6 hours ago
6
By the time I got into Cardiff Central just before 8am on Friday, the early birds of the Oasis flock were already arriving. With a full 12 hours to go until showtime, this wasn’t a bad effort. Respect. I wasn’t there for the big reunion concert. I’d have liked to have been going, but I couldn’t face the hassle. If a ticket package had been available which transported me to my seat, à la Star Trek, just before the gig started, and then transported me straight to bed when the curtain came down, I would have paid handsomely for it. As it was, I enjoyed bystanding, breathing in the thick air of anticipation, like a kind of passive smoker, detached yet vaguely intoxicated by it all.
I was there to present my radio programme from BBC Wales, just across the way from the station. My studio afforded me a view of the crowds thickening outside. I wanted to scoff at all the blokes of my vintage wearing age-inappropriate bucket hats, and the rampant money-making at the heart of it all. But it was all too moving seeing these people getting reacquainted with their 20-years-ago selves. And as for the Gallagher brothers, hell, money has driven many families apart – so what if in this instance, it’s money that has brought them back together?
I spotted a lad in a Man City top who can’t have been born when Oasis started out. He was doing the Liam Gallagher walk. You know the one: a kind of extreme swagger, with exaggerated shoulder movement and feet oriented outwards, gum being chewed. Sweet. Daft, but sweet.
And then I noticed that nearly everyone was, to a lesser or greater extent, doing the Liam walk. Young and old alike had their shoulders moving more than usual, their feet angled outwards by as many degrees as they could manage and their jaws a-chewing. This walk is seen as a Manchester thing, but I don’t know if it was Manchester that gave it to Liam, or Liam who gave it to Manchester. Either way, geography didn’t seem to matter, the whole seething congregation was at it. I’m not even sure it was a conscious thing; people’s bodies just seemed to start moving in this way. It was obviously infectious. Everyone’s attitude, bluster, arrogance – call it what you will – was elevated. It was quite a thing to see.
Elis James joined me on air. He said that there are specific walks for specific occasions, and this was merely the going-to-an-Oasis-gig way. Another example, James said, was the walking-to-a-football-match walk. And he’s right, there is something brisk, purposeful but vaguely trepidatious about the gait of a football fan heading to the ground. Heading away from the ground after the match is a different matter. Then it is result dependent. Winners and losers walk different walks.
Other gaits spring to mind. There is the not especially purposeful and somewhat untidy way that kids the world over make their way to school. The leisurely, hands-behind-back progress of aged Italian gents taking their post-prandial stroll. The erect, staring-straight-ahead stride of beautiful people, their facial expressions communicating something along the lines of: “Yes. Gorgeous, aren’t I? Don’t blame you for staring but, just to be clear, I’m way out of your league.” I’ve become a gait connoisseur. There really are so many to celebrate.
I finished my radio show at lunchtime and made my way back to Cardiff Central to get out of town and leave the Oasis hordes to it. And sure enough, even during that short walk through the throng, my legs developed minds of their own. I watched my feet splay outwards towards the 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock. My shoulders soon joined in, and before I knew it I was chewing, even though there was nothing in my mouth to chew. Yes, I too was doing the Liam walk. Its power is great indeed.
Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
