#gas panic

HAPPINESS IS A BUTTERFLY ₊˚⊹

Casual hookups with Noel suddenly become something deeper after one fateful night together.

[PART ONE] [part two] [part three] [part four] [part five]

2.2 k. late 90s NG x reader. based on (?) this request. [18+]

a/n: i just went to link the ask for this and……. i think i went off the rails. like what the fuck. i’d completely forgotten what the original request was while writing. like i practically blacked out apparently. WHAT THE FUCK. I’M SORRY to whoever sent that request because i’ve literally just went off on my quest here. i’m gonna try to comply more to the og ask for future parts i’m sorryyyryryryryyy !!!!!

It started off as merely a mutual release of tension.

One particularly drunken night, where the light seemed to hang a thousand miles above your head, indiscernible from the stars, and the dance floor seemed a thousand miles from your eyes, you had bumped into him. Not loudly, not dramatically—it was a quiet encounter where words were solely a theatrical act for the eyes watching. The night ended, not romantically but satisfactory.

It had continued like that for a while. Celebrations with mutual friends and after-parties with groupies and journalists ended with the two of you, locked in a bathroom or against the wall of someone's bedroom. It was impersonal, anonymous, distant enough where it ended with awkward shuffles to find discarded clothing and low mumbles of friends and drinks.

That is, until last week.

You didn't know whether it was on purpose or not. You'd invited him over after drinking smooth wine at a mutual friend's house and didn't promise much apart from privacy and champagne. He accepted. It started off as nothing out of the ordinary—drinks, cigarettes, slow conversation. His hand came onto your thigh, glasses were put down, didn't bother to leave the couch. Then, in the midst of it, his head fell against the couch cushion beside your head and, so quiet you could barely hear it: Your name. Over and over, no more than a whisper. He said it like a prayer. A sacred, ancient text repeated a million times until it echoed in one's mind when they clamped their hands together, whether they wanted to hear it or not. You weren't even sure he aware of what he was saying.

When his body caught satisfaction and his breathing stilled, reality seemed to crash over his wine-drunk mind. He'd hurriedly dressed in silence and left without saying goodbye.

There’d been an eerie silence after he left. Not just for a couple lingering minutes, but days. Of course, there was never any contact between your hookups. He didn’t have your phone number and you didn’t have his, that was the way you’d both preferred it. Only, this silence stuck to the back of your mind, always present no matter how much you tried to ignore it. It grew louder than the actual noises around you. You thought that night was the last time you would see him.

Until yesterday night.

The lights were buzzing like flies were trapped inside, yellowish and sickly, and the hallways to the venue were damp and cold. It was some secretive party, not exclusive but definitely not accessible either as you had practically guessed your way to the right time and place.

You hadn't exactly wanted to find him. He didn't owe you anything. Though it'd never been spoken aloud, there was an agreement that you'd both shook hands on. If he decided you had reached the end of that contract, you were no one to argue.

But he couldn't stop you from going to parties. An accidental encounter could hardly be your fault. Your circles had sort of ended up as a Venn diagram after all.

The room where the actual party was located was dimmer than the rest of the building, lit by candles and floor lamps. Leaned against a wall, you spotted him. Cigarette in hand, drink in the other. Indifferent as ever.

His sunglasses obstructed you from the knowledge of whether he saw you or not—though you could assume by the way he shifted from one foot to the other when you entered. Silent hours passed and as the night grew older, you began thinking he really did want nothing to do with you. In the moment, you had thought it was childish of him. Something so minor to any other person—a name, no more—had it embarrassed him so greatly he had to cut all contact to save his own ego? You knew the scent of his skin, where your kisses had the biggest effect, how his throat tightened when he came close—but he drew the line at vulnerability?

Just as you were about to exit with someone else, you felt a familiar hand around your wrist.

Yesterday night, he went along with you to your apartment. There was no mention of last time and, strangely enough, there was no awkward tension. It was like nothing had happened and you wondered if it was all something your mind had made up, or dreamt, maybe. It'd had been almost a week by then; you considered if your memories had warped and distorted from time.

You didn't talk. Kissed, in the hallway and the entire way to the bedroom. His hands trailed up your body, shedding your clothes piece by piece as you helped him out of his too. His grip on you was like a madman's: Harsh and bruising, bordering possessive.

By the time your back hit the mattress, you were only in your panties. It was like there’d been all this time for dramatic buildup, a small uneasiness that grew to become disorienting, and now you were on the very edge of that mountain looking down at a thousand feet drop.

His kisses came down greedily against your neck, your collarbone, your chest as he unclipped your bra. There was a haste in his actions, like he couldn’t bear to wait another second.

When he hovered above you, stark naked, his eyes burnt so intensely you could almost see the fire behind them, raging and eating at his sense of logic as it spread from his fingertips to your skin. He pushed inside and the familiar stretch of him sucked the air out of you, not necessarily from the pleasure of that action itself but more so from what your body knew was coming.

His kisses returned, half paralysing and stammered as he struggled to multitask, and you almost expected there to be big, charcoaled marks where his lips had been. Biting and breathing hard, it was like he had no control of himself. His thrusts came at a relentless, almost resolute pace.

It was so bizarrely unlike how it all began; Noel’s torpid, virtually greedy self-indulgence as he pulled you on top of him. How it had slowly transition into him on top, his hands and fingers working laboriously for something outside of himself. Now, it was like he believed he was on verge of death with the way he so ravenously clawed at you and you egotistically thanked the existence of whatever drug he had taken.

Noises left him in broken divisions, received as prayers in your ears. He groaned and fought with his own voice, crazily trying to contain his vocal pleasure within the lines of his polished image.

His pace grew erratic and something no less than a fervent moan left him as he came, pushing deep into you as thick, hot ropes emptied into you.

You squealed and breathed against the side of his face as you came too, broken into a million pieces only held together by Noel’s warm hands, clawing at his shoulders like it’d pull you back to earth. You held him closely for one still moment before you woke up from your dazed pleasure and let go of your painful grip on his hair.

He seemed to be quite spaced out too as he fell onto the mattress beside you, chest still heaving wildly. You found yourself inert, only capable of lying still and focusing on staying conscious, as the minutes drifted by. When your breath had caught and your mind was back in its normal state, you kept your eyes closed as you waited for the rustle and shift in the mattress of Noel getting up. Only, it never came. You stayed there with your eyes closed as you listened to his now calm breaths, like a dream you were afraid would disappear.

Nonetheless, you cracked your eyes open to find his physical self still there—not an illusion or a dream. Motionless and dead asleep.

For a moment, you considered waking him. It’d never been his milieu to linger, let alone stay overnight—but the way his face relaxed into sleep was a contrast so grave against the animalistic hunger that had consumed him just a couple minutes before that it had to be for good reason. You decided to let him sleep. He was so picturesque you couldn’t find the courage to reach out and touch him in fear of startling him so you stayed there, unmoving and slowly dozed off to the image of him.

You woke in the summit of night for no apparent reason. Your bedside lamp was still on, left forgotten before you fell asleep. The memories came back to you slowly as you breathed in the scent on the sheets.

Noel. He'd fallen asleep with you—the memory risen from his scent still tangled in the blanket. But as you lay there, wrapped tightly in the blanket, you noticed you were alone.

You hazily propped yourself up on your elbows to scan the bedroom—frozen in your action as you saw Noel, perched on the edge of the bed.

He was half dressed, only missing socks and a shirt, his back to you with his elbows resting against his knees. You couldn't see his face as it was covered by his hands—flat, trembling palms against his skin.

"Noel?" you tried.

He didn't respond. His back rose and fell with alarming haste, his knee bouncing wildly beneath his elbow. There was no indication that he'd heard you or even realised that you'd woken up. Or maybe he had heard you, though couldn’t distinguish the sound of your voice from the blood rushing through his ears or his heaving, gasping breaths.

You crawled hesitantly over the bed, taking the blanket with you. You stretched your hand out slowly, fingertips grazing his shoulder, cold and clammy.

He jerked, hands leaving his face as he looked back at you with wild eyes.

"Are you alright?" you asked, unsure of whether he wanted you in a moment like this or not.

Beads of sweat glazed his forehead. " 'M sorry," he mumbled, voice smaller than you'd ever heard it before.

"You’re sorry?" you repeated, confused, allowing your shy fingertips to become a sturdy palm against his skin. "What for?"

"Waking you." The muscles in his face flexed and relaxed, his head in small, jerking motions like he was struggling to keep still.

Your mouth formed a small, round “o” shape. “Don’t be. It’s alright. Are you alright?” You felt the panic in Noel progress into you, though you tried not to show it. You put a slow hand in his hair when he didn’t respond. Easing into him slowly, you placed your cheek against his shoulder and wrapped your arms around his back. You didn’t know what to do—how to help. This was unmapped territory, and tremendously precarious territory at that.

His eyebrows quivered into a frown at the contact, eyes closed tightly as his head returned to his hands. He rubbed his eyes, a palm against his forehead, or cupped both his cheeks like he was just trying to keep his hands busy. Then, you felt him stop, like he was hesitating.

He sat up straight, though not with much confidence. When he turned his body to you, his eyes didn’t meet yours but his trembling hand crossed your back and anchored itself to your shoulder, the other finding your waist over the blanket.

You were half stunned and half reflexively wrapping your arms around him as your back hit the mattress. You didn’t say anything, didn’t know what to say. This was most definitely overstepping the agreements in your nonexistent contract, though you had a condoling feeling that it was the last thing on his mind right now.

He was lying, half on top of you, his face somewhere in your neck, with his trembling hands in fists against your skin. You rubbed slow, steady circles over his cold skin. You could still feel his face twitching in strain against your neck and you, for some reason, wanted so desperately for him to go back to normal.

Not because of selfish reasons. Not because you were embarrassed that you were still naked beneath the blanket he was lying on top of. Not because you were uncomfortable with his weight squeezing the air out of you. But because you cared. You could feel his racing heart through his back and it was like every despairing beat hit you right in the chest.

The walls Noel had spent decades building and strengthening to protect himself were torn down at a moment’s notice, leaving him completely defenceless and unnerved. He’d been so careful surrounding what parts of him you got to see and what you didn’t, what no one did. Now, he was shivering in your arms with no sense of himself anymore and it tore at your heart like a physical thing.

Eventually, his heartbeat slowed down and his grip on you loosened to something less frantic. His muscles relaxed and turned to slop, exhausted from the constant flexing and relaxing. His breath came slow against your neck and you didn’t ask him to move. Didn’t ask if he was okay. If he should leave.

You held him there with your hands in his hair and on his skin as his eyes eventually fell closed and the tension in his eyebrows left.

In the still of the night, you knew, even then, that it was the beginning of something irreversible and unspeakably complex.

[go to: PART TWO]

…… did you get whiplash from that. sorry. i didn’t think this through before writing……….. i’m impatient.

anyway—PART ONE OF SITUATIONSHIP NOEL IS FINALLY HERE. idk if this is up to standard, i’m hesitant myself, but i just. gotta get something out so i can proceed. i’m gonna try to write the next part a little more thought out !!! stay with me.

ok. need to write something stupidly cheesy now to cleanse my palette.

As Oasis celebrate their tenth anniversary, Noel Gallagher comes clean on the rock wives (now ex), the drugs (though now he prefers a good book), the musical borrowings (doesn't everyone?) - and, of course, that sibling rivalry. Interview by Robert Crampton of The Times

Noel Gallagher sits there for two hours and never plays a false note. I have no reason to doubt him when he says his approach to interviews is: "You ask me a question, I will not tell you lies". (Actually, he says "f— lies", but if I left in all his expletives, this article would have more asterisks than words.) For instance, Noel admits he always wanted "to become very, very, very, very wealthy". He says that he had nothing to write about on Be Here Now, the (disappointing) third Oasis album, because "I was just a big, fat charlied-up rock star sitting in limos and going to parties". He is "well aware that as a group, and me as a songwriter, from Morning Glory (the best-selling British album ever) onwards, it's sort of levelled off a bit".

He says that the lyrics to Don't Look Back in Anger, considered a modern classic, are "just nonsense", the result of "sitting down with some Red Stripe and a spliff". He agrees that the intro sounds a lot like Let It Be.

He cringes at fans' favourites such as Roll With It (the single which came second to Blur's Country House in the Britpop battle of summer 1995). "Before we played Wembley last year, they were interviewing fans outside. There was this guy, skinhead, couple of teeth missing, Ben Sherman shirt. I'm watching the television thinking: what's this character gonna say? He's going: 'Oasis! Best band in the world! Better than the Beatles!' And he looks into the camera and recites the words to Roll with It! 'You gotta roll with it/You gotta take your time/You gotta say what you say/Don't let anybody get in your way', and I'm thinking (he covers his eyes and grimaces): 'What the f was I on?'" (Cocaine, lots).

He admits that he used to borrow melodies, not just from the Beatles, which is unavoidable -"I learnt to play guitar by opening a Beatles' songbook" - but also from T. Rex, Slade, David Bowie and even (vindication this for Blur's Damon Albarn, six years on from his "Quoasis" tag) from Status Quo. Yet Gallagher isn't saying, as Malcolm McLaren once did of the Sex Pistols, isn't it funny how we managed to swindle everybody?

He is instead being candid about how a songwriter starting out starts to write. Most songwriters' early efforts don't sell in millions.

"When I was a roadie, I made up a compilation tape of strictly Slade, Bowie and T. Rex. That's all I listened to for two years. Everybody on the bus would go, 'Turn it off!' and I'd say, 'Listen to the guitars!' I'd copy the songs, like Cum on Feel the Noize, change the chords around a bit. I make no bones about it, man. I wasn't taught music by anybody. I didn't learn music at school. I can't play the piano." He lifted the melody for Cigarettes and Alcohol, their first top ten single, from Get It On by T. Rex. "I wouldn't attempt to do that now. That was written before I had a record deal."

"We were playing in pubs in Manchester. I brought the song to the band, expecting they'd go, 'We can't do that!' and of course everybody went, 'This is amazing!' I said to McGee (Alan, boss of Creation Records and The Man Who Discovered Oasis) 'Er, are you allowed to do that kind of thing?' and he was, 'Oh, I don't know -but it's great'. We never got sued." (Except by the New Seekers, of all people, who took exception to Shakermaker's resemblance to I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing. The New Seekers got £175,000. And Gary Glitter got £200,000 after they nicked the line "Hello, hello, it's good to be back." It's worth noting that these songs, along with almost all of the others Gallagher used, had been Number One singles in their time. There's no faulting Noel's ear for a popular tune.) I say: a really harsh interpretation of your songwriting might follow that old quote about a piece of work "being both good and original, but the parts that are good are not original". He finishes the line, "and the parts that are original are not good". You could say, here's a guy who put some memorable melodies together, but many of the most memorable had, er, I'm not being funny, already been written by other people and since then, what's he done?

"It's true," he says disarmingly. "I would agree with that because factually you're exactly right. I would disagree because: Don't argue with the man in the street. There is no greater accolade than Joe Public." Going back to the man in the Ben Sherman shirt, Gallagher says: "I'd love to sit him down and say: 'What does that song mean to you?' 'Cos I don't know what it means to me, but he'd probably have a very good explanation for it. It means summat in his life."

He's not all self-flagellation. "Couple of songs on the last record I'm really, really proud of. The six I've done for the new one I'll stand up and fight anyone for. I'm still learning as a songwriter. I'm never happy anyway. I think I'm equal parts genius, equal parts buffoon in the one day." On a Lennon and McCartney timescale, I say, you should be about to write your Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt Pepper trilogy. He says, with sadness and determination, "Yeah, yeah. Definitely. I've put out a lot of crap in the past. Not crap, but stuff I don't like any more. I have to live with it. Gonna take a bit back for me now, say (to the band and the record company): 'Well, you might like it, but I don't'."

Next month, Oasis will play a short tour to mark their tenth anniversary. For several of their ten years, the band was the biggest thing in British rock. Seven consecutive singles went to number one or number two. In 1996, they sold 18 million albums and, that August, played to more than a quarter of a million people over two days at Knebworth. Critics loved them. Twenty-year-olds who'd previously bought only dance music loved them. Thirty-year-olds who'd given up on the charts loved them. The new prime minister invited Noel to Downing Street. They were, defiantly, much more than the sum of their parts. If some of the tunes were derivative, the Gallagher brothers had a sound and an attitude all their own.

The time was ripe for them, too. They liked booze, drugs, football, fighting and women; popular male recreations which had become fashionable again. They weren't pretending. "I used to think it was just because the music was so fantastic," says Noel. "Looking back now it was as much that people just knew Oasis wasn't bullshit. None of the characters were tarted up. Liam's Liam and Noel's Noel." They worked hard, too, touring relentlessly. "We were like, 'I ain't doing anything better with my life, show us the bus'."

Adding to their appeal was the mythic, Celtic, love-hate relationship between the boys: the soap opera of the two warring brothers who close ranks against outsiders. The elder, more focused, more responsible Noel snorting his control freak drug, at odds with the sexier, wilder Liam clutching his larrikin Stella and prettier wife. "I want to be a songwriter, he wants to be a singer," Liam once said, encapsulating the rivalry. (I met Liam briefly at the photo shoot. Seemed like a perfectly nice young man.) I talked to Noel Gallagher in a bar at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea Football Club's ground, on the day before the attack on the World Trade Center. He is small - about five seven - and ten stone. He wanted Guinness but had to settle for John Smith's. He drank one pint. "It's Monday night," he said. "I only have a proper drink maybe once or twice a month. You get to 34, the last bad hangover I had, I was literally crying. It was awful." Liam, he says, remains "a f— good drinker".

As the bar filled up, I worried that people would interrupt. He was untroubled. After his rock-star excess, he is trying, consciously, to lead a "normal" life. "We go to the studio every day by train, just to be around other people, not to have to sit in the back of a limo with some bloke in a suit going, 'Is it too hot? Shall I turn the music down?' If you wanted to, you'd barely have to breathe sometimes."

Wasn't that what he had always wanted? "You read the stories about Marc Bolan, John Lennon, David Bowie - you want to see what it's like to fly in a Lear jet and be extravagant." He can't drive, but he owns five cars because, when he bought his big rock star's house in Buckinghamshire, "If you've got nothing to put in the driveway it's a bit of a shame, isn't it?" Does he like cars? "No, don't like 'em at all." His philosophy is: "For a while, it's cool to have a great big telly. But it's not the be-all and end-all." He doesn't know, doesn't want to know, what he's worth. "My manager phoned me when I became a millionaire, told me I had £1 million in the bank. I said, 'Right, don't ever let it fall below that'."

He seems like a man taking stock after many years of upheaval: geographical; financial; chemical; emotional. He left Manchester for Camden eight years ago with "a guitar and an Adidas holdall". He then made "more money than I could believe" inside a couple of years. He travelled the world. He "took more drugs than I should've". He became a father in January 2000, divorced Meg Mathews, the mother of his daughter, Anais, a year later, now lives back in London with his new girlfriend, Sara MacDonald, a public relations consultant.

MacDonald was educated privately, in Edinburgh. "She reads a lot. She'll think nothing of sitting down for two hours on a Sunday with a book. I'm at a loose end, I'll go, 'What's that book about then?' We'll talk about stuff and she'll say, 'How did you get all this knowledge?' I'm like, 'Well, I used to watch television, all day, every day. And read magazines.' I read more books now than I ever have done. Vietnam, the Kennedys."

His ex-wife and child live in the house in Buckinghamshire. He sees Anais Thursdays and Fridays and every other weekend. "It's the most awful feeling in the world giving her back. Awful." The "nameless people" that used to fill his old house, Supernova Heights, have fallen away. The biggest change, the start of the stocktaking, came in June of 1998, "halfway through the World Cup". By then, he was spending hundreds of pounds a week on cocaine. "People I know now who are heavily into it are not doing half as much as I was." He says, "For that period, it was great. I felt invincible."

But he also says, "Most of it was pretty fake and soul destroying because all my opinions were clouded by drugs". He had also put on two stone, following the standard coke monster's diet of "Jack Daniel's, lager, crisps, KitKats and McDonald's". He decided to stop. The reason was straightforward: his doctor told him to.

"I'd called him out a few times for panic attacks and each time it was getting worse, like, 'I'm going to have a heart attack!' The last time I was lying in bed going, 'I can't live when I feel like this!' My doctor said, 'Well, there's a simple solution: if you stop taking drugs you will stop feeling like this'." With no counsellors and no programme, Gallagher did, astonishingly, as instructed.

Maybe his acquiesence is not such a surprise. For all the Up Yours swagger of Oasis's heyday, Noel has usually heeded authority when it mattered, usually showing excellent judgment in those he has chosen to follow. He plumped for the ambitious, something-to-prove McGee and Creation over other, more lucrative record labels. He chose Marcus Russell, 20 years his senior, as the band's manager, "a proper, proper manager, with a briefcase. Most bands have their mate who can't play bass, thick as pigshit". He says Russell, who does not have children, is a father-substitute for him.

Early on, he embraced the friendship and patronage of Paul Weller, a man who commands the respect of a generation. "He's a top man, the only person in the whole world who heard the demo of Be Here Now and said, 'It's shit, man. I'm not having it'." More recently, Gallagher has made friends with Bono of U2. They discuss religion. "I said to him: 'Look, you believe in it all. I'm Catholic same as you. Can you explain it to me?' He sat down for two hours and made a lot of sense."

"I was going, 'You drink and all the rest of it and make millions of pounds, tell me how you pray?' He made tons of sense. Couple of days later, this parcel turned up at my house. A book each for me and Sara. One's called What's So Amazing about Grace? And the other's Searching for My Hidden God, or summat. And his dad had just died! How difficult must that be? Takes time out because two people were interested. What a guy. I'm going to have a good read of this book." Gallagher's poor relationship with his own father, a labourer, is well known. His parents split when he was 17, Liam 12. Until then, "they were together because they were Catholics. It was verbally violent, and physical violence did rear its head. There was an overriding sense of tension all the time." The problem? "Drink, circumstances, no money, no job. It was the same for every kid in my street. Everybody's dad was out of work then. Everybody's dad drank".

Burnage was and is "a respectable working-class area. It's got a Spar, a bank, a chippy, a pub. It's not the worst bit of Manchester". For a time, he admits, "me and Liam were pretty much out of control, robbed lots of stuff. But we were never major-league criminals." School (Catholic, all boys) was a failure. He left with nothing. "None of the teachers were my friends, they were just there to lay down the law. I didn't want to learn." He had friends and, from 13, he had his guitar.

Most importantly, he had his mother, Peggy, originally from a farm in County Mayo, telling him, "Nobody owes you anything, you've got to

get it for yourself". As boys in "short trousers and Man City kits", he and Liam went to Mayo every summer. "I'm as English as they come, but I feel Irish, too. I got my actual education there, my sense of humour, my sense of music." Last year, when she died intestate, he bought his grandmother's farm, "to keep it in the family".

We talked a lot about all the aggravation between him and Liam, how it has lessened, partly through getting older, partly because Liam, now 29, is songwriting himself. He says, had they not been brothers, Oasis would certainly have split up, probably still would. "(But) If we split, I'd still see Liam every Christmas. We're brothers and our kids are cousins. It'd be too much, too emotional - and it'd upset me mam. I don't want to upset Liam either. If I'd thought Liam could stand on his own two feet, I maybe would've." He can, now, though, can't he? "Yeah, but see, I get angry and walk off tours and stuff, but once I've slept on it, I think: it's nothing that important. And it's my band - I'm not walking away from it. The band shouldn't (have to) split up - it's just that me and Liam have got to shape up a little bit."

He painted a picture in a recent interview of how, now that Patsy and Meg, who didn't like each other or their husbands' brothers, are out of the way, he and Liam have started to go for agreeable Sunday lunches as a foursome with their new girlfriends. "It happened once," he says. "The whole band went. Liam dragged us up to Hampstead to this pub where he's got his own little chair in the corner, probably got a tankard behind the bar as well. And he paid. It was weird not seeing him at 5 o'clock in the morning."

They still argue in the studio. When Noel recently delayed their new single so he could write "more meaningful lyrics, Liam said, 'These lyrics are too complicated, man! What was wrong with the old ones?'" Fatherhood has probably done more than anything else to put his rivalry with Liam in perspective. "If I were single and didn't have kids I'd probably stillI I'd be mad. I'd be addicted to something." When he left Meg Mathews, whom he refers to formally as "my ex-wife", never by name, Anais was just nine months. "Now, we've just started to click. She knows who daddy is. I would get nervous when she was gonna come, 'cos I always think I'm a shit dad, but as soon as she's there, what was I worrying about?" He is sensitive about his divorce. "What's happening to Anais's mam and dad happened to mine. It's real life. It is awful to give her back, but you've got to be strong about it and have faith that it's going to be all right. You sit at home and go, 'It's gonna be all right, it's gonna be all right. I'll make it all right.' You make decisions in your life. I believed what I was doing (ending his marriage) was right then and is now. This is the right way for my kid to be happy, and me as well."

We talk a little about his own, wasted, education. He says that because "Anais will probably go private" he will have to "get my arse in gear to gain her respect. Upgrade a little bit." But, he adds, "She will have to understand where I come from." This leads us on to politics, Blair's Downing Street party, and as magnificent an Old Labour monologue, brimful of class pride, as I have heard in a long time.

"Got this invite, rang me mam. She said, 'You've got to go. It's the Labour Prime Minister. It's not John Major. It's Tony Blair.' I said: 'You're f— right. I'm gonna go.' I thought, 'I pay the rent on Downing Street. I paid for the carpets.' Even when I was on the dole, they taxed me, f— bitch. Hundreds of photographers, begging me to do a V-sign on the doorstep. I'm thinking, 'I'm not turning up here in jeans and trainers, so they can say, 'Look at this yobbo'. No! I'm gonna go and buy a suit, get the Rolls-Royce polished up, and I'm walking up that street, in my brand-new suit, and I'm gonna shake his hand.

"I thought, 'I'll get slaughtered for this'. And people come up to me and say, 'That was out of order,' and I say, 'Listen, right: the invite comes through your door. What would you do? I've always voted Labour. My uncle was a Yorkshire pit-worker, given redundancy. Not asked, given. Oi, you, there's your pay, f— offI" He pauses for breath. "If there's one thing I regret, it's that photograph of me with the glass of champagne."

Did he vote Labour this year? "I was in the States. But I would've, out of principle, because the other lot tried to take away the identity of my class." Does he now feel used? "I feel used as a voter. Never thought it was gonna end up like this, big business running hospitals and schools. But we all got carried away back then, didn't we?" Indeed we did, with Noel Gallagher as much as with Tony Blair. Noel Gallagher, especially, got carried away with Noel Gallagher. Who can blame him? He said and did some daft things, wrote some good songs, survived, wants to write some more. He says: "To go for a walk in the park with someone you love, and people come past and say, 'I met my wife listening to your music', or whatever, you think, 'Sound'. You've touched people's lives. That'll do for me."

February 28, 2020 (SOTSOG 20th Anniversary):

*camera quickly pans to Tommy*

Tommy: Check this out!

(COBRA TRANSITION)

Screeno: Ladies and gentlemen, "Oasis" with Who Feels Love!

(we then see a tribute band of Mixels performing Oasis' Who Feels Love)

(after the song, a graphic appears onscreen stating that the premiere of Mixels' Every Knight Has Its Day (Extended Version) was next)

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This was a pretty big night, not just for me, but also my friends.

If you don't know, back in late 2019, me and some Mixel friends formed an Oasis tribute band. This appearance on Fridays (dedicating the 20th of Standing on the Shoulder of Giants) would be our first proper gig, with a big outdoor stage set up in Mixel Park for us.

By February 2020, we had been setting up what I considered an alternate lineup for playing Oasis songs from the 2000s:

Davis (me) - Liam Gallagher

Footi - Noel Gallagher

Jinky - Gem Archer

Glomp - Andy Bell

Flain - Alan White

However, Footi was out of town at the time, so Torts of the Glorp Corp played lead guitar instead.

Speaking of Glorp Corp, we hadn't settled on Glomp playing bass for the group until a day or so after this concert. In the meantime, Vampos of the Glowkies served as our temporary bassist (think of it like our own Paul Stacey).

Starting around 8:00pm, we would play most of the songs off the Shoulder of Giants album in-between shows. This was the setlist:

1. Go Let It Out

2. Who Feels Love?

3. Put Yer Money Where Yer Mouth Is (shortened but also cut from broadcast because no one likes it)

4. Let's All Make Believe (controversially used playback because I was worried of ruining what is probably one of Liam's best vocal performances on any song)

5. Gas Panic!

6. Where Did It All Go Wrong? (acoustic)

7. Sunday Morning Call

8. I Can See A Liar

9. Roll It Over

Schedule-wise, we premiered an extended/edited version of Every Knight Has Its Day, mainly so we could include the following:

More character interactions.

Mixadel's guilt for unleashing the Mixelopters taking a bit longer to settle in (Mixadel: *turns to camera* I make good decisions!).

Camillot and Mixadel's rivalry being more developed.

Implications of Mixadel being punished for what he did (Teacher: Meet me in the principal's office when we get back, please?).

An after-credits scene with the MCPD still stuck in the cage, with a Mixelopter now in there too (Kuffs: We are so screwed...).

The Mixies (including Tapsy) have a scene or two together to explain why this music group is attending Mixopolis Middle School.

A few removed conversations from the original storyboards were added in (including that one where Mixadel says "Are you deranged? I would love to have my ass kissed all day!")

Here was the full lineup for that week (repeats will be listed in italics):

7:00 PM - Mixels Watch (NEW)

7:30 PM - The Powerpuff Girls

8:00 PM - A Bird's Eye-View (NEW)

8:30 PM - Mixels: Every Knight Has Its Day (Extended) (PREMIERE)

9:15 PM - Codename: Kids Next Door

9:30 PM - Mixels Watch

10:00 PM - *no programs as concert continues*

10:30 PM - A Bird's Eye-View

11:00 PM - The Hero of Aura City