An Oasis superfan willing to pay £1,000 to meet his hero Liam Gallagher face-to-face is going to camp outside Wembley Stadium to make sure he is in the front row to show off the huge tattoo on his back of Liam’s face. John Smallbones, 50, is desperate to meet Liam to tell him he’s not “just a random fan”.
John has loved Oasis since 1992, has seen the band live 40 times and spent £14,500 on memorabilia. He will be sleeping out the night before the July 26 Wembley concert in his van – which is Oasis themed – to nab a spot at the front of the queue.
John, a window surveyor, from Andover, Hampshire, said: “A lot of people meet [Liam]. Obviously they are fans but they probably don’t have what I’ve got. I’d have to show him how much stuff I have. I’d probably show him my tattoos, and my van with his mugshot. Also something in my house. I think by then he’d realise that I was a nutter.”
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John has offered £1,000 to his friends Chris Jackson and Spencer Walker, who buy and sell music records and helped in the ticket hunt, if they can land him a face-to-face meeting with Liam through their “industry contacts”. “I’d have a hundred questions to ask him but my mind could go blank,” he said.
While hundreds of thousands of Oasis fans are flocking to see the reunion tour, John does stand out from the rest. His home is covered top to bottom in Oasis memorabilia, where visitors can find mugs, t-shirts, cardboard cutouts of the brothers, and a handmade ‘Liam’ wig.
£1,000 spent on tickets to 2025 reunion tour
His record collection includes rare live recordings, which he has obtained with the help of Chris and Spencer, who owns a record shop in Whitchurch, Hampshire. But it wasn’t easy for John to get tickets to the reunion tour. It took a team of seven friends and family to hunt down tickets for him to go to two performances – one in July for £650 and one in September for £350.
He said: “They were all in their own houses on different laptops. Every time when everyone got down to number one in the queue it logged you out. They spent about seven or eight hours each on it.
“They were all doing it and I wasn’t. I don’t do computers and I was busy thinking about what I’ll be wearing. I’ve got a Liam Gallagher wig but I think it might be too hot for it.
“We couldn’t get any in the first sales. They weren’t impressed. I’d wasted everyone’s time. But they tried again and again, and it just went on like that for about a month.
“If I could have got a ticket for every night in each different place, I would have done. Eventually everyone gave up except my dad. He was the one who got them.
“He just kept trying and trying, because he always does for me. He got me the ticket for my 50th birthday. I was smiling from ear to ear.”
John’s dad, who is also called John, is in his 70s and passed up the chance to go with his son, offering the spare ticket in July to John’s cousin, James Bulpitt. James, 50, a carpenter, will be camping out overnight before the first concert in the van along with John.
“He’s not as into it as I am. But he’ll dress up as Liam as well because he’s borrowing some of my clothes,” John said. The superfan also insists that he is not worried about the Oasis brothers falling out over the course of the tour.
He said: “To be honest, I don’t think they ever really probably fell out. I’ve always said to people that they get back together. A mate of mine said that there was no chance that they would get back together and that he didn’t know why I kept banging on about it.
“But I said ‘yeah, they will – they definitely will’. I remember him saying how they don’t even like each other and me saying ‘yeah, that’s what they say, but it’s probably all part of the plan’.”
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