BRITAIN’S media is frantically churning out witless articles about ‘Cool Britannia II’ thanks to the Oasis reunion. See how many of these words and phrases you can spot.
Optimism. Cool Britannia was supposedly a time of optimism, but this is totally subjective. If in 1995 you’d been dumped by the love of your life and were stuck in a dead-end job, it’s unlikely the release of Roll With It would have suddenly made you optimistic.
The Beatles. Oasis were emphatically not The Beatles. Paperback Writer doesn’t sound really, really similar to Strawberry Fields Forever and all their other songs.
Blair. Tony Blair met Oasis because he wanted to look ‘with it’. Noel Gallagher met Blair because he is incredibly self-important. Opportunism and egomania together at last. How cool.
Britpop. A period of British musical brilliance, if you leave out Ocean Colour Scene, and quite a few others.
Social mobility. The logic of this seems to be: Blair supported social mobility, the Gallaghers became rich. Rock star is a terrible career for promoting social mobility due to the incredibly high failure rate, and the successful ones just turn into twats like Roger Daltrey.
Keir Starmer. The idea is that Keir Starmer and Labour could be at the centre of Cool Britannia II. He’s far more likely to be remembered for Austerity II.
Outspoken. For decades Liam in particular has incessantly shared his pointlessly combative opinions about everything from ripped jeans to Glastonbury. ‘Outspoken’ is the wrong word. ‘Shut the f**k up you babbling twat,’ is more on point.
Swinging London. Articles strangely never mention that, like ‘Cool Britannia’, it was only really meaningful to a small cultural elite. Although, frankly, would you have wanted to hang out with Mick Jagger?
Patsy Kensit. Will Patsy be getting back together with Liam in a putative Cool Britannia II? No, therefore it’s irrelevant. It pains us to say it, but she wasn’t even that successful at the time. Has anyone actually seen Absolute Beginners apart from the cinematographer?
Attitude. If by ‘attitude’ you mean ‘having weird, incoherent grievances’, Oasis had it in shedloads.
Damien Hirst. Young British Artists were a big part of Cool Britannia. They challenged our preconceptions of what constitutes art. Then they made the same point again. And again. And again. And again. At £8 million a pop for a dead shark that’s a lucrative grift.
Blur. Oasis had a much-vaunted rivalry with them. Oasis made more money but Damon Albarn had the last laugh by not getting AIDS.
Vanity Fair. Liam and Patsy were on the cover of the glossy showbiz magazine. Did you read it then? No. Are you in any way tempted to read it now? No. You might miss out on important news about preparations for the Golden Globes though.
Union Jack Dress. Geri Halliwell wore it. She was a moron but everyone liked her tits. Truly a profound cultural moment.
Soft power. Cool Britannia gave the UK ‘soft power’. This is a pretentious way of saying you make successful entertainment products. It’s lucky Ukraine isn’t relying on British soft power right now. What would we do, send them Kula Shaker?
Put their differences aside. Yeah, for £50 million you can see why Noel would forgive Liam for all the insults, punch-ups, timewasting, generally being a dick and twatting him with a tambourine. Money is a great healer.
