CAUGHT IN THE ACT

A lot of people dismissed Noel Gallagher’s recent “confession” that he and other members of Oasis had as teenagers “burgled houses and nicked car stereos” as merely an idle rock ‘n’ roll boast. An outburst by a right-wing politician only served to make the whole matter seem even more of a joke.

Not to the police in the band’s hometown of Manchester, though. They have initiated an investigation into the supposed misdeeds, going so far as to question Ben Stud, the writer of the Melody Maker article containing Gallagher’s claims.

The police press office admitted last week that little progress had been made in the case. That’s not surprising: As Stud wrote in a follow-up piece in the current Melody Maker, “The idea that the police should set about investigating an abstract crime with no location, no date and no known victim is laughable.”

Furthermore, Stud writes that those upset about Gallagher’s claims have missed the fact that he was presenting himself as “an exemplary aspirationist, someone who has come from the toughest of backgrounds only to pull himself up by his bootstraps and succeed in classically enterprising fashion.”