Noel Gallagher and Margaret Thatcher

06 Feb 2012 4 Comments

by representingthemambo in Current Affairs, Music

Oh look, two celebrity stories in one day. The Mambo is turning into an upmarket version of OK Magazine.

Noel Gallagher has been holding forth on the great political issues of the day in the Mail on Sunday of all places. And a riveting read it makes too. Or really grim, depending on your point of view. The smarter of the Gallagher brothers was interviewed by a sunday paper that prides itself on being a mouthpiece for the politics of Maggie.

The Mail’s headline is:

‘It was all better under Thatcher’: Noel Gallagher on Britain’s glory days, turning his back on drugs and the end of Oasis

 

If you read the interview that isn’t actually what he said, and he is reportedly very unhappy with how he has been misrepresented, but even with that rather large caveat the contents of the article are deeply depressing for those of us who assumed that he wasn’t a complete dick. And he only has himself to blame if he is unhappy that an unreconstructed Thatcherite paper decides to spin his comments on……Thatcher. What did he really expect  them to do? Run a headline saying ‘Noel says Thatcher was shit”?

So, leaving aside the fact that he doesn’t actually come out and say Thatcher was brilliant, let’s take a look at some of his other comments:

• ‘Now, these kids brought up under the Labour Party and whatever this Coalition thing is, it’s like, “Forget that, I’m not interested. I wanna be on TV.” It was a different mindset back then.’

The modern celebrity culture is in many ways very toxic indeed, but this seems like a very rose-tinted view of recent British history. Things were pretty grim under Thatcher, Noel. Have you forgotten, with those millions you now have in the bank for ripping off firstly the Beatles and the La’s and then…..yourselves? (Be Here Now is amazing though, to be fair……)

• ‘Now, no one’s got anything to say. Write a song? No thanks, I’ll say it on Twitter. It’s a sad state when more people retweet than buy records.’

I’m sorry? Do people really tweet instead of write music? Do they? Since when? And when was the last time Oasis had anything to say?

• Gallagher is entirely clean now, bar the odd beer or cigarette. He’s in no doubt as to what turned him around. ‘Meeting my wife,’ he says. ‘She was the catalyst for everything.’

Noel Gallagher the family man? Aw. How touching. How very Terry Christian.

• But, it turns out, he will be sending his sons to private school.  ‘I don’t want them coming home speaking like Ali G,’ he explains. ‘Anyone in my position, you owe it to your children to send them to a school where they don’t have to walk through a metal detector in the morning……There were riot police outside our local school the other morning. Turns out there’d been a stabbing. Rival gangs. We shouldn’t need riot police at schools. This is Maida Vale. This isn’t Handsworth or Tottenham, do you know what I mean? I don’t want my kids going to a school like that. I’d rather they were at a school with Russian oligarchs’ children.’

Superb. Of course Noel. Every comprehensive in Britain is drug-filled crack den full of teenage prostitutes and 11 year olds fornicating on the desks whilst simultaneously shooting up and giving their teachers blowjobs in exchange for high marks. At playtime they play a 21^st version of British Bulldog, the difference being there are real bulldogs and all the kids stab each other at the end. Not that you’re stereotyping or anything, Noel. Or rationalizing your decision to keep your children away from those ghastly proles.

• ‘Kids now watch America’s Hardest Prisons and want to be in a gang,’ he says. ‘They’ve no imagination. When I was 16 I’d watch The Godfather, but I didn’t think, “Right, I’m going to go down the barber’s and get some protection money off him.

Oh yes. You tell ‘em Noel. Every fucking kid in Britain spends his free time at the local barber’s extracting protection money (why the barber’s? What made him say the barber’s?) The thing I love most about Noel Gallagher is that for all the money he may have earnt, he still understands the realities of life for us ordinary plebs.

• ‘I saw kids on the telly saying in their Ali G voices, “It’s payback for the po-lice.” What does that mean? “Cause they arrest yer for stupid things.” Like what – hopping on one leg? Doing a silly walk like John Cleese? Get home, you idiot.’

He seems obsessed with the Ali G thing. He mentions it a couple of times. Firstly it reveals his age, but does he also really mean black but without having the bottle to say it? Is he doing a David Starkey? He just sounds like a rather ignorant, embittered old Daily Mail reader.

• ‘I don’t want to be “interesting”,’ Gallagher scoffs. ‘I don’t want critical acclaim. I don’t want my songs to be social commentary. Radiohead can have that. That’s why they’ve never done three nights at Wembley. I want the money. I want the jet, the holiday and the first-class lounge.’

Piss off Noel.

I’m surprised he is so upset with how the interview has been portrayed. The headlines could have been far worse if people had bothered to actually read the article.

‘Ali G voice’ indeed.