Noel Gallagher: Class act

Noel Gallagher - you'll remember him, he used to appear in that glitzy gossipy Sunday Times column written by his then-wife Meg Matthews about their life in whatever part of London it was - is complaining that there aren't enough working class types in the charts these days. He blames other people:

"Music is very middle class, I’d have eaten Bastille alive in an afternoon in the '90s, one interview, destroyed, gone, never to be heard of again. Easy, had ‘em for breakfast. My bass player summed it up, we’re constantly saying, 'Where is the next band coming from?' and he rightly says, 'Never mind the band, where are the people?'

"When I first started I wanted to get in the charts and wreck it, like stamp Phil Collins out and Wet Wet Wet, they've got to go, and all that '80s gear, we don't need that anymore. I don't see anything from the working class, I just don’t see it."

Ah, yes. Gallagher's war on Wet Wet. So successful that was that, after just three Oasis albums and three years of Gallagher activity, Wet Wet Wet's 1997 album 10 only managed to limp to, erm, number two in the album charts spawning just two top ten singles. And the destroyed Phil Collins only managed to sell a million copies of 2002's Testify so much damage had been inflicted upon him by Gallagher's sharp tongue.

Apparently, this is all the Arctic Monkeys and Kasabian's fault:

"Well you only have to look at the charts, what happened at the end of the '90s, all those bands used to be in the Top Ten, like us, Manic, Pulp, The Verve, Suede and Blur, and I think bands like that have been marginalised and side-lined," he replied. "There's X Factor and all that kind of thing, can you name me the last great band that came out of this country? There's not really been any great bands in the last 10 years."

When it was put to him that One Direction might be considered great in terms of their global success and fame, Gallagher added: "They're not a band, they’re a group and good luck to those lads. Arctic Monkeys and Kasabian, that's ten years ago now and shame on those two bands for a start because they didn't inspire anybody else. The working classes have not got a voice anymore, there doesn't seem to be a noise coming from the council estates, you know what I mean?"

It doesn't seem to enter Noel's head for a moment that there are other possibilities - that for kids growing up now, making fifth-wave Beatles echoes might not be inspiring because there are other, better uses of their time; or that there's always been a talent-show-to-fame path that working class people have followed and the X Factor isn't really anything new in that respect; or there's actually a really vibrant music scene full of people of backgrounds less comfortable than Gallagher's which he doesn't think is there because it's neither about him, nor for him. (Clue, Noel: it's the latter.)

The saddest thing - and were he not such an anal chapstick you might even feel a bit sorry for Noel - is that he's sat on his comfy sofa, reliving the war on Phil Collins, blissfully unaware than for a a kid turning 16 this year, he's their Phil Collins.

Win prizes: Get to be quite near Marti Pellow

A heartbreaking tale from the latest batch of Advertising Standards Authority judgements, about a person who entered the Sheffield Star's Meet Wet Wet Wet competition, and won, only to find:

although she was in the vicinity of the band, she did not meet them.

Understandably, 'be in the vicinity of Wet Wet Wet' hadn't been considered as an attractive offer for the front of the paper, but the paper tried to mount a defence:

Sheffield Newspapers claimed that the chance to "meet" the band, as described in the front-page flash, meant the chance to be in their presence, to encounter them and to come together at the spectacle. They argued that the prize was detailed in the competition copy itself and delivered as described.

Furthermore, they said, the organisers let two of the prize winner's mates in for free and:

They asserted that the winner and her guests were in the presence of the band and that the lead singer blew the winner a kiss.

Come on, how much more of a meeting do you want than having someone mime a kiss from across a room at you?

Understandably, the ASA was having none of this:

We considered readers would understand from the claim "meet ..." that winners would come face to face with the band and would have the opportunity to interact with them in some way, for example by speaking to them or being photographed with them.

Indeed, trying to tell people that being in the same place as someone constitutes having a meeting with them - isn't that what low-level stalkers do?

Wet Wet Wet weather warning

Prepare for a miserable winter - Wet Wet Wet are completing an album:

Band member Tommy Cunningham added: "It'd be easy to do a greatest hits tour every four or five years but we want to be a sparkling new Wet Wet Wet with a brand-new Love Is All Around."

A new Love Is All Around? Wasn't that what Colin Powell told the UN Saddam was trying to develop in his weapons programme?