How the mockery of newly-divorced Noel was set off for Oasis reunion

The performance was so bad that even the most ardent Noel Gallagher fan was horrified. The former Oasis guitarist’s attempt at singing the Joy Division classic Love Will Tear Us Apart last June on BBC2 show Later… With Jools Holland was widely scorned.

Some industry insiders even suggested it could signal the end of Noel’s career.

But, as the Mail can now reveal, this was perhaps the moment that convinced Noel, 57, it was time to bury the hatchet with his estranged brother Liam and reunite one of the most iconic rock bands in living memory.

For at the same time that Noel was humiliating himself on prime-time TV, younger brother Liam, now 51, was on a run of sold-out gigs, performing the historic hits that had turned the brothers into global stars in the Nineties.

Music industry sources say their varied fortunes last year made Noel ‘realise just what he was missing’.

One tells me: ‘Poor Noel went on Jools Holland: he thought it would be fun and would raise his profile for his musical projects.

‘It backfired. He found himself laughed at – the social media comments were brutal.

‘Then to think Liam was away having a great time singing Oasis songs while he was singing someone else’s tunes seemed ridiculous. It felt like a terrible shame, all because the brothers hadn’t been able to make up.’

It has now been 14 years since that almighty brawl between siblings backstage at a concert in Paris, which led to the break up.

Behind the scenes at the Rock en Seine Festival on August 28, 2009, Noel recalls Liam hurling insults around the dressing room before throwing a plum at the wall.

Liam then left the room before, according to Noel, returning with a guitar and allegedly ‘wielding it around like an axe’. That was the point Noel decided enough was enough.

‘It’s with some sadness and great relief to tell you,’ Noel said at the time, ‘that I quit Oasis.’

Their last concert had been at V Festival, held at Weston Park, Staffordshire, a few weeks earlier.

It marked the end of a 15-year career for Oasis, the Mancunians who had taken the world by storm with their debut hit Supersonic in 1994. Live Forever followed – the first of an astonishing 22 successive Top Ten hits for the group.

The split left fans in mourning.

In the intervening years, the pair have exchanged insults in the Press and pourned scorn on one another’s careers, partners and even – in some cases – children.

Famously, when Noel announced the debut album from his new band Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds in 2011, Liam tweeted the phrase: ‘S***BAGS,’ before branding the band ‘High Flying Turds.’

From 2016, Liam also went through a phase of posting pictures of Noel alongside the caption ‘potato’.

Noel – less prone to brash insults – at one point suggested his brother seeks psychiatric help.

But all that is set to change.

On Sunday night, both Gallagher brothers and the official Oasis Twitter account posted two images – one that said ‘8am’ and the other ‘27/8/2024’ – today’s date. It appeared news of a reunion was imminent.

Earlier in the day, amid claims they were to make a comeback, Liam had tweeted to his 3.7 million followers: ‘I never did like that word FORMER.’

While the pair are not best friends, bread has evidently been broken. And no one will be more pleased than their long-suffering mother, Peggy, who pleaded with her offspring to put aside their differences in 2011, saying: ‘I want my sons to sort it out.’

Much of the negotiations have been through the brother’s managers, but there are rumours they have already met, ahead of the announcement, for a photoshoot – their first picture together in a long time.

It is widely expected that a string of gigs at Wembley Stadium and the Etihad Arena in Manchester – home to the brothers’ beloved Manchester City football club – will form the basis of the 2025 reunion tour, with tickets starting from £130.

Gigs are also planned for Glasgow and Cardiff, with a mooted headline slot at Glastonbury.

A performance at the world’s most iconic festival, in front of hundreds of thousands, would surely be the pinnacle of their reconciliation. Their previous headline shows at Worthy Farm in 1995 and 2004 have become part of music folklore.

Either way, the tour is predicted to make a whopping £400 million.

Experts are quick to stress that would be a gross figure, pointing out that tours cost a lot of money. As well as venue and stage costs, the promoters Live Nation and SJM will also take a large cut.

Noel and Liam, meanwhile, are expected to pocket about £50 million each, which friends say will be ‘very well received’.

It was acknowledged by both camps that not getting back together would be ‘looking a gift horse in the mouth’. After all, the brothers live expensive lives.

Noel’s divorce from Sara MacDonald last year after 12 years cost him a ‘significant’ proportion of his rumoured £53 million fortune – said to be far larger than Liam’s, as Noel wrote most of the Oasis songs and continues to collect the lion’s share of royalties.

Following their split, he lived in splendour at the five-star Claridge’s hotel in Mayfair, where he occupied a £2,500-a-night suite for almost a year.

Indeed, it was PR executive Sara who was widely thought to have stood in the way of any Oasis reunion. She was no friend of her husband’s famously irascible younger brother.

Liam and Sara clashed repeatedly over the years. Sara first met Noel in Ibiza in 2000, ahead of his divorce from first wife Meg Matthews a year later.

No one was surprised when Liam failed to attend his brother’s wedding to Sara, now 53.

By 2018, relations between Sara and Liam had deteriorated to a shocking extent.

Liam said in a newspaper interview at the time that he ‘didn’t care’ if Sara, Noel or his brother’s ‘f****** kid’ were abused on social media. Responding, Sara wrote on Instagram: ‘ “His f****** kid”? You mean your gorgeous niece, you deplorable w*****.’

That same year, in a series of angry tweets, Liam compared his brother and Sara to being ‘like [the serial killers] Fred and Rose West’ and claimed Sara was the reason Oasis split up.

Singer Liam added: ‘She’s the reason OASIS is no longer. Have to put it out there, she’s DARK.’

A source tells the Mail: ‘There were many reasons for the bitter feud that erupted between Noel and Liam after Oasis split up.

‘To be fair to Sara, it was never going to be easy for any woman caught up in the middle of this spat to have to deal with Liam.’

But Noel’s divorce ‘actually made Liam and Noel confront some of the issues they were constantly clashing over, rather than blaming somebody else,’ added the source.

‘Who knows, but you do wonder whether, if Noel and Sara were still together, this reunion would be happening. You can only imagine what poor Sara had to put up with.’

Noel is currently dating high society events planner Sally Mash, known for running exclusive private member’s clubs in west London.

He has two sons, Donovan, 16, and Sonny, 13, from his marriage to Sara, as well as a daughter, Anaïs, 24, with Meg Matthews.

It was last summer – shortly after Noel’s disastrous performance on Jools Holland – that I first learned there were hopes he and Liam might reunite to mark the 30th anniversary of Oasis’s first album, 1994’s Definitely Maybe.

Liam was keen to recreate the magic of the band, along with original guitarist ‘Bonehead’ (Paul Arthurs) who has recently been touring with Liam.

Liam and Paul set off on tour in June – a reminder for Noel of what he was missing and of what a reunion could be like.

‘Liam would have loved to have had Noel on that tour. Despite their differences, he knew how special the 30th anniversary was,’ says an insider.

‘Noel simply wasn’t quite ready. A few weeks into it, he was. And so they’re going to make it happen.’

Now the only worry hanging over the reunion is how well Noel will get on with Liam’s fiancée and manager, Debbie Gwyther, 42. The pair barely know one another. However, those in the know say that Debbie is a ‘calming’ influence on Liam and is more likely to encourage him to work through his problems with his brother, rather than be difficult.

‘Debbie and Liam got together during the fall-out,’ says a band insider.

‘She doesn’t really know Noel that well, certainly not as his brother’s girlfriend. But she really wants this reunion to work, so everyone will be making a big effort.’

The Gallagher brothers were born in the Longsight district of Manchester – Noel in 1967, Liam in 1972.

Parents Peggy and Thomas divorced when the boys were young and they had little to do with their father afterwards.

Together with Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs, Paul McGuigan on guitar and Tony McCarroll on the drums, they formed Oasis and signed in 1993 to Creation Records.

The brothers were the stand-out stars with Noel on guitar and Liam providing lead vocals.

Last week Noel gave an insight into how they came to that decision, saying: ‘If voices were drinks, mine’s half a Guinness on a Tuesday. It’s all right. Liam’s is ten shots of tequila on a f***ing Friday night.’

Liam, who released a solo album in 2017 named As You Were after launching the band Beady Eye between 2009 and 2014, has four children.

His eldest is Molly, 26, from a relationship with model Lisa Moorish; Lennon, 25, from his marriage to Patsy Kensit; Gene, 23, from his marriage to Nicole Appleton; and Gemma, nine, whose mother is journalist Liza Ghorbani.

Home is a £4million mock Tudor home in North London and a lavish country home in the Cotswolds.

‘Liam loves the finer things in life,’ says a friend. ‘He also has four children who he likes to make sure want for nothing. All of these things cost money.’

There is no doubt that the impending windfall has helped to spur the reunion.

‘It was a case of getting to the point where they could stand on a stage together,’ the friend continued. ‘And then they’ll make an absolute fortune.

‘At the same time, they know they will give potentially millions of people the most wonderful memory of watching something they never thought they would see.’

In 1996 Oasis played perhaps their most famous gig: two nights at Knebworth Park, Hertfordshire, to 250,000 fans.

Now there’s a tantalising prospect of a reunion tour to rival that weekend as the greatest moment in Britpop history.