Andy: (laughs) Yeah, you’ve gotta decide whether you believe in Liam or not! I think I believe in him. I’m agnostic towards Liam Gallagher. I’m prepared to think he might exist.

Q: When you’re writing, do you have Liam in mind to sing your songs? Andy: Yeah. I don’t think of my songs in terms of Noel singing. He sings his songs when it’s his own thing, when he’s got something to say, whereas Liam is the voice of Oasis as an entity. That’s not to say that Noel couldn’t sing one of my songs – I mean, for a while he was singing ‘Thank You For The Good Times’ until Liam learnt it; that was how we got it going in the studio. That’s often the case with his songs too; he’ll sing them all until Liam learns them and then there’ll be a division of labour and they decide who takes the big fellas.

Q: So [The Nature of Reality] is obviously a song that’s very personal to you. Did you have to sit and talk it through with Liam? Andy: No, I let him take what he wants from it. I mean, it’s fairly obvious what it’s about really, it’s pretty straight-forward; it’s not tied up in poetic language, it just is what it is.

Q: When you’re writing, do you always have Liam in mind to sing it?

Gem: No, but subconsciously yeah, in that I have the same kind of range as Liam. Noel has a far higher range, so I couldn’t even begin to think of writing a melody that Noel could reach – he can get way higher than me – and Liam is the singer, so that’s my thing, you know.

Q: How personal or honest can you be in your lyrics when you know you’ll have to give it away?

Gem: I actually wrote one song specifically for Liam, but it wasn’t right for this album. But I think it’s a top tune. It was one of the ones that Noel said was one of the good ones out of that bunch, but having to write words over a weekend…I just kinda let them out, don’t worry about it, you know, and hope they’re gonna fly, cos sometimes you write stuff and then you wanna change it a month later. Luckily with this, I didn’t.