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You think of Oasis and you think of big tunes, punch-ups and massive drug usage.

The tunes are all present and correct on current chart-assaulting greatest hits album Stop The Clocks, and the brothers are still scrapping – so that just leaves the drugs.

Luckily, a certain Mr Noel Gallagher isn’t shy when it comes to talking about the illicit produce that helped fuel his most creative years.

And – despite being off the naughty stuff for more than eight years – the big Manc only has good things to say about narcotics.

Even though his teeth started falling out and he found people he hated sitting in his front room.

In fact, he takes great pleasure in ripping the mickey out of today’s crop of rockers for failing to handle their nose candy without seeking out help.

Noel, 39, says: “You read all these stories now of rock stars going into rehab. Someone must take them to one side at some point and say: ‘Look, I think you’re going off the rails and you might want to go to The Priory or something.’

“To start with we were off the rails before we got a record deal! That’s the difference between the working classes and the middle classes.

“The middle classes experiment with drugs and the working classes just get stuck in. Forget experimenting with them, let’s just get them done.”

And get them done he did.

“We kind of arrived in London hammered,” he confesses.

“We were just out of it and like ‘let’s ’ave it!’ It’s never been a problem for me and Liam.

“It fascinates me that out of all the people we hung out with the only two people who haven’t been in rehab is me and Liam.

“Why would you go to a hospital to pay somebody four grand an hour to tell you things that really you should already know yourself?”

Certainly, Noel had the strength to leave that tempting powder behind him without the help of men in white coats.

He explains: “I’m free of drugs, now, eight-and-a-half years. When you say that to people you sort of half expect a round of applause but I don’t think there should be anything like that.

“Where we come from in Manchester, that was just the done thing and I’ve never had a problem with it.

“The only thing that is bad about drugs is that you drink more and that eventually messes you up, I think.

“If there were gold medals for taking drugs for England then I’d have won a sh*t load!

“I did enjoy it but it kind of got to the point where I’d done them all and that was it, there was none left and I just thought: ‘Can’t be arsed any more.’

“How it’s been portrayed in the past is that I kind of just stood up at a party and went: ‘And this shall be my last line, after this there will be no more!’

“We were at a party one night and then I got up one day and thought: ‘I can’t be bothered today.’

“Then one day turned into a week and that turned into a month, then that into a year – I kind of then just enjoyed not being out of it all the time.

“As that state of mind took hold I would go out with the people I was surrounded with at the time, I’d be sitting there thinking: ‘I don’t even like you, your bird’s an idiot. What you doing in my front room? Get out of here.’

“In the end everybody kind of left the party, if you like, and left to get on with life I guess.

“You’ve got to be strong-willed to say it and vanity also plays a big part in my life – my teeth were falling out and all sorts!

“Nobody wants to look like a weirdo, you know what I mean? You don’t look good and everything was revolved around getting hammered.

“I don’t want this to sound like ‘my drugs hell’ because it wasn’t hell, it was fantastic and I had some of the most monumental nights out and monumental nights in ever.”

Noel grew up in Burnage, south Manchester, and was a regular truant with his brother Liam, allegedly breaking into cars and stealing bicycles.

As a teenager he taught himself to play guitar and also had his first brushes with narcotics before he became a roadie with indie band Inspiral Carpets.

There he began to experiment with Class A drugs on a regular basis and returning from an American tour in 1992 he formed a band called Rain.

They eventually became Oasis when Liam went on vocals. The rest is rock ’n’ roll history.

Noel adds: “I wrote some of the best songs, met some of the greatest people in some of the greatest parties … man.

“It just came to the point where it was like: ‘I can’t be bothered any more, it’s too much.’”

He may be nearly 40, and settled down with his missus Sara MacDonald, 31, but Noel’s still regularly scrapping with his brother Liam, 34, who he affectionately calls “Our Kid”.

He jokes that they row because “I’m better looking than him, obviously”, but admits even when they are warring, deep down they still have feelings for each other.

He says: “I guess because there is a lot of pressure being in a big group we kind of fall out on a regular basis but it’s not anything that’s ever put the band in danger.

“The only people that suffer really are the people that happen to be in the band at that point – there’s been hundreds of them in the past.

“I think that maybe, how can I put it, we don’t like authority figures very much, me and Liam.

“I guess because everyone in the band kind of directs everything towards me because I am, for want of a better word, seen as the leader – I think Liam sort of rebels against that. I think that causes friction between us.

“But put it this way, if he was getting his head kicked right now I would probably join in to save him and if I was getting mine, he would probably join in to save me. I can’t say any fairer than that.”

Both brothers are particularly protective of their mum Peggy, who brought them up single-handedly when their dad walked out on them in the early Eighties.

But they didn’t exactly splash the cash when the millions started rolling in from sales of albums Definitely Maybe and (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?

Noel says: “When all the money started rolling in we were like, ‘Of course you’re going to leave now, aren’t you?’

“She was like: ‘I’m not moving anywhere.’ All of her sisters, she’s got seven or eight, live within a two-mile radius of each other.

“The one thing that we got her was a new garden gate! Seriously, it never had a latch on it so when it was windy it would bang all night.

“Her bedroom was at the front, and she said ‘If you’re going to get me one thing get me a f***ing garden gate’.

“You should have seen this garden gate at the time because it’s not much now. It was mega – had this big gold number five on it.”

Noel Gallagher appears on Parkinson on ITV1 tomorrow night at 10.50pm.

Source: Daily Star

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