As I wrestle with a pint machine behind a bar in Heaton Park, Manchester, spaffing pilsner all over myself, I come to one of the most painful epiphanies of my life so far: I am Noel, not Liam. I am the thinker, not the drinker. The tonic, not the gin. I will probably never get kicked out of a pub for trying to ride someone’s pet dog. There are people working here, my colleagues for one day only, who make this look easy. They peacock as if they own the place, seemingly able to carry seven pints at once, dispensing bon mots, getting drinks bought for them, fielding requests for their numbers. But I am not like them: I am Noel to their Liam, and once you become Noel you cannot become Liam. There is no going back. If Liam, as a heartbreakingly young Pete Doherty once told MTV, is the “town-crier” of the duo, then I’m the laughing stock of my medieval village, a man dogged by rumors of mange, pelted with rotten turnips daily. I wrestle with the machines and now I wrestle with this—and I’m only one hour into my shift.

It’s a sweltering Wednesday afternoon and I’m at the third Manchester gig of the impossibly huge Oasis reunion tour, a series of shows that in another summer of British turmoil seems to be single-handedly powering the UK economy. A traveling carnival of bucket-hat vendors, pop-up bars, and endless activations have taken over the city center these last few weeks, fueled by the incessant caress of contactless cards going beep, beep, beep. Peering out from behind the bar, I can see thousands of men who seem to have walked through the new adidas x Oasis stores covered in super glue and not changed outfit since. The merch isn’t my bag, granted, but I do very much like Oasis. They are the sound of having an unfinishable mound of cocaine in front of you. Which is quite exciting when you don’t do cocaine anymore.

But it’s a momentous occasion for another reason; it’s my first ever proper day of work. I’ve been a ‘professional’ writer ever since I was a preteen, when I realized I could earn pocket money pumping out card-magic eBooks (please, don’t ask). I started freelancing aged 16 and haven’t looked back since, which means that really, I have never, ever had a “proper job,” as my friends regularly remind me. They also like to laugh, hysterically, at the idea of me working in hospitality; I have the practical ability of Kendall Jenner trying to juggle cucumbers. 

It’s why, a month ago, after not managing to get a real ticket, I decided to apply for a bar job. Could I kill two birds with one stone and catch Oasis while also earning my first pay packet, proving that I’m not a total charlatan when it comes to grafting?

The first obstacle was the job application. I decided to double-down on the fact that, yes, I have no true work experience, but I used the word “gregarious” a lot in the excruciating video all applicants were asked to film and promised to give Oasis fans stories to last a lifetime. There followed weeks of silence. Then, somehow, days before the second week of gigs, I was offered a role. 

My first ever workday began at 1PM, sprinting and sweating, minutes away from missing the start of my shift. I made it to the accreditation gates just in time, where I started trying to suss out the other staffers. Though most were students they were also infinitely more experienced than me. Not many people seemed too bothered by the fact it was Oasis; they were far more excited by the prospect of getting out of their overdrafts. “Doing owt else this summer?” was the question ringing around, with everyone reeling off the other festivals they’ll be working.

“What the fuck is he doing,” I heard someone behind me whisper.

I didn’t have to spend too long standing around feeling like a complete fraud, as we were soon herded to a bar. Spanning more than 300 feet, we completed a quick-fire training session, conducted by some kind of pint-pouring coach who, I imagine, has been making the same sketchy gags connecting the film Taken with the ‘Ask for Angela’ scheme for the last decade. Aaron*, a recent graduate, told me later that he recognized several of the training managers, who all seemed to exist in a strange time warp, like veteran teachers at a primary school. But apparently it was the supervisors, vigilantly manning the panopticon keeping watch over myself and my colleagues, that I needed to look out for. “They’re always on some mad ego trip,” Aaron warned.

A few minutes later, I punched in and found myself floating around the tent, trying to make myself useful before hordes of punters came streaming through. When life makes you a lemon, start pouring vodka lemonades, I decided. But I immediately embarrassed myself by not being able to work the ‘bar optics’ (that’s what pros call the spirit taps). “What the fuck is he doing,” I heard someone behind me whisper. I snapped out of my daze; I was trying to draw liquid from a tap with no bottle attached to it. I was essentially dispensing air.

Rattled, I scurried across to the pint machines—huge, Wallace-and-Gromit style steampunk contraptions that piss out ten drinks at once at the flick of a few buttons. But I pressed the button thrice, not twice, resulting in an overflow of Brooklyn Pilsner lashing down into the bucket below. “Surely nothing can taste good coming out of those tubes. It looks like an udder,” said Aaron. Noah*, a second-year student who suddenly transpired on our part of the bar, injected a bit of much-needed energy. “Today’s going to be a core memory,” he said.

Perhaps I’d be better off using my “gregarious” skills at the terminals, I thought. So I grabbed a SumUp machine and nipped to the front at 4PM, as waves of punters flooded the field. I tried to ID a girl, who sighed and handed over her provisional driving licence. I couldn’t believe it—my suspicions were right—it said 2005. I’d caught her! It was then that I realized my maths were off, and that somehow she was 20 years old.

The next few hours, I spent eavesdropping, learning a lot about the fantasies and anxieties of those in attendance at Heaton Park and the world more generally. One woman worried that her autistic son might feed their hedgehog too much chocolate. Another lady reminisced about doing the exact same shift at Oasis’ Maine Road shows in 1996. A snaggletoothed man pointed to Jade*, the friendly girl I was working next to, and asked: “Are you shagging her? She’s well fit!” A Glaswegian bloke who said he would never dream of drinking the “pish” coming from our machines asked us to find a proper tap to pull him a pint. A man with a face like the surface of Mars demanded a bottle of blue wine. What do you mean? The purple wine, he clarified. I eventually deciphered that he meant the red.

There were many wind-up merchants who actively enjoyed terrorizing us. One tried to order a vodka and Rockstar just by throwing up a “rock on” sign and was incensed when we had no idea what he was doing. Another tried to get all his drinks for free, promising that with a tap of his phone, he could disable every CCTV camera in a mile radius. All in all, I only dropped one serious clanger, when a woman made a return trip to the bar with her daughters. She had previously asked me if we were selling cigarettes. “Any luck with the fags?” I asked, cheerily. She went white and insisted I’d confused her for someone else. I had accidentally grassed her up in front of her kids. Elsewhere, I disgraced myself with a few bad gags. “Feeling supersonic?” I asked a woman ordering a G&T. Crickets, tumbleweeds, unbearable shame.

I also learned some tricks of the trade. Blue roll fixes everything, cider is weirdly popular, and it’s always best to nod your head and agree when a bloke with the temperament of a wardrobe falling down three flights of stairs gets aggy. Snatching a break, I started to bitch about the pitfalls of hospitality as if I were a pint-pulling aficionado with my new friends. “They’re just trying to cut costs,” I ventured. My new comrades concurred. “People are so entitled,” sighed Jade. A couple of older staff members asked for a lighter then made for the exit, looking a tad suspicious.

Back in the mixer, things were starting to ramp up after Richard Ashcroft’s support slot had come to a close. As soon as I got to the front, I saw the older couple queuing at the bar. They’d switched sides just before Oasis were due to start, completing an excellent swindle. The man winked at me conspiratorially—but I wasn’t about to desert my army. Especially as it was starting to kick off. “It’s the great cider shortage of 2025,” one panicked lad quipped, eyes ablaze at the pint machine operators.

I bounded around in a hyper-focused state. I had become one with the equipment, the staff, and the job at hand. I was in deep communion with the machine. I was almost half-ready to hit a “Yes, chef!” or call service. One lady in the queue told me she’s a pub landlord and couldn’t imagine doing such a busy service. “It’s my first ever shift,” I whispered to her. “You’re doing so well, love,” she replied. Is this warm, fuzzy sensation what validation feels like? 

Then, at 8.15PM, something miraculous happened; a few people were asked to clock-off as the queues were winding down. I offered myself up without any reservations, saying bye to Aaron and Jade, who practically carried me through my shift. Having missed the start of Oasis’ opener “Hello”, I ran with Noah toward the wailing riff of “Acquiesce”. A mob of fans, swaying and swaggering as if they were at the football, ebbed and flowed against each other.

There is, of course, a part of this whole operation that is a cynical cash grab. At today’s wages, it would take me 3.9 million hours of working behind the bar to earn the estimated £50m each the Gallaghers are minting from this tour (you’d have to work every waking second of your life, five times over). But it was also electric. Lyrics that mean so little, mean so, so much to a huge number of people. “You’d have to go back to the Stones or the Beatles to have so many big tunes,” said Noah, and he was right.

Looking around during “Champagne Supernova”, I recognized several people I’d served through the day, buzzing on lukewarm lager and whatever else. I turned around and caught the eye of some other bar staff. I thought I spotted a flicker of recognition, maybe even respect. We were wielders of the blue roll, masters of the SumUp, magicians of the ice scoop.

But their eyes pierced through me and I realized they were actually all smiling at a man in a Stone Island jacket, rattling a miniature shaker, sliding off his mate’s sunburnt shoulders into a pool of stagnant cider. I guess when you’ve never done a proper day’s work in your life you don’t get much practice at recognizing respect. Really, I did not matter. And that’s OK. I was just a cog in the machine and then just a face in the crowd, dissolving into the ecstatic nothingness of communal euphoria.

*Names have been changed so we don’t grass anyone up

Follow Kyle MacNeill on Instagram @kyle.macneill