And so it was—the Barmy Army was dislocated from the WACA, all bloated and giddy from a day’s sun and heroic levels of mid-strength beer, and transferred to the velvet-y splendour of Perth’s concert hall. When the lights went out, suggesting the imminent arrival of our Noel, the crowd beat itself up into a frenzy—a deafening roar of competing football chants and wilder, individual cries. This was not Oasis, mind you, but just Noel and an acoustic guitar, humbly supported by a percussionist and Gem, who sometimes played keys or backing guitar.

Yes—everyone was drunk and sunburnt, and had translated the day’s cricketing humiliation into a parochial seizure. One heckler, curiously, kept screaming out “Scunthorpe!” between songs, without any helpful supporting context, and Noel, who had not managed to shut him up with threats, resorted to embarrassing the man: “‘Scunthorpe’? That’s nothing to boast about, young man”. It worked.

There was a fine gentleman behind me who roared and wailed almost entirely incoherently, but he was polite enough to reserve lucidity in order to advertise his football club—Derby County. This man was so wild and aggressive in the sounds he made—so alien—that thoughts of telling him to shutup were abandoned for fear the good Derbyshirian would hurl me fatally off the top tier. The Today Tonight promos ran through my head: “Looking Back in Anger: How not Heeding a Lyrics Sentiment Killed a Man” and “Wonderbrawl!: MELs Kill Respectful Listener”. I clenched my teeth and waited for the next song, confident that if I died, the Today Tonight poll asking whether the Barmy Army should be deported en masse would overwhelmingly be agreed upon.

You may have detected a whiff of snobbishness here, and you’d be right to—but there’s a point to my rant that’s irreducible: drunk fuck-nuts are drunk fuck-nuts, and that goes for Liam Gallagher, too.

Sitting through the performance—slightly re-arranged versions of the great old b-sides and classics—I got the horrible feeling that I had grown up too much to enjoy Noel (not grown up enough, no, but enough to feel uneasy in that den of wild chatter and pop anthems). I got to thinking how nice it would be if Noel’s self-perceived gift of wittiness could find a place in his lyrics, and I twitched uncomfortably when he sung the chorus to “Fade Away” (while we’re living/the dreams we have as children fade away) and got to thinking how incongruous that piece of whimsy was with its author. No, it’s not really a problem when the songs are this good (and I was really nodding my head to this version), but the fact was I was thinking—a sure sign you’ll miss the ineffable thrill of pop.

After the gig the three of us piled out as quickly as possible, and searched for something to eat. We needed to get away from the swaying hordes of hyper maked-up girls and polo shirts. After some time we found a kebab store and sat down outside. It was then I remarked on the significance of what we had been talking about since leaving the gig, a space of 25 minutes. We had been talking about Alan Partridge. The significance was that there was no post-gig post-mortem, but the thing is, there was nothing to say. Our deflation eclipsed Noel’s presence. More, listening to Noel idly churn out the classics (it was the last stage of a world-wide tour) had an end-of-an-era feel to it. It just seemed right to be there, to pay homage to nostalgia, and to do so away from those crowds, in those festivals. A night of acoustic intimacy, I thought, might nicely round off my time with Oasis; a last, intimate conversation with my childhood. That sense of intimacy was exploded, however, and I could not be moved to appreciate the gig in the ways of everyone else. This was one last, selfish desire I had of Oasis—to appreciate their legacy as a solipsist—and I thought a small acoustic set at the concert hall would do it. Of course, it didn’t.

Oasis remain for our good MELs what they were over ten years ago—a lofty, swaggering testament to hedonism and thuggery. It’s a shame, and perhaps one sensed by Noel too, if his response to some particularly inane and ribald commentary made from the front of the audience is any measure: “that might have been funny 8 years ago, my friend, but as it stands, it’s fucking mind numbing”.

I would like to think that Noel’s humbled these days by contemplating the culture he’s helped create. Well, perhaps not so much as “created” but unleashed or titillated. If he is, and he may never admit it, he’s right to be embarrassed.