Those days, as he notes in a stream of profanities, are long gone. Well, definitely maybe.

The hype machine about the Oasis reunion has gone into overdrive. Within hours of the announcement of a UK and Ireland tour next summer, hotel rooms in Dublin were being pitched at €800 for one night’s stay. Some estimates suggest that the brothers will rake in north of €100m if they extend the brief tour by a few months. 

Money will churn in the economies of the cities where this fake nostalgia will be rolled out. Everybody can pretend that they are witnessing the second coming of their own, albeit imagined, youth. 

In reality, the emperor in the room hasn’t a stitch of clothes to shield his decaying virility, with due deference to mixed metaphors. The only thing that can save the whole shebang is for Noel to pen a new song entitled ‘Oh Hype, we’ve fooled them once again’.

I saw Oasis in concert at Slane Castle in 1995. They were outstanding, Liam snarling at the hills rolling down to the Boyne, Noel making his guitar sing. They exuded attitude and confidence, displacing the relatively tame headline act of REM as the main event. 

When Liam sang that he was going to live forever, you believed him. A year later, the band hit its career peak with gigs at Knebworth and a few days later, Pairc Ui Chaoimh. 

They were definitely going to live forever, no maybe about it.

By then, they had produced two albums full of serious and melodious rock ‘n roll. If they had imploded at that point, the world huddled at their feet, there would forever have been speculation about the band less travelled that could have been huge. 

Instead, they put out a succession of mediocre albums and distracted with the soap opera of two brothers wanting to beat the living lard out of each other. For 13 years beyond their peak, they limped on, their creativity drained, the humour increasingly lost in crankiness.

Now they are back. Or at least Noel and Liam are. The other three original members of Oasis are apparently superfluous to the whole affair, which would imply the new version should be called The Fabulous Gallagher Brothers or maybe even something more direct, also beginning with an F, as a prefix to Gallagher Brothers. 

Liam will once again be able to retain three people to make his cup of tea and attend to any other basic or bodily functions that no self-respecting rock star should ever have to endure. If Noel needs a new garden shed he will not have to lose sleep over the cost of tradespeople these days.

At the risk of appearing a party pooper, it is necessary to point out that the gigs earmarked for Croke Park are probably in peril even before the tickets go on sale. The tour begins on July 4 in Cardiff and there will be 12 gigs across the UK over the following six weeks before arriving in Dublin on August 16.

Will the duo even be intact by then? Will they be able to still share a room, not to mind a stage? Will Liam have set loose his tea-makers on the brother with instructions to re-arrange Noel’s face but leave his fingers intact to perform the solo on Don’t Look Back In Anger? 

Will they have abandoned the whole thing as a bad job and immediately kick off speculation about the next reunion some time before the grim reaper has his revenge on one of them for having the temerity to suggest they would live forever? 

None of it really matters beyond the hype and the desperate need among fans to feel young again, if only for a horrendously expensive couple of hours.