“It’s better to burn out than fade away,” Noel Gallagher once sang, but he forgot to add that an even better thing to do is reunite 15 years after burning out for a fat wedge of sweet cash.
That’s right, Manchester’s favourite musical brothers announced this week that “the guns have fallen silent” on their decade and a half-long feud and Oasis were returning for a string of sunsheeiine-filled arena shows across the UK and Ireland next year.
Charities joined the frenzied response on social media, with RSPB posting a pair of seabirds with the line: “Today is gannet be the day that they're gonna throw it back to you.”
The charity helpfully clarified in its post that the gannet on the left with a brown mop-top is guitarist Noel while the right-hand bird in dark sunglasses is his younger sibling and lead singer Liam, of course.
The Woodland Trust responded with a tree-straddling red squirrel under the heading: “I don’t beleaf that anybody feels the way I do about you now.”
I don't beleaf that anybody feels the way I do about you now 🍃 pic.twitter.com/bby8uYmjuQ
— Woodland Trust🌳 (@WoodlandTrust) August 27, 2024
But spare a moment, dear reader, for the poor charities that share a name with the nation’s favourite northern songbirds who have no doubt had to field questions about ticket sales this week from eager punters.
Oasis Charitable Trust founder Steve Chalke reminded his X followers that the charity was formed six years before its rock’n’roll namesake and will be celebrating its 40th anniversary at the time of the reunion gigs.
Refugee charity Oasis Cardiff sent a message to the hitmakers, meanwhile, welcoming their visit next year to the Welsh capital.
Elsewhere, RNIB took a break from asking Calvin Klein to make its raunchy pants ads more accessible to encouraging Oasis ticket sellers to be more inclusive of blind and partially sighted people as they gear up to charge them their life’s savings in processing fees this weekend.
.@TicketmasterUK @AXS_UK and more – By now, you should have somehow realised what you gotta do: make yourselves accessible.
— RNIB (@RNIB) August 27, 2024
Blind and partially sighted @oasis fans feel Half A World Away because your systems are so inaccessible. It's time for a more inclusive experience. RNIB x pic.twitter.com/h30W63xZ0o
Time capsule
In other 1990s throwback news, a “time capsule” has been discovered at London’s National Gallery in the form of a letter written by John Sainsbury at the start of the decade buried deep in a column now being removed from the site’s foyer.
The late Lord Sainsbury, a member of the supermarket-founding family, was a donor to the gallery but apparently disapproved of the “false columns” being installed in 1990.
According to reports in the Art Newspaper, his ALL-CAPS letter reads: “I BELIEVE THAT THE FALSE COLUMNS ARE A MISTAKE OF THE ARCHITECT AND THAT WE WOULD LIVE TO REGRET OUR ACCEPTING THIS DETAIL OF HIS DESIGN.
“LET IT BE KNOWN THAT ONE OF THE DONORS OF THIS BUILDING IS ABSOLUTELY DELIGHTED THAT YOUR GENERATION HAS DECIDED TO DISPENSE WITH THE UNNECESSARY COLUMNS.”
Diary appreciates a petty revenge letter from beyond the grave (particularly one that switches from the first to the third person for added emphasis) and it’s needless to say that Sainsbury had the last laugh.
