Creative Australia has reinstated artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino as Australia’s artistic team for the 2026 Venice Biennale, following an independent external review of the decision.
The pair had been dumped from the prestigious art exhibition earlier this year after Creative Australia’s board took the unprecedented decision to revoke their appointment.
“Today, we were officially informed by Creative Australia that we have been recommissioned as the Artistic Team for the Australia Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale,” the team said in a statement.
“We accept this invitation and welcome the opportunity to represent our country on this prestigious international stage.”
Just days after their selection was made public in February and following negative media and political commentary about two of Sabsabi’s historical artworks dating back nearly 20 years, Creative Australia’s board rescinded their contract, saying it wanted to avoid a “divisive debate”.
The artistic duo said the decision has renewed their confidence in Creative Australia and “in the integrity of its selection process”.
“It offers a sense of resolution and allows us to move forward with optimism and hope after a period of significant personal and collective hardship,” their statement said.
“We acknowledge that this challenging journey has impacted not only us, but also our families, friends, the staff at Creative Australia, and many others across the broader artistic community here and abroad.
“We would not have reached this point without the unwavering support of the Australian and international creative community.”
Edited by Valentin Bansac, Mike Fritsch, Alice Loumeau and Peter Szendy
Published by Spector Books
The Luxembourg Pavilion at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale is an invitation to close our eyes and actively listen. The installation hosted in the pavilion, Sonic Investigations, operates a radical shift away from the visual: it offers a cartography of various environments exclusively through sound. The volume, conceived as a companion to the sound installation in Venice, has a broad ambition: it argues for a counter-project to the hegemony of images.
Since the climate crisis can also be understood as a crisis of sensory perception and representation, it is all the more urgent to find new ways of approaching the ongoing environmental transformations. The act of listening allows for different forays into both anthropic and natural ecosystems. It directs our attention toward the vocality of other-than-human agencies; it empowers them with a voice of their own.
Field recording can thus be the prelude to another mapping of the world, attuning our ears to its various fault lines, to its tensions. And sounding becomes a powerful investigative tool, a way of auscultating the infrastructures of the present as well as the times to come. The concept of ecotone, a transitional space between two ecosystems, is a guiding thread for the authors of this volume as they listen to boundaries between territories, to urban patterns, to natural balances and imbalances, or to political fractures.
The book includes contributions by Peter Szendy, Shannon Mattern, Tim Ingold, Soline Nivet and Ariane Wilson, David George Haskell, Ludwig Berger, Philip Samartzis and Madelynne Cornish (Bogong Centre for Sound Culture), Nadine Schütz, Laure Brayer (AAU-CRESSON), Julia Grillmayr, Christina Gruber and Sophia Rut (Lobau Listening Comprehensions), Yuri Tuma (Institute for Postnatural Studies), Emma McCormick Goodhart, as well as a fiction piece by Xabi Molia and poems by Laura Vazquez and Cole Swensen. The graphic identity is designed by Pierre Vanni.
Public events of Sonic Investigations, Luxembourg Pavilion at the Venice Biennale The activations extend the reflection on embodied practices and sensorial approaches to space through sound, offering a unique exploration of the performer’s and the audience’s body within soundscapes. The events will create a dialogue between the space of the pavilion and the infrastructural apparatus of the Venetian lagoon, together with local Italian sound artists and researchers.
October 7–10, 2025 Ecotongues (Residency and Performance inside the pavilion): Gaia Ginevra Giorgi (author, sound artist and performer) Ecotongues explores mediumship as the ability to inhabit the threshold between the visible and the invisible, the audible and the inaudible, as a performative practice of interspecific intimacy between human and more-than-human entities.
October 25–26, 2025 Attunement Exercises: Nicola Di Croce (researcher and sound artist) The two public exercises address the idea of ‘attunement’ as the possibility of entering ‘into resonance with’ the non-human, through an investigation of the sound sources of the Venice lagoon taking particularly into account the infrastructure systems and their relation to wilder ecosystems.
19th International Venice Architecture Biennale, Luxembourg Pavilion, Arsenale, Sale d’Armi, 1st floor / May 10–November 23, 2025. Valentin Bansac, Mike Fritsch, Alice Loumeau with Ludwig Berger, Peter Szendy:Sonic Investigations
Commissioners appointed by the Luxembourg Ministry of Culture: Kultur | lx—Arts Council Luxembourg, LUCA—Luxembourg Center for Architecture / Curators: Valentin Bansac, Mike Fritsch, Alice Loumeau / Exhibitors: Valentin Bansac, Ludwig Berger, Anthea Caddy, Mike Fritsch, Alice Loumeau, Peter Szendy / Visual identity: Pierre Vanni.
Press contact: Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg Emilie Gouleme, emilie.gouleme [at] kulturlx.lu, T +352 621 680 028
Aamir Khan’s latest film, Sitaare Zameen Par, has crossed the ₹130 crore mark at the box office within two weeks of its release.
The movie raked in around ₹4 crore on its second Tuesday (Day 12), taking the total collection to a solid ₹130.4 crore, reported Sacnilk.
The film started its box office journey with good numbers and has maintained steady growth since then.
Collection details
Strong opening weekend followed by steady weekdays
The film’s box office performance has been consistent, with earnings from all languages adding up.
The movie opened on June 20 with ₹10.7 crore, followed by ₹20.2 crore on Saturday and ₹27.25 crore on Sunday.
Even during weekdays, when collections usually dip, Sitaare Zameen Par managed to earn ₹8.5 crore each on Monday and Tuesday, and an additional ₹7.25 crore and ₹6.5 crore on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively, in its first week alone (Hindi).
Audience response
Day 12 box office report and Khan’s statement
On its 12th day, Sitaare Zameen Par witnessed an overall Hindi occupancy of 18.29%. Morning shows were comparatively low at 11.01%, but the interest picked up throughout the day with afternoon shows at 15.51%, evening shows at 20.79% and night shows at a healthy 25.84%.
Khan has stressed the need to support diverse stories in cinema, saying, “Your support gives creators the freedom to tell diverse stories.”
Film details
‘Sitaare Zameen Par’ focuses on special needs athletes
Sitaare Zameen Par is not just a sports film but a touching story of a basketball coach (Khan) training players with special needs.
Genelia D’Souza also stars in the movie.
The film introduces 10 new actors—Aroush Datta, Gopi Krishna Varma, Samvit Desai, Vedant Sharma, Ayush Bhansali, Ashish Pendse, Rishi Shahani, Rishabh Jain, Naman Mishra, and Simran Mangeshkar—who deliver heartwarming performances.
Edited by Valentin Bansac, Mike Fritsch, Alice Loumeau and Peter Szendy
Published by Spector Books
The Luxembourg Pavilion at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale is an invitation to close our eyes and actively listen. The installation hosted in the pavilion, Sonic Investigations, operates a radical shift away from the visual: it offers a cartography of various environments exclusively through sound. The volume, conceived as a companion to the sound installation in Venice, has a broad ambition: it argues for a counter-project to the hegemony of images.
Since the climate crisis can also be understood as a crisis of sensory perception and representation, it is all the more urgent to find new ways of approaching the ongoing environmental transformations. The act of listening allows for different forays into both anthropic and natural ecosystems. It directs our attention toward the vocality of other-than-human agencies; it empowers them with a voice of their own.
Field recording can thus be the prelude to another mapping of the world, attuning our ears to its various fault lines, to its tensions. And sounding becomes a powerful investigative tool, a way of auscultating the infrastructures of the present as well as the times to come. The concept of ecotone, a transitional space between two ecosystems, is a guiding thread for the authors of this volume as they listen to boundaries between territories, to urban patterns, to natural balances and imbalances, or to political fractures.
The book includes contributions by Peter Szendy, Shannon Mattern, Tim Ingold, Soline Nivet and Ariane Wilson, David George Haskell, Ludwig Berger, Philip Samartzis and Madelynne Cornish (Bogong Centre for Sound Culture), Nadine Schütz, Laure Brayer (AAU-CRESSON), Julia Grillmayr, Christina Gruber and Sophia Rut (Lobau Listening Comprehensions), Yuri Tuma (Institute for Postnatural Studies), Emma McCormick Goodhart, as well as a fiction piece by Xabi Molia and poems by Laura Vazquez and Cole Swensen. The graphic identity is designed by Pierre Vanni.
Public events of Sonic Investigations, Luxembourg Pavilion at the Venice Biennale The activations extend the reflection on embodied practices and sensorial approaches to space through sound, offering a unique exploration of the performer’s and the audience’s body within soundscapes. The events will create a dialogue between the space of the pavilion and the infrastructural apparatus of the Venetian lagoon, together with local Italian sound artists and researchers.
October 7–10, 2025 Ecotongues (Residency and Performance inside the pavilion): Gaia Ginevra Giorgi (author, sound artist and performer) Ecotongues explores mediumship as the ability to inhabit the threshold between the visible and the invisible, the audible and the inaudible, as a performative practice of interspecific intimacy between human and more-than-human entities.
October 25–26, 2025 Attunement Exercises: Nicola Di Croce (researcher and sound artist) The two public exercises address the idea of ‘attunement’ as the possibility of entering ‘into resonance with’ the non-human, through an investigation of the sound sources of the Venice lagoon taking particularly into account the infrastructure systems and their relation to wilder ecosystems.
19th International Venice Architecture Biennale, Luxembourg Pavilion, Arsenale, Sale d’Armi, 1st floor / May 10–November 23, 2025. Valentin Bansac, Mike Fritsch, Alice Loumeau with Ludwig Berger, Peter Szendy:Sonic Investigations
Commissioners appointed by the Luxembourg Ministry of Culture: Kultur | lx—Arts Council Luxembourg, LUCA—Luxembourg Center for Architecture / Curators: Valentin Bansac, Mike Fritsch, Alice Loumeau / Exhibitors: Valentin Bansac, Ludwig Berger, Anthea Caddy, Mike Fritsch, Alice Loumeau, Peter Szendy / Visual identity: Pierre Vanni.
Press contact: Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg Emilie Gouleme, emilie.gouleme [at] kulturlx.lu, T +352 621 680 028
Applications open for the 15th edition March 19–22, 2026
MIA Photo Fair BNP Paribas
Superstudio Più Via Tortona 27 Milan
20144
Italy
T +39 342 706 0124 info@miafair.it
MIA Photo Fair BNP Paribas, Italy’s leading international art fair dedicated to photography, has officially opened registration for its 15th edition. Scheduled from March 19–22, 2026, the fair will return to Superstudio Più in Milan’s central art and design district.
Organized by Fiere di Parma and under the artistic direction of Francesca Malgara for the third consecutive year, the fair continues to shape the cultural landscape of contemporary photography.
Renowned for bringing together international galleries, artists, collectors, curators, and photography enthusiasts, MIA Photo Fair BNP Paribas is a key cultural event on the international art calendar in Milan.
Applications are now open for galleries wishing to participate in the 2026 edition. Interested galleries are invited to submit their applications by contacting info@miafair.it.
The 2026 edition will feature several curated sections that examine the multifaceted nature of photography:
Main Section: Showcasing established galleries from Italy and abroad. Beyond Photography—Dialogue: Curated by Domenico de Chirico, exploring photography in dialogue other media as sculpture, painting, video, and installation. Reportage Beyond Reportage: Curated by Emanuela Mazzonis, this section delves into documentary, photojournalism, and street photography. Special Focus: Curated by Rischa Paterlini, offering a photographic deep dive into the contemporary art scene of a selected country or region, soon to be revealed.
The fair also hosts several prestigious awards:
BNL BNP Paribas Award: An acquisition prize for the bank’s prestigious art collection. Fiere di Parma Fund: Targeted acquisitions of outstanding works shown at the fair. Additional Awards: Focused on both artwork acquisition and gallery support.
In 2025, the fair welcomed over 13,000 visitors, featuring 114 exhibitors and 77 galleries. Now in its 15th year, MIA Photo Fair BNP Paribas continues to grow as both a marketplace and cultural hub, supporting the work of emerging and established voices.
For more information and updates, visit miafairbnpparibas.it.
Last month, the BBC said it was no longer airing a documentary about Israeli military attacks on hospitals in Gaza because it risked creating “a perception of partiality” over the broadcaster’s coverage of the conflict. Channel 4 is now showing it instead. Ramita Navai investigates the allegations of the targeting of doctors and healthcare workers in Gaza’s 36 main hospitals – which the film says have all now been attacked by Israel. Hollie Richardson
Can’t Sell, Must Sell
8pm, Channel 4 “Oh God, they’ve got the Live, Laugh, Love wallpaper – that needs to go.” In a slightly more bearable new property series, expert siblings Stuart and Scarlette Douglas help couples who are struggling to sell their properties. First up, a seriously cluttered cottage in Wales and a terrace with too much pink personality in Liverpool. HR
Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace
9pm, ITV1 Long Lost Family often reveals the devastating impact of last-century attitudes to things like out-of-wedlock pregnancy, but this week tells the story of Sarah, the show’s youngest-ever foundling, who was left in a Surrey car park in 2001. Also featured is Chris, who was dropped off at a childminder’s 62 years ago and never collected. Ellen E Jones
Britain’s Most Expensive Houses
9pm, Channel 4 Llwynhelig House in the Vale of Glamorgan is a Grade II-listed manor with a log cabin and shepherd’s hut in case the house itself isn’t big enough – but can agents Sorcha and Jemma flog it for £2.2m? More than seven times that price will secure Sunningdale Manor in Jersey for one lucky buyer. Down in Flushing in Cornwall, meanwhile, big local noise Ian spots the chance to trouser more commission on a house he has sold twice before. Jack Seale
Ashley Graham and Emma Grede know how to side hustle. Photograph: UKTV Alibi
Side Hustlers
9pm, U&W This small business competition from Reese Witherspoon’s production studio continues, and a woman who works a food stall with her ex is the first to pitch her future dreams to potential investor Emma Grede. Then, Ashley Graham is excited to meet the woman behind Bonks emergency thongs (“Yes! Yes! I want panties in a bag!”). HR
Mary Earps: Queen of Stops
10.45pm, BBC One There might be a tear of pride in your eye while watching one of the best goalkeepers in the world tell her story – from “being in pieces on the kitchen floor” after not making the England squad to a meeting with Sarina Wiegman that would lead to her helping the Lionesses become the 2022 European champions. It hits even harder given that she retired from international football in May. Jill Scott, Alessia Russo and Ella Toone chip in, too. HR
Film choice
Heads of State (Ilya Naishuller, 2025), Prime Video
Gleefully preposterous … Heads of State on Prime Video. Photograph: FlixPix/Alamy
Strongly in the running for the most gleefully preposterous film of the decade, Heads of State is a movie about the American president and the British prime minister. What’s preposterous is that they are respectively played by John Cena and Idris Elba. Even more preposterously, it’s an action buddy comedy by Ilya Naishuller, the director of Nobody. Did the world need a film where the leaders of the western world are stranded in the middle of nowhere and have to machine-gun their way out in a whirlwind of quips? Absolutely not. But the most preposterous thing of all is that it somehow works. Stuart Heritage
Live sport
Football: Uefa Women’s Euro 2025, Switzerland v Norway, 7pm, BBC One The opening match at St Jakob-Park in Basel, Switzerland.
Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi, Bill Ward, Ozzy Osbourne formed Earth, later renamed Black Sabbath, in 1968
With Black Sabbath’s final concert just days away, metal bands and musicians explain how the band influenced the course of their lives – and paved the way for a new generation of artists.
“Sabbath gave us the blueprint, Sabbath gave us the recipe. They gave us the cookbook, man,” says Slipknot’s Corey Taylor.
“The mystique was in the lyrics. It was in the sound. It was in the way that everything was just a little darker.”
The song that shares the band’s name is “one of the scariest songs I ever heard” says Taylor, which he plays when he “wants to go someplace mentally”.
“I don’t have to look for, you know, [The Omen’s] Damien Thorn. I don’t have to look for merciful fate.
“I go back to the beginning. I go back to Black Sabbath, the song and the rest is history.”
Getty Images
Corey Taylor says Black Sabbath paved the way for bands like Slipknot
The frontman is among musicians paying tribute to the band ahead of their final performance on Saturday.
The all-day Back to the Beginning event at Villa Park on Saturday will feature Metallica, Slayer, Halestorm, Lamb Of God, Anthrax and Mastodon among many others.
Halestorm’s frontwoman Lzzy Hale says she would not be the singer, songwriter or guitarist she is today without the influence of the band.
“For whatever reason Black Sabbath caught me early on and it was something that I didn’t even know how to describe, but I understood it,” she says.
Being part of the show “wasn’t even on my bucket list of dreams,” she adds, “because it was an indefatigable dream to even consider because it was impossible.”
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Lzzy Hale says playing the Villa Park gig was not even on her bucket list of dreams
Ozzy Osbourne, guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward sold more than 75 million records worldwide.
Black Sabbath, initially called Earth, emerged from a “vibrant music scene” in 1960s Birmingham according to their first manager Jim Simpson.
Setting up Big Bear Records in 1968, he had invited the foursome to play at Henry’s Blueshouse at The Crown pub on Hill Street, where they were an instant hit with punters.
‘A horrendous racket’
“There was much more attention paid to them than the average band,” he recalls.
The four started out playing blues, before turning their attention to writing their own material.
The band had initially made a “horrendous racket,” adds guitarist Iommi, “but it worked out in the end, it was great.”
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The four original members will play one last gig together at Villa Park
They were a “product of the time and a product of the city” says Jez Collins, founder of Birmingham Music Archive.
“I don’t think it would have happened from any area other than Aston with all of those foundries and factories and the smelts and the bomb sites,” he adds.
Slipknot’s Taylor agrees.
“One hundred percent Iowa is the reason why Slipknot was Slipknot and the Midlands are absolutely the reason Sabbath was Sabbath,” he says.
“You are where you come from.”
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The four friends grew up in the Aston area of Birmingham
The band’s distinctive sound, which helped propel them to worldwide success, was partially down to Iommi’s earlier job at a steel factory.
Planning to leave work in order to take up a place with another band, he had lost the tips of two fingers on a steel-cutting machine.
“After the accident I went to various doctors and they said ‘you’d better pack up really, you’re not going to be able to play,’” he says.
“But I wouldn’t accept that,” he adds, describing how he had fashioned new fingertips from a melted down Fairy Liquid bottle and parts of a leather jacket.
Start of the magic
Judas Priest lead singer Rob Halford, who grew up a few miles away in Walsall, picks up the legendary story.
“When Tony had his accident, and had to detune some of the strings, things started to get lower and heavier, and that’s when the magic really started,” he says.
“And certainly for me and for all of us in Priest, from day one, those bands and more were a tremendous influence to us all.”
Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple were also forefathers of the movement, but it was Sabbath that “cemented it,” adds Taylor.
He and other artists have been speaking to BBC Radio WM for a new documentary, Forging Metal, looking at the history of the genre.
Barney Greenway, lead singer of Napalm Death, also from Birmingham, says the “density and the depth of the music they were making was completely new”.
“There were bands doing darkly heavy music at the time, but arguably nothing like Black Sabbath.
“Heaviness and musical extremity before that was even thought of,” he says.
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Guitarist Tony Iommi (left) fashioned his own finger tips from a Fairy Liquid bottle after losing them while working in a steel factory as a teenager
Getty Images
Black Sabbath attracted huge audiences worldwide
The eyes of the world will be on Birmingham for the Villa Park gig which is a “profoundly important centre for metal,” says city academic Dr David Gange, author of the Why Metal Matters project.
But, he adds, “metal was global from its origins, with indigenous Americans such as [guitarist and songwriter] Link Wray, and others, particularly from Latin America, being crucial to it’s emergence”.
Crusty, dirty and glorious
The genre had spawned “literally hundreds of sub genres, probably thousands,” he explains, with some now being used to promote social and environmental activism, in far flung corners of the globe.
“There’s an absolutely wonderful band in the very, very far north of Finland, called Unearthly Rites, who are as heavy as can be,” he says.
“They are crusty, they are dirty, they are just glorious, their key thing is protesting open-pit mining, and their musical heritage runs directly back to Birmingham bands like Napalm Death and Bolt Thrower”.
Dr David Gange
The musical heritage of global bands can be traced back to Birmingham bands such as Napalm Death, says Dr David Gange
Many of the “most interesting” artists taking metal forward are currently women or non-binary people, the Birmingham University history lecturer added.
Birmingham’s Debbie Gough, who fronts metal band Heriot, says the scene is “the most diverse space” she has ever known it to be.
Heriot has just completed its second headline tour of the UK and are about to embark on a 32-date tour of North America supporting “super influential” Trivium.
“I feel very welcome and feel like it’s a very accepting space and a very informed space as well which has allowed for lots of different people in bands to experience music,” she says.
Dr David Gange
Debbie Gough says the metal scene is now an accepting and informed space
There had been a marked change since the Covid-19 pandemic, she claimed.
“Before that I could maybe count on one hand the amount of times there had been female crew, or other bands with females on the line-up, and now nobody even flinches, which is super cool.
“I’m just overjoyed about the blueprint of who gets to be in a metal band has just been completely destroyed and anybody can be in any band now – and that’s really amazing to see,” she added.
Ziggy Ella Bagley
All-female band Cherrydead will perform at the BBC Radio WM event on 2 July
Emily Drummond, vocalist for the all-female Birmingham band, Cherrydead says she is also “absolutely buzzing” about the future of metal.
“Not just in the West Midlands, all across the UK and it’s something that we are so glad to be a part of,” she adds.
Cherrydead are among acts playing a BBC Radio WM celebration gig Metal in the Midlands.
She says there had been a “real shift” for women within the scene.
Although not perfect, she added, “there is a transformation coming and I feel things have really moved in that sense”.
Mosh pit freedom
The metal scene faces “all kinds of crises”, Dr Gange says, with many music venues under threat.
“But metal thrives off crisis, metal is the music for how we process crisis and the bands are doing it in such exciting ways,” he adds.
“It’s a profoundly supportive community, the mosh pit itself is an allegory for all the best things in life – you give yourself total, total freedom, let yourself fall over, let anything happen with the complete knowledge that someone is going to reach out and pick you up if you go down.”
BBC Radio WM’s Forging Metal will be available on BBC Sounds from Friday 4 July.
Actors Cate Blanchett and Adrian Dunbar will receive the Freedom of the City of London for their work in the arts.
The 56-year-old Australian, who won Oscars for her roles in The Aviator and Blue Jasmine, has long been an advocate for action on climate change and a range of humanitarian issues.
Northern Irishman Dunbar, 66, is best known for his time as Supt Ted Hastings in the award-winning TV series Line of Duty and has written and directed plays.
Both have performed at the Barbican over the past year, and Mr Dunbar is an alumnus of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
One of the City of London’s ancient traditions, freedoms are believed to have been handed out since 1237.
They give thanks to individuals for their contribution to London or public life – or to celebrate a very significant achievement, the City of London Corporation (CLC) says.
Ms Blanchett’s and Mr Dunbar’s names were included on a list of more than 50 people nominated to receive the Freedom, which was approved at a Court of Common Council.
Alderman Russell, chair of the CLC’s Freedom applications committee, said Freedom is “offered as a way of paying tribute to their outstanding contribution to London or public life, or to celebrate a very significant achievement”.
Representatives for Blanchett and Dunbar have been approached for comment.
Gary Crowley has fond memories of his 1994 interview with a soon-to-be-famous Liam and Noel Gallagher
It’s June 1994 and a relatively unknown band from Manchester are about to play London’s Marquee Club. In a small guitar shop in London’s West End, two brothers sit down for their first national TV interview together. The presenter waiting for them is Gary Crowley.
“It just felt like a tornado had just blown in from Denmark Street,” he says of Noel and Liam Gallagher. “They just both exuded this energy.”
Oasis are about to embark on their long-awaited reunion tour, and the presenter admits he couldn’t have predicted the meteoric rise the band would enjoy – although there were signs of their potential for stardom.
PA Media
Noel and Liam announced last summer they would be reuniting for Oasis’s UK-wide tour
Crowley landed what turned out to be the first of many interviews with the Gallagher brothers when presenting Carlton Television’s The Beat, which he describes as a “grown-up music magazine TV programme”.
“In 1994, it was such an exciting year for music,” says Crowley.
“It felt like there were more intrinsically British bands who were beginning to come to the fore. Whether it was Saint Etienne, Pulp or Elastica, or of course five young gunslingers from Manchester called Oasis.”
Crowley first came across Oasis through their radio promoter, who sent The Beat team a copy of Columbia – a song that would be on their debut album Definitely Maybe – which he says he and his producer “fell in love with”.
“There seemed to be a kind of punky-ness to them, which I loved,” the BBC Radio London presenter says.
‘The Beat’ Fuji Television, 1994
Gary Crowley describes the Gallagher brothers as being very comfortable in front of the camera
“Liam was like a squirrel on a washing line. He was here, there, everywhere… sort of doing that Liam walk, that swagger that he has,” Crowley recalls. “He was very charming. When he focused on you, you couldn’t help but be sort of charmed by him.
“Noel, it felt to me, had written all the books about what you had to do to become a pop star. He was very funny and very irreverent as well – slagging off a lot of the other bands we’d had on the programme.”
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Oasis playing London’s Splash club in early 1994
What strikes Crowley most looking back at the interview – apart from what he now sees as a questionable taste in fashion in his younger self – is how comfortable the brothers were in front of the camera.
“They could not wait to see the red light go on,” he says. “They were not shy, wilting flowers.”
The Gallagher brothers had the production crew in fits of laughter – “behind the camera, and everybody’s got their hand over their mouth”, Crowley recalls.
The presenter quickly realised how compelling the brothers were as a double act, although he says “Liam did a lot of the talking” during the interview.
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Oasis released their first album, Definitely Maybe, in August 1994
At one point, Noel interrupts his brother to say: “Can I say something now? My name’s Noel. I write the songs.”
Liam later speaks of his ambition to “be a star” and “have a big house somewhere”, with Noel quipping: “Preferably not anywhere near my big house.”
Crowley says the dynamic between the pair in 1994 felt like the sort of thing you’d see between any two brothers working together. The rancour that would ultimately cause Oasis’s 16-year hiatus had yet to develop.
“They were taking the mickey out of each other,” he says. “You could see that affection.”
After the interview, Crowley says Noel took him aside.
“He said: ‘Look, you should come [to the gig] this evening.’ And I said: ‘Well, I’ve got to go and see this movie and review it.’”
The film was Shopping. “It was freaking awful. In fact, I think my review called it ‘shocking’,” Crowley laughs. “I stayed for about a third of the film, and then I hotfooted it over to the Marquee – and it was the best decision that I made that year.”
Looking back now, what stands out to Crowley is not just the charisma but the assuredness.
“Where did that self-confidence come from?” he says. “They looked to me like they’d been doing it for years. They seemed incredibly relaxed.”
While other bands often preferred to “let the music do the talking”, Crowley says Oasis embraced the attention.
“They absolutely grabbed the bull by the horns and ran out of that guitar shop with it.”
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Oasis’s line-up has undergone several changes over the years – in 1995 Alan White (left) was the first of them, replacing drummer Tony McCarroll
The interview would prove to be the first of many Crowley did with the Gallagher brothers.
Asked why he thought they kept asking him back as their success grew, he jokes: “Because I’m cheap.”
Crowley says watching the tape puts a “big dopey smile” on his face. “It’s a lovely snapshot of where they were at that time.
“I didn’t foresee it,” the presenter says of Oasis’s global success. “But I left that interview feeling better for having met them.”
Senior palace aide drops new update on King Charles’ health
A senior palace aide has dropped an update on King Charles health as he praised the monarch for still fulfilling royal duties while undergoing cancer treatment.
Even though the Buckingham Palace has kept details about the monarch’s health private, an official revealed that Charles is responding well to treatment.
At the annual Sovereign Grant briefing, James Chalmers, the monarch’s new Keeper of the Privy Purse, revealed that the King has managed to keep up with many constitutional duties, including regular meetings and state responsibilities.
“The King demonstrated remarkable resilience by undertaking a wide programme of public and state duties at home and overseas while continuing to receive treatment,” Chalmers said.
He further described the past financial year as “something of a return to normal business after the health challenges faced by members of the family in the previous fiscal year.”
“Indeed, by happenstance, the period to which this Sovereign Grant Report relates correlates almost exactly with His Majesty’s return to public-facing duties, in April of 2024,” he added.
Charles approach demonstrated “not only His Majesty’s personal commitment to duty but also the adaptability and resilience of the Royal Household in ensuring continuity of service, no matter the personal circumstances,” Chalmers further shared.
He noted how the public was very supportive of Charles and Kate Middleton, who was also diagnosed with cancer last year.
“The profound connection the royal family maintains with people across the country and indeed the world.”
“No metric can fully capture the scale of this connection,” he said, highlighting that the royal websites attracted a record 4.2 million new visitors, while the royal family’s videos reached nearly 400 million views and their social media content generated 1.3 billion impressions.
