Gordon in the morning: He wasn't mod enough for me

I know what leaves you unable to sleep at night. Why, you wonder, why did Robbie Williams ever fall out with Oasis?

Wonder no more. Indeed, if you will, Wonderwall no more. Gordon has the answer:

ROBBIE WILLIAMS says he fell out with OASIS in the Nineties because he wasn’t “mod” enough.

Really? Not being mod enough for Oasis is a bit like not being gourmet enough for Charlie, The Little Chef.

But Robbie, it seems, is convinced - why, how could he hope to fly so close to such a band?

Liam’s voice was the voice of a generation

No, it wasn't.

and Noel seemed to be writing the songs of a generation

It would be churlish to just dimiss this with curt 'no he wasn't'; on the strength of the first album, you could say that Noel did seem to have something of a knack for crystalising something, and at the time Williams was fawning round the band like a bear trying to wrestle his way into a bin full of sausages, you could forgive someone for thinking that might be the case.

They were our Beatles for around 18 months.

Again, the temptation is to just snort at this - but, of course, snorting is what led to a bunch of people believing this to be true in the first place.

However, if you look again at what Williams has just said there, you'll notice that he's turning the knife, which makes that "seemed to" when talking about Noel seem less an accident of phrasing and deliberately, delicately putting the boot in.

Because The Beatles, if they are anything, did not have a time period slapped on them. Being "The Beatles for 18 months" is like being God for a fortnight - if you don't transcend your time, you're doing it wrong.

Gordon seems to think Williams is praising Oasis; in fact, he's very gently, and somewhat sweetly, putting them in their place.