Who's The Daddy: It was case of 'Definitely Maybe' but then absolutely not

Those of us (yours truly included) who braved Ticketmaster’s Lobby and Queue for hours on end as the number of people ahead dwindled down from 67,831 at 10.10am until I got to the front just before 1pm were peeved to say the least to see £150 standing tickets for Heaton Park had more than doubled in price to £355.20.

It was weird, it took hours to get from 60,000-plus in the Queue to 20,000, and about 40 minutes from there to the front as thousands of fans saw the price hike at checkout and said a collective: “Er, nope!”

Because tickets were in huge demand (who knew?) Ticketmaster jacked up the price as the day wore on. This isn’t a word that I throw around lightly, but isn’t that how touts work?

Anyway, after a quick game of ping-pong text between me and three college buddies I’ve known since 1988, we decided to tell Oasis and Ticketmaster to shove it up their Champagne Supernovas. £150 to stand in a park dodging plastic pint pots full of warm wee-wee that has zero chance of passing a drugs test hurled by enthusiastic young Mancs was taking the, er, wee-wee. But adding £200 to the price at checkout? Definitely Maybe? Absolutely not.

Next summer’s shows are sold out, so it’s not like Ticketmaster or the multimillionaire Gallagher brothers will give a flying fudge. But this unnecessary and money grabbing behaviour leaves a sour taste.

Oasis are, or at least they were when I last saw them at the Empress Ballroom in Blackpool in 1995, a phenomenal live band. Their debut album Definitely Maybe was arguably the finest album of the 1990s and still sounds like it was written and recorded last week.

There were a few hits on the follow-up and some of Noel’s finest work inexplicably buried on B-sides of four-track EPs from 1994-96, but each album that followed was a little bit more disappointing than the last, until the band finally imploded in 2009.

There’s an argument for saying that The Stone Roses didn’t record enough albums and Oasis made too many. And the half-finished, will-this-do? career-ending Second Coming sounds better today than the astonishingly basic (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? And Stone Roses tickets weren’t £355.20 either (from memory, about £60).

Maybe Blur should do a series of pop-up gigs in the same cities on the same nights as Oasis, just for old time’s sake, and party like it’s 1995?

Anyway, back to reality, and our grown and literally flown kids are Half The World Away (see what I did there?) from each other as Daughter #1 is on holiday for a fortnight in Bali while her little sister completes her fifth week working on a cruise ship sailing from New York to The Bahamas and back.

There’s the soul of the wanderer in both of them, which means one of two things - either they couldn’t wait to flap their wings and get as far away from us as possible, or they know there’s always a warm welcome and plate of dinner here whenever they want. Option 2 please.

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