Happy Noel

Oasis are having a bit of a break and some might say they deserve it. That's the first and last crappy pun where a song title is thrown into this blog entry. Noel, missing the intimacy that stadium gigs cannot provide, saw this as an opportunity. With guitar and Gem in tow he travelled around a few countries playing acoustic sets to the lucky 1000 or so fans. The venues were tiny, the track list wasn't your usual Oasis set and, nightmare of nightmares, the notice was very, very short. So short infact that when Regan showed me the sold out advert for the gig just 3 days before it took place, I hadn't heard a word about it. Incidentally why do venues advertise sold out gigs? It always annoys me that.

Attempts to pay mass amounts of cash to knobheads on ebay were futile, but I wasn't yet defeated. Camera in pocket, I headed down to befriend a tout. Now I don't think I've ever been to an event of any variety and not been offered tickets by some dodgy geezer in a parker. He's probably called Tony (known to his mates as Ticketek Tone) with a Staffordshire Bull Terrier and a Manc accent, regardless of where he's from. I even went to watch Brisbane FC the other week and in a stadium that seats 60000, there were only 15000 seats sold. Yet there were ticket touts outside! Mate, there's 45000 spare seats in there, why am I going to buy a ticket of you? Knobhead. Anyway, shit shock horror, there were no touts at all. Just a row of geeks waiting for their ticket to arrive from 'some guy off ebay.' Long story short, got mates with some woman on the guest list, I was in. The place was rocking. Not so much like a small theatre, more like something off a Channel 4 programme where they have bands on, like TFI Friday or similar. I won't bore you with the details of the set, or how good it was, or how close I was stood, or the really cool people I met. What I will bore you with is this:


After the show me, the really cool people I had met and about a hundred others decided to wait for Noel to come out. What other chance would I get? As time passed by, numbers dwindled until there were only six of us left. And then, as hope was in no way beginning to fade, he emerged and in true rock 'n' roll style, was pissed out of his head. He went to get straight into his car but I shouted that there were only six of us and so he comes walking over. Cue dry mouth, racing heart, jelly legs.

The best thing was that the bouncers had taken the full ticket off people as they had entered the gig, leaving many to protest that they wanted a stub as a souvenir. So at the end of the show they had left all of the tickets out on tables for people to collect one if they so wished. I collected seventy. I pulled them all out so Noel could use the other sixty nine to rest on as he signed the top one. "Fuckin' hell!" he said. How rock 'n' roll is that? The first words he ever said to me were 'fuckin' hell.' It was just how I'd dreamt it.


Granted he's just a Manc scally come good, but he can't half write a tune and the guy has changed my life. A hero of heroes. I had to get out of my taxi early and run home just because I had so much energy. Purely belter. It will probably go: marriage, having children, shaking Noel Gallaghers hand. By no means whatsoever will they be in that order.

As my new best mate Noel said himself, "Happy Christmas, and all that bollocks."