20 January 2024 , 18:56
1003
0
Rock wildman Noel Gallagher has gone Champagne Super-sober after corking his nightly wine habit.
The Oasis and High Flying Birds star says he swapped booze for peppermint tea on New Year’s Day. But the health-conscious Live Forever songwriter, 56, will not be ‘no ale Gallagher’ permanently. He is already plotting a “blowout” after a big gig at London’s Albert Hall.
Noel, who wrote hits including Cigarettes & Alcohol, Wonderwall and Don’t Look Back in Anger, said: “I’ve been drinking every day for four years, half a bottle of red wine a night. I’ve got a gig on March 21 at the Royal Albert Hall, so that’s the aim – to have a big blowout the night after that, go mad, swinging my undies round my head in the dressing room.”
Noel was one of showbiz’s biggest caners in the 1990s when he was married to music publicist Meg Mathews. He was a regular on the party scene and even famously claimed that taking drugs was “like getting up and having a cup of tea in the morning”.
Just last year, Noel declared: “Dry January is for middle-aged women.” But the dad-of-three has seemingly changed his tune – for now, at least – even though he reckons that stopping drinking has “f***ed” his sleeping. Speaking on the Matt Morgan podcast, Noel said: “I’m all or nothing and I can do it. I quit drugs like that… I got up one day and said, ‘After tonight, that is it’. I’m three weeks into it and I feel the best I’ve felt since 2019.”
'I stopped drinking booze on dates and it made life much more exciting'
He added: “Sobriety… I’m all for it. I know it’s not gonna last for ever so yeah, I’m liking it. I’m embracing it. It’s not going to be a new way of life as I do like a drink. But now that I’ve got back into the way that I was before lockdown, I think I’ll stop the drinking at home.”