Hynde asked the 17-year-old me if I wanted her to teach me to play the bass, assume the name ‘Kicks Tart’ and join a motorcycle-themed band she was thinking of forming.

‘Thank you, but I’m keen to be a writer,’ I said sweetly. Since then I’ve become a very good writer, extremely adept at putting pop stars down. But on hearing the news that Oasis are getting back together – after a bitter split fifteen years ago – for a 2025 world tour, I closed the windows before screaming: ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ like Molly Bloom getting off with Sally Albright at the all-you-can-eat buffet at Pizza Hut.

Some background. I’m not generally the best interviewer ever, for obvious reasons (arrogance, conceit and ego) to the point that I once told the excellent PR man Murray Chalmers, when he asked me if I would care to interview Morrissey: ‘Sir: I do not DO interviews – I GRANT them.’ Ironically, it was Murray who arranged for me to interview Noel Gallagher for the Sunday Times in 2015, when I made a prize poltroon of myself. I’ll spare you the actual interview, but the intro and finale sum up perfectly the state I was in – a woman in her fifties, remember:

‘I was so excited at the thought of interviewing Noel Gallagher that I arrived at his local two hours early. So my cabbie insisted on giving me a tour of Little Venice for half an hour, and when he finds out my intentions, proffers the fact that he had briefly met Mr G in a VIP box at a football stadium: ‘A real gentleman – not like some of ‘em!’ When the PR texts NG that I’m already here, Mr G texts back ‘Bit keen!’’

When Gallagher eventually arrived, he grinned at me and bought a Guinness. ‘Two hours early, eh?’

‘One,’ I lie. ‘You’re not David Bowie.’

He laughs. Unlike most people who have been the most important person in the building for decades, he is a very generous laugher. He’s really good-looking – it’s like he has grown into his looks, as surely as his younger brother grew out of his.

Then came the ghastly interview itself – not so much a Q&A as a DOA – and then it ended like this:

‘I went to meet Mr Gallagher with the idea of provoking him out of his comfort zone of Dream Interviewee, but embarrassingly fell at the first hurdle of his charm. Listening to the interview on the train home, I had to get off at a station before Brighton just to cool down my ferocious blushing – the amount of audible simpering, gushing and giggling on the tape would indicate that a coach-load of Japanese schoolgirls had joined us at some point.

So though I’d had the time of my life, I remain the only living human who has ever come away from a pub with Noel Gallagher with a dull interview. But I was my old sharp self when I wrote about his brother:

‘I found that I wasn’t even interested in mentioning the L-word: Liam..Talking about him to his supremely accomplished and satisfied brother would have seemed like mocking the afflicted.’

Liam had a right old hissy fit about this, tweeting illiterately: ‘Mocking the afflicted well you’d know all about that wouldn’t ya have another line you old tart.’

I must admit that I was absolutely delighted to have attracted the ire of the man I think of as ‘the Afterbirth’. But from the sublime – Noel – to the ridiculous – Liam – I’m feeling such happiness at the idea of an Oasis reunion. Apart from Noel being, yes, gorgeous and such a good songwriter, and Liam having a sweet little voice, they were just so funny; if ever the phrase ‘adding to the gaiety of nations’ could be truly used of rock stars offstage as well as on, it was the Gallagher boys – the best-ever archetypal showbiz can’t-live-with-can’t-live-without couple from John and Paul to Rod Hull and Emu by way of Steptoe and Son.

There’s bound to be lots of interviews as they make their triumphant procedure around the world – masses of them, hopefully still unfiltered by the craven times we live in. The celebrity interview is such a sad and stunted thing now, unrecognisable from the days when Rex Reed went on bar crawls with Ava Gardner. Noel Gallagher has spoken of how he enjoys the company of journalists; the mark of a reckless man with nothing to hide. He’s not going to tolerate some well-spoken simp with a stop-watch sitting in, telling him what he can and can’t say and how long he’s got to say it in.

Of course, there may well be friction in other departments if certain people don’tunderstand who’s boss. The brothers’ volatile relationship came to a splendidly slapstick ending after a 2009 show in Paris, during which Liam threw a plum at Noel (‘Part of me wishes it did end like that – ‘plum throws plum’’) and wielded a guitar in the manner of an axe (‘He nearly took my face off!’). But there had been a long lead-up of ill-feeling between the pair, with Liam letting the side down by having hangovers which led to the cancelling of shows and demanding to tout his clothing label’s merch in Oasis tour programmes (‘I didn’t think it was right for him to be flogging his gear to our fans. There was a massive row about it. It slowly went downhill after that.’)

Whereas Noel expressed ‘great relief’ at the sundering as he ‘simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer’, the younger Gallagher appears to have reconsidered his position more swiftly – not surprising, considering their differing capabilities. Somewhat pitiably, Liam’s ‘Definitely Maybe’ tour has been going through the motions this year to mark the thirty years since the first Oasis album’s release. Now – just before Liam irretrievably became a superannuated tribute act to himself – Noel has come to save the day. This could be the biggest tour in the history of British pop.

When tickets go on sale this morning, they’re likely to disappear fast. I won’t be trying to buy any; I just want the Gallaghers back, to add some fun, foolishness and freedom to our sad, sour, cowardly cultural landscape. I want to hear what Noel thinks of Sam Smith, what Liam thinks of Ed Sheeran and what both of them think about Keir Starmer and whether a woman can really have a penis. I don’t expect to agree with them all the time but I know I won’t be bored: for example, Noel Gallagher said of Brexit: ‘There’s only one thing worse than a fool who voted for Brexit. That’s the rise of the clowns trying to get the vote overturned. You take part in a democratic process – if you don’t like the outcome, go to North Korea.’ It will probably end in tears again – but so what? Most of the best things do – so that’s a yes, yes, yes from me.