Robbie Williams has taken a jibe at Noel Gallagher by placing a billboard for his Manchester show on the street where Noel used to live.
Robbie is playing a show at the city’s Aviva Studios tonight (February 27) as part of BRITs Week, where he will play tracks from his debut album ‘Life Thru A Lens’ as well as his recent Number One record ‘BRITPOP’.
The show will see support from The Lottery Winners and all proceeds will go towards War Child, the charity that provides aid, education and specialist mental health support for young people affected by conflict.
To promote the show, Robbie has taken a sly shot at his longtime rival Gallagher by putting up a billboard on Whitworth Street West in Manchester City Centre, the street where the Oasis guitarist lived before the band became famous.
For two years in the early ‘90s, Gallagher lived in India House, just a few steps from the site of the legendary Hacienda nightclub, having completed his stint as roadie for the Inspiral Carpets. While there, he wrote much of what would go on to be Oasis’ highly influential and successful 1994 debut album, ‘Definitely Maybe’.
“LONG 90’S IN MANCHESTER/..TONIGHT!” Williams wrote on Instagram this morning, alongside an image of the poster in question, which prominently features a Daily Telegraph review of ‘BRITPOP’ that reads: “…sing-along choruses to make Noel Gallagher question whether he ever needs to bother writing another song.”
Williams and Gallagher’s connection goes back to the height of Britpop in the mid-’90s, notoriously culminating in Williams’ antics at Glastonbury 1995. Williams has described that weekend, which came shortly after he left Take That, as the “start of his new life”.
“I set off with [a] flute full of champagne and a pocket full of cocaine, ready to get insane in the membrane and I went to Glastonbury to begin what I didn’t know was to be the start of my new life. When I was there, I hung out with this lot,” he said in 2022, before singing a version of ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’.
Noel notoriously referred to Robbie as “the fat dancer from Take That” during that period, while Robbie challenged Liam Gallagher to a £100,000 fight at the 2000 BRIT Awards.
Williams has since described Oasis as “bullies” in their heyday, telling Apple Music in 2022: “Ultimately, I’m a huge fan of Oasis and [always] was. I was there and I was part of it, and it was fucking unbelievable: incredible hedonism, reckless abandon and rock’n’roll, and ‘let’s turn it to 11, 12 and let’s see where this goes’. It’s part of that competitive nature of me, too.”
He continued: “Also they were gigantic bullies too, to the whole industry, everybody in it – and I didn’t like that. A lot of that still remains inside me. They’re probably different people now but there’s a lot of me that’s like, ‘They’re fucking bullies, them. I don’t like bullies’.”
Liam Gallagher responded to those comments, writing: “I agree with him on the vital ting not on the bully thing,” he said. “I’ve never bullied anyone in my life I’m a massive piss taker for sure and probably gone a little too far sometimes, but if I’ve ever hurt anyone’s feelings I apologise.”
When the Oasis reunion was announced in 2024, Williams included another jibe at Noel: “Liam Gallagher reading his phone on the toilet would be more charismatic and intriguing than 99.9% of the world’s population at their most enigmatic,” he said. “All he has to do is stand there and sing for the audience to be guaranteed their money’s worth. Noel will be there too.”
Other artists to have played shows for this year’s BRITs Week include Olivia Dean, Spiritualized, The K’s, Fatboy Slim, Lambrini Girls, Myles Smith and BRITs Critics’ Choice award winner Jacob Alon.
The BRITs 2026 take place at Manchester’s Co-op Live on Saturday February 28. Check out the full list of nominees here.
Noel Gallagher will also be at the ceremony, as he has been awarded the Songwriter of the Year prize. After a backlash to his win, with some pointing to the fact that he has not released any new songs in the past 12 months, Gallagher challenged his critics to “meet me there”.
“We’ll have it out on the red carpet. If any of those wet wipes songwriting teams, all 11 of them, want to write a song between the lot of them, want to have it out on the red carpet, I’m there.”
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