Oasis 'flooded with big money offers to play major festivals next year' after success of sold out reunion tour
However it seems the Oasis reunion tour may lead to even bigger and better things with the band reportedly inundated with big money offers to play major festivals next year.
With the hype around the Brit pop band greater than ever The Sun have reported that their teams are receiving requests for Liam and Noel to play big shows all over the globe including Coachella and Benicassim.
An insider told the publication: 'If fans thought Oasis were busy, they should see the offers their teams are fielding behind the scenes.
'None of the bids are being accepted at the moment. They're just being stacked up to be discussed at a later date. The focus for Oasis is this tour, and so far it's been a phenomenal success.'
They added: 'Any decisions about future performances are a long way off — but some of them look incredibly tempting.'
With the hype around the Brit pop band greater than ever their teams are receiving requests for Liam and Noel to play big shows all over the globe including Coachella and Benicassim
It will be down to Noel and Liam whether they continue following the existing dates, but they are loving being back on stage performing to their loyal fans.
MailOnline have contacted Oasis' representatives for comment.
Oasis' 41 date reunion tour, which kicked off in Cardiff last week, will also see the band head to the rest of the UK, Ireland, Australia, the US and Mexico.
It comes after ticketless Oasis fans reportedly tried to 'storm Heaton Park' on Friday as the band kicked off the first of their five-night stint at the venue.
It has been claimed that the police were forced to intervene as people attempted to gain entry to the sold-out gig, with footage showing metal fence panels on the ground.
The brothers performed in front of a sold-out 80,000 strong crowd in their home city of Manchester.
But some of those who were unable to get tickets to the event appeared to take matters into their own hands and attempt to jump the fence.
According to Manchester Evening News, an eyewitness claimed that 'around 50 people' had tried to 'rush' one of the internal entrances to the gig area.
It was thought that 10 people got in, but the publication reported that the rest were 'apprehended and turned away.'
The police later issued a statement to MEN confirming that 'no one made it through to the concert area.'
The shows at Heaton Park - a 600-acre public park in Bury and Manchester - are the only UK shows held outside a stadium, with the others taking place at the Principality Stadium, Wembley and Murrayfield.
Elsewhere, fans were given a treat as many lucky music lovers were able to enjoy the bands opening night at Heaton Park 'for free.'
While some paid hundreds to watch the reunion gig, some were able to catch the performance on TV screens.
As the duo performed Don't Look Back In Anger, Cigarettes and Alcohol and Morning Glory could be heard across Prestwich.
Although many didn't have a ticket for the event, many were able to catch the gig on the big screens from a near by hill.
Taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, one fan said: 'Henman Hill? Welcome to Gallagher Hill #oasis.'
'Amazing night on Gallagher Hill in Heaton Park for Oasis. Best atmosphere & lovely people!'
Oasis guitarist Paul 'Bonehead' Arthurs, who joined the brothers on stage, shared a clip of the fans enjoying the concert from outside the venue.
Alongside the clip, he penned: 'No tickets needed,' alongside red heart emojis.
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The Guardian
18 minutes ago
- The Guardian
A new Irish writer is getting rave reviews – but nobody knows who they are. That gives me hope
What's in a pen name? Irish writer Liadan Ní Chuinn's debut short story collection, Every One Still Here, is receiving rave reviews and rapturous praise, but hardly anyone seems to know who they are. A cursory Google turns up no photos or biographical information. All we know is that the writer is Northern Irish and was born in 1998, the year of the Good Friday agreement. A statement from Irish publisher The Stinging Fly reads: 'The Stinging Fly has been working with Liadan on these stories for the past four years. From early on in the process, they expressed a desire to publish their work under a pseudonym and to protect their privacy throughout the publication process. No photographs of the author are available and Liadan will not be participating in any in-person interviews or public events.' Writing anonymously or under a pseudonym is a long-established custom in publishing. Jane Austen's novels were attributed to 'a Lady', George Eliot was Mary Ann Evans, and the Brontë sisters were Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Although women no longer need to disguise themselves as men, and 'the low trade of writing novels' is less stigmatised, the tradition of the pen name has continued throughout the 20th century into the present day: John Le Carré was really David Cornwell; Eric Blair became George Orwell; and no one has heard of Erika Leonard, but everyone has heard of EL James. When questions regarding the veracity of nature memoir The Salt Path caused outrage among the nation's book groups, the fact that the author had changed her and her husband's names was the least remarkable revelation. If anything, it can feel more unusual to meet an author whose books have the name they were born with on the cover. In the world of modern publishing, the spectrum encompasses everything from 'uses a pen name but has an author photo and gives interviews' to 'has an opposite gender or gender-neutral author persona'; 'uses different pseudonyms for different genres'; 'uses a different name for political reasons, eg to escape persecution in their home country, or personal or professional reasons'; and even 'secret anonymity' (is anonymous but tries to make it so that no one actually knows they are). Nepotist offspring will often use a less famous parent's surname to stave off accusations that they owe their success to their connections or, as in the case of AS Byatt, an author may use their married name to distance themselves from a novelist sibling (Margaret Drabble). Total anonymity, however, is a different business. The most famous modern example we have is of course Elena Ferrante (or it was, until she was possibly and, to my mind, very rudely unmasked by an Italian journalist.) Yet even Ferrante did some press through correspondence, including writing for the Guardian. To not give interviews at all, especially as a young debut author, is unusual indeed, and especially in a publishing landscape where 'personal brand' is key, and short stories remain such a hard sell. You could say that Liadan Ní Chuinn's collection being published at all is something of a miracle. Literary quality is not always prioritised above profile. I cannot tell you how many proofs I am sent by writers who are big on Instagram but can't string a grammatical sentence together. With publicity budgets not what they used to be and many authors needing to do much of the work themselves, a debut writer who won't give interviews or attend events represents a challenge to any acquiring publishing house and their publicity department. I admire Ní Chuinn. As an author myself – in the next six months I have two books coming out – I know that the stress of exposure and the risk of burnout can be very real. Ní Chuinn could be forgiven for looking at Sally Rooney, another writer in the same literary ecosystem who started young, and thinking that level of exposure looks unappealling. The way a young woman – because it's usually a young woman – who creates something great becomes a sort of shorthand for everything that is wrong/right about her chosen art form is hardly an incentive to put yourself out there. Rooney's writing shows a deep ambivalence about fame, and her decision to now largely only put herself forward in the media when it serves her impassioned political beliefs is to be admired. Yet newspapers are still terribly prone to what I call 'Rooney-itis'. Look, I'm doing it now. When you're an author, public exposure doesn't just affect you, but the people in your life whose stories often overlap with yours. When you are writing about sensitive topics that have a lasting, painful legacy on real people's lives – as Ní Chuinn does in their excavation of the murderous legacy of English colonialism in Ireland – it can be an act of care and protection to remove yourself from the spotlight. Most of all, it makes the interaction between author and reader purely about the quality of the work. For a publisher to agree to publish an anonymous author, as so many did Ferrante, and publishers in Ireland, the UK and the US have Ní Chuinn, that writer has to be extraordinary. And Ní Chuinn is. It should give any avid reader of fiction – and any author who cares about sentences but is rubbish at TikTok – hope. The work can still be the thing, at least sometimes. Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist
The Guardian
18 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘All those posh apartments. It's a playground for the rich': is Manchester turning into London?
Arriving in Manchester after moving up from London in 2013, I spotted something I took as a sign of how different my new life would be – how much cheaper, how much less pretentious. I told everyone back in London about the £1 Brew Stall at Piccadilly station. 'Can you imagine being able to get a cup of tea at Euston for only a pound?' I would ask. For a while, I was always seeking to prove I had not made a mistake leaving behind the bright lights of the capital city. I was the last staff reporter the Guardian had left in the whole of the north of England, and I felt isolated in a place no one in London really seemed to care about. It made me extremely chippy. This was a year before George Osborne anointed Manchester the centre of his fictional 'northern powerhouse'; four before Andy Burnham abandoned Westminster to become the region's mayor. It irritated me when Londoners would sometimes ask after the north as if it were a foreign land – certainly more foreign to them than Paris or New York. But, truthfully, life was very different just two hours up the west coast main line. It was poorer, obviously. And, yes, wetter, too. But that combined to create its greatest asset: a population who never let a lack of funds or sunshine stop them from having a good time. Once I ended up dancing outside Strangeways with a crowd who had gathered to watch a prisoner spending his third night up on the roof. There were kids in pyjamas, pulled from their beds; their mums in dressing gowns doing the Macarena. The protester was eventually coaxed down in a cherry picker with the promise of a takeaway pizza and a can of Coke, and gave the Manchester Evening News (MEN) the unimprovable quote: 'I've had a mad one.' Twelve years later, as I end my reign as North of England editor – staying in Manchester to present the Guardian's daily news podcast but leaving behind the biggest northern reporting team we have had in decades – how things have changed. The £1 Brew Stall is a distant memory and I'm sad to report the £6 pint has well and truly arrived, along with £199 monthly gym membership and studio flats where you pay £1,200 a month rent and still have to eat your tea in your bedroom. Last month the luxury Swiss watch brand Audemars Piguet chose Manchester as the location for its first UK boutique outside London, selling 'timepieces' for six figures, displayed in cases shaped like honeycomb – the bougiest appropriation of the Mancunian worker bee I've seen yet, against increasingly strong competition. Chanel put on a soggy catwalk show in the Northern Quarter 18 months ago, Puma recently relocated here and the English National Opera is coming soon, albeit unwillingly. Next year the Brit awards move up from London, and in October Soho House opens its first UK private members' club outside the capital, with a rooftop pool everyone jokes will never need topping up. Some call this the Londonification of Manchester – a highly charged allegation in a city where the capital has long been used as an insult, a byword for everything Manchester isn't – or wasn't. Two years ago the Resolution thinktank made the mistake of comparing the cities unfavourably, pointing out – not unreasonably – that it was not ideal that Greater Manchester was 35% less productive than London, a larger gap than between France's second city, Lyon, and Paris, which stood at just 20%. 'Why do we want to be like London?' ran the headline of the MEN's write-up of the report. 'Make Manchester Mancunian again!' goes the rallying cry. But is Manchester really becoming any less Mancunian? Or are Mancunians just changing, along with their ever expanding, shape-shifting city? It's a Thursday evening in late May and I'm in Deansgate Square, a collection of glistening skyscrapers that a few tiresome people persist in calling Manc-hattan. Is Manchester becoming more like London, I ask Iain Butterworth, a waspish florist working at the foot of one of the towers? 'It is a bit,' he says, surrounded by £40 bouquets. 'I personally like it because I don't want this chatty northern stuff. You know when people say, 'Oh, they're a bit cold in London – no one chats to you at the bus stop'? I'm like, 'I don't want people to chat to me at the bus stop.' So for me, it's quite good.' Butterworth, a scouser, came to Manchester in the 90s for the clubs. He likes how the city is changing: more shops, more restaurants, Korean supermarkets selling interesting noodles: 'It's less like London and more global.' Most of his customers are either Chinese or from Gulf states: rich foreign students whose parents don't mind paying £2,500 a month in rent – and £30,000-plus in annual tuition fees. Almost 10,000 Chinese students are studying at the University of Manchester this year – 21% of the entire student body – as well as more than 1,000 from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE. But many of the residents of the towers, he claims conspiratorially, are influencers or OnlyFans creators. 'OnlyFans is massive. Humungous. The percentage of OnlyFans people in here is quite high.' He points up at the ceiling. 'One of my friends is gay for pay and he made £2m last year. I know his girlfriend. He's not even gay!' I look up this chap and can tell he's filming in the towers, pressing his buff body against the ornamental safety grates that stop people falling out of the windows. 'The window cleaner told me he saw one girl filming a guy with like five other guys who were bent over on the couch,' Butterworth chuckles. 'This is what I love about the lads here, they weren't ashamed. One of them said to the window cleaner, 'Hey, mate! Want to come and join in?'' Good old Mancunian hospitality. Residents wanting a bit of body work can pop down to see plastic surgeon and boob job expert Reza Nassab, who recently counted Love Island contestant Samantha Kenny as a satisfied customer. He opened his Deansgate Square clinic three years ago, after toying with one in the capital and deciding London is 'becoming a little bit saturated'. Such is demand that he has just opened his own private hospital in Manchester, the Deansgate Clinic. He likes operating on Mancunians. 'Some London patients could be quite demanding, whereas up in the north, they tend to appreciate more what you do and the results they achieve,' he says. So many influencers live in Colliers Yard, another high-rise cluster, that one on-site gym has designated hours for selfie-taking and content creation. An argument recently broke out on the residents' WhatsApp group after an influencer did a photoshoot in the lift, blocking the doors with her shopping bags. One disgruntled tenant posted a screenshot and blamed her for the lifts always taking aeons to arrive. It all kicked off when the influencer's boyfriend piped up to defend her. 'That's my girlfriend you're talking about,' he said. 'She's everyone's girlfriend for a fiver a month,' came the reply. But despite the aggro, demand for these high-spec flats continues to outstrip supply, with Deloitte recently heralding the advent of tenant bidding wars, 'similar to what has been seen in the London rental market'. The classic signs of gentrification 10 years ago would have been a craft beer bar or a hipster haberdashery. Now it's a padel club, and naturally Deansgate Square has its own hangout for people who like playing tennis but need an easier version. There's a sauna and ice pool next door, too, if you want to play gentrification bingo. Club de Padel opened at the end of 2023 and is booked out by locals and a surprising number of Kuwaitis when I visit. English teacher Zabeen, from nearby Bury, is having a knockabout with her Saudi Arabian students, who all say their favourite thing about Manchester is the weather. 'They all rush to the window to take pictures every time it rains,' Zabeen says. Club co-owner Lucy Noone Blake insists she can only think of good things about the Londonification of Manchester. Bike lanes, for one: a belated import from the capital (via Copenhagen and Amsterdam), they were finally installed over Covid at glacial speed. 'I can't remember the last time I used the car. I take my kids to school by bike, then I cycle to work,' she says. Bike lanes were one of the things I missed when I moved up from London, along with reliable public transport, Turkish food, good sushi, lidos and a general feeling of being where the action is. Progress has since been made on most fronts: Burnham explicitly says he is trying to build a 'London-style' transport system, the Bee Network of trams, trains and buses. Eight years into his reign, buses are now cheaper than when he began (£2 v £1.75 for a single in London). And a lido was recently granted planning permission on a new development in Holt Town, a fly-tipping hotspot in east Manchester. After leaving Leeds Beckett University in 2012, Noone Blake weighed up whether to move to London. Instead she came home to Manchester and became one of the launch team of Hawksmoor, the stupendously successful Manchester outpost of the London steak chain, which encouraged a whole generation of London restaurants to try their luck in the north. Recent implants include Blacklock chophouse, Pizza Pilgrims and the unforgivably named Sexy Fish. Lina Stores arrived in April, with Circolo Popolare, a Sicilian joint which is one of the first tenants in Gary Neville's St Michael's development, billed as 'Manchester's new five star destination – a visionary workspace with vibrant living'. St Michael's has taken Neville almost a decade to get off the ground, with initial plans scrapped after locals complained that they looked like 'two massive turds pointing to the sky'. It involved him buying the only city centre synagogue, which he paid to have rebuilt elsewhere, and also a pub, the Sir Ralph Abercromby. He originally wanted to bulldoze that, too, but capitulated following howls of protest about losing a pub that bore witness to the Peterloo Massacre of 1819. Louis Twist-Green, a city centre property consultant, says Neville's project will push prices ever nearer London's. 'The apartments in there are scheduled to complete in 2027 and they are going to be the highest priced yet in Manchester. Their two-bedrooms are rumoured to be starting at £700,000, which would be the first development [in Manchester] that's in line with the price per square foot of London,' he says. Two-beds in Deansgate Square go for £450,000, often snapped up by Middle Eastern parents so that their children don't have to slum it in a Fresh Meat-style student houseshare. 'It's unbelievable how young they are to be living in such luxury apartments. They don't know they're born,' says Louis's mum, Julie Twist, who founded the family estate agency in 1994 when 'there were only 600 people living in the city centre'. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion According to estimates from Manchester city council, that number has now swelled to 95,000. Most of these new residents are on good money. 'If they eat breakfast, lunch or dinner out four or five times a week, that's four or five hundred thousand meal events happening in one demographic alone that didn't exist not too long ago,' says hospitality consultant Thom Hetherington. The London blow-ins have not priced out local indies, he insists, singling out the Spärrows, Winsome and Erst for praise. He has no time for people moaning about supposedly London affectations, such as the plague of small plate joints selling cloudy natural wine for ungodly sums: 'Saying 'It's a bit London' is an emotive red flag. What it actually is a hipster or engaged foodie demographic that you'll find in every western city in the world.' One pub you wouldn't find anywhere else is the beautiful Peveril of the Peak, a grade II listed building clad with emerald tiles that dates back to 1820. Among those enjoying an alfresco pint when I visit is Dr Kate Themen, a sociology lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University who, like so many people in Manchester, was briefly in the Fall. She disapproves of the way the city has developed, saying up and coming artists and musicians – the kind the city trades so heavily on in its marketing and self-mythologising – can't afford to live or practise centrally. 'There's this tendency to push out the creativity that gave the city its character. The ultimate thing is if you keep on pricing people out, you're going to be left with a bit of a shell of a city,' she says. 'I don't like to use the word gentrify, because it doesn't really encapsulate what's going on: that push towards becoming a much more consumptive and transitional space.' A few years ago, dozens of local bands lost their practice rooms when Brunswick Mill, an old cotton mill in the rapidly gentrifying New Islington district, was given planning permission to be turned into luxury flats. Off-plan apartments were recently advertised for £250,000, with landlords told to expect yields of 6.7%. Despite its London connotations, New Islington is the historic name for an area dating back to the early 19th century. It's better known to some locals as Miles Platting – one of the poorest wards in Manchester, where life expectancy is 11 years less than in Piccadilly, just 15 minutes' walk away in town. Gentrification is coming fast as the city centre creeps north-east. Just one old pub remains in Miles Platting – the Bradford Inn, where you can still get a pint for £3.85, less than half the price inside the new Co-op Live arena around the corner. I ask Sean, a 34-year-old coach builder having a bargain liquid lunch, if he thinks Manchester is becoming more like London. He can't answer that because he has never been to London – 'never had a reason to' – but nor does he really go into town either. 'It's not for us,' he says. 'All those posh apartments that we could never afford. It's a playground for the rich, isn't it?' I walk into the estate and get chatting to David Taylor, a 62-year-old care worker who is sitting on an office chair in his front garden, blowing bubbles for Mia, his 19-year-old tortoiseshell cat. The new high-rise towers are 'nice', he says, but not for normal people. 'They're for people like you,' he says, gesturing at me in a not entirely complimentary fashion. 'Professionals.' He offers me a can of pop as a peace offering, then makes fun of me for living in Stockport. He finds the new Mancunians baffling, 'always going running' and keeping 'tiny furry little dogs' in their overpriced flats. He cannot fathom the queues outside Pollen, a hipster bakery on Cotton Wharf just down the canal. 'I went once, but all that queueing up, just for a croissant? Nah.' I decide not to alert him to the area's newest coffee joint, Voodoo, which doubles up as a running shop and sells shorts for £150. Jain Edwards is a comedian who makes deadpan Instagram videos satirising the new Manchester, 'a nightmare of overpriced novelty cocktails, retro fonts and burgers named after serial killers'. Edwards moved to Manchester from Rhyl in north Wales to go to university in 2010 and sees herself as part of the creative working class. 'It's actually surreal how fast it has changed. I think it just feels like the main reason for moving here isn't due to a love of Manchester, it is due to it being (a bit) cheaper than London. There's a feeling that newbies don't want Manchester, they want London, so that naturally affects how they interact with the place. And because money talks, the city will always adapt to this fast cash above all else.' She dislikes the newcomers' 'hyperconsumption … a constant need for London-style experiences of food and drink at a scale that feels new in Manchester'. That and the way they rush around the city: 'I have never been so pushed about, bumped into without someone apologising … There was never a hostility to how people walked around Manchester. This comes down to the self-entitlement of interacting with the place, also forgetting that Manchester isn't that big? I walk around this city stopping and chatting to people I know. I recognise people, see the same people all the time. You don't 'never see people again', like in London. It isn't the same vibe; there isn't the same anonymity. This is why I have always thought everyone calls it 'town'. There was always something town-like to the place.' In the Northern Quarter, Botswanan law student Yao Tafa, 25, agrees. 'People are much nicer here,' she says. 'I come from a place where we greet each other, people say hi, you help each other. In London you don't get that.' It's easier to make friends here, she adds: 'There's more freedom to be who you are, whether that's part of the LGBT community or just to dress a certain way.' For David and Chris, two drama teachers enjoying a glass of rosé on Canal Street, being gay in Manchester used to mean 'having your wits about you', David says. If the Londonisation of Manchester means 'it's more cosmopolitan, with more openness and acceptance of difference', then they welcome it, Chris says. Local content creator and PR director Alicia Boukersi, who posts as Life In Manc, loves Mancester, but worries that while the city may feel 'cool and Instagrammable', it seems 'more like a costume than the city's actual identity. It's still got an edge, a humour and a character that London can't touch. But there's a risk of us losing that if we keep importing trends and pricing out people and places that made this city exciting in the first place.' Jack Barton, head of communications and impact at homelessness charity Mustard Tree, says Manchester's housing crisis is the city's 'great shame'. In 2023, one in 71 people were homeless in Manchester – only London has a worse rate. A staggering 19,000 people are on the waiting list for social housing. Outside the Guardian's Manchester office, a mini tent city recently cropped up around a statue of Abraham Lincoln, installed to recognise the solidarity of the city's cotton workers during the abolition of slavery – a reminder that Mancunians once made stuff for a living. 'Manchester used to be more equal,' Barton says. 'Now the gap is greater and more visible – much like our London counterparts. A change in leadership at the council and positive focus is encouraging, but the reality is the city has suffered by not building houses of any type, resulting in an inflated housing market.' Bev Craig became leader of Manchester city council in 2021 and is clearly irritated at the notion that it might be becoming in any way like London – though she dreams of a Mancunian tube: 'By 2050, for Manchester to be sustainably growing and connecting people into it, we will have to think about how you route trams underground.' Earlier this month, Burnham went further, saying he had instructed Transport for Greater Manchester to 'start planning' for an underground network. Craig insists she doesn't look to London for inspiration, but to Melbourne, Barcelona, Lyon, Vancouver or Austin, Texas: 'All of the international evidence shows that cities that aren't the capital thrive in the longer term when they differentiate themselves.' She knows that housing is an issue, but insists 'last year we built more council and social homes in the city of Manchester than at any point in well over a decade'. On Downley Drive in New Islington, near pubs that are too cool to serve pints (schooners only: two-thirds of the liquid for three-thirds of the price of a pint!), 52 flats are being built for social rent, alongside 75 'affordable' homes. Across the city, despite spiralling prices, according to Manchester city council the average house still costs around 60% less than in London (£277,750 in Manchester v £682,190 in London), with rent on the average two-bed 34% cheaper (£1,394 in Manchester v £2,118 in London). Disposable income for the average renter is more or less the same in both cities, with the median salary of a Manchester resident £32,704, two-thirds of the £49,455 you can expect in London. So is Manchester becoming like London? Yes – and no. But I know where I'd much rather live. It may now cost more than a pound for a cup of tea, and you can sometimes wait five minutes for a bus without anyone chatting your ear off. But you'll never have a bad night out. You might even have a 'mad one'.
Telegraph
18 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Bobby George: My amputated toe is preserved in vodka – I walk like a monkey!
We would probably all go a bit wild if we had the money to build our own mansion. Bobby George's lies just outside Colchester, and is the house that darts built. Or, more accurately, that George built. All 18 bedrooms of it. Before he made his living from sport, George laid concrete floors and dug the tunnels that became the Victoria line. Once he had the cash in the mid-1990s, George Hall took shape and it has all of the essential trappings for a house of its size. Three floors, fishing lakes and a fully-stocked bar behind which is his amputated toe, preserved in vodka. Sorry, what? 'My toe's been on American television, two doctors talking about it,' says George. It has been there for 20-odd years, but there has been a surge of interest since publication of George's new book – Still Here, his stock response to 'how are you?' as he closes in on 80. Any darts converts from the Luke Littler age would struggle to marry George's renown with his list of honours. He was runner-up in two world championships, both BDO, but was not invited to the breakaway PDC which now dominates. He was a showman in an otherwise dowdy era, but is best known now for his prolific reality TV work, appearing on everything from Celebrity Fit Club to four series of The Real Marigold Hotel with unlikely pal Miriam Margolyes. George's toe in vodka: Essex's oddest souvenir The toe had been causing him bother. During the quarter-finals of the 1994 BDO World Championship George won a set, jumped in celebration, and broke bones in his spine upon landing. He had to wear a steel corset to make it through his semi, miraculously won, before losing to John Part in the final. In the following years his toes began to cross over one another, making it hard to get his shoes on. The first to go now sits in a small glass jar, Essex's oddest souvenir. His doctor would not let him have it in formaldehyde but he was advised vodka would do the same job. Three more toes have come off since, but tragically George was not allowed to keep them. 'I walk like a monkey now, and when I get out of the shower I look like an orangutan. I wore my body out, I overdid it. But I don't regret it. Touch wood I haven't got any organ trouble, it's all bone structure.' Is it possible to live in an 18-bedroom mansion and wear so much jewellery your nickname is the King of Bling without being flash? Somehow George is pulling it off. The house is, by his own admission, over the top. But it feels like a home, his grandkids have begged him not to sell it. You do not detect the implied superiority common to many with a massive property. When I arrive he is down by his lakes, cleaning up after a charity fishing match for Macmillan Cancer Support the day before. His wife of nearly 40 years Marie lets me in, then locates George on the big screen in their kitchen which shows live footage from various CCTV cameras. Bobby arrives a few minutes later and is chivvied along by Marie as he has a cup of tea, rolls then smokes some Golden Virginia and puts his many bracelets and rings on from a bashed-up blue velvet box. 'I'm Robert now, I'll be Bobby George in a minute.' He is a equally irritated and invigorated by the constant to-do list. Cleaning pumps, getting weeds out, cutting trees, trimming bushes. 'It's all got to be done. The maintenance is a lot. Nature doesn't stop. You can do a nice job, leave it a month and it looks like you haven't done anything. I'm not exaggerating, I think I've got 18 hoovers. They're all lined up, like soldiers on parade. 'I've got a cherry picker, I don't go up my ladder, it's dangerous.' I spot a stairlift stationed at the bottom of the grand wooden staircase. 'I don't have to use it, but it takes the pressure off.' He has not made it easy for himself in some ways. There is a wood burner in the 60ft-long living room we sit in, alongside with the bar and full-sized snooker table. 'It's messy, it generates dust but it's worth it. You can sit round a fire and enjoy it, you can't sit around a radiator. I'd rather be f------ dusty than cold.' 'I felt like the Pope' There is a dartboard here too, does he ever play for pleasure? 'I done loads of that, nearly 50 years. Walking up and down, bang bang bang, nah I don't do that now.' He comes from a darting tradition as much about entertainment as victory. His career was built on exhibitions, nights of fun and trick shots with an MC around the country. Better, he thought, than competing for the era's often measly pots. 'There's two roads in darts, if you go down the tournament road there's only one winner. You'd go to Denmark for a tournament, pay for a flight, pay for a hotel for three nights and if you win you'd get £300 and a bunch of flowers. Who wants a bunch of flowers? I'd rather have £310. All that work to get a title, but you can't go in a shop and pay for something with a trophy, you've got to have the bees and honey.' 'I don't think Littler has much personality' These days he wonders if players feel the same duty to entertain. 'The fun has gone out of it a bit, 180 bang, boom boom boom. I think it's boring.' He also fears the presentational flair he brought to darts has spiralled. 'The crowds, it's horrendous the noise. But without them you're not going to have the prize money. The players have learnt to play under those conditions. 'It's probably my fault, I invented the music for walk-ons, dressing up with glitter and all that. It changed the game. I didn't think it would, I wouldn't have believed it. But without it now it would be boring. A lot of players didn't like it, they said it was a circus. But it is, it's a show. You don't want it to be like the military. So I wore sequins, and I got that from the ice skaters, I made a cloak. They gave me the candles. I felt like the Pope.' There is no posturing about the standard of darts in his time compared to now. 'The players of today would slaughter me. They're a good crew of young men, not big-headed, not show-offs. Michael van Gerwen calls me 'grandad' and 'silly old b------'. [Luke] Humphries is a lovely bloke.' What does he make of Luke Littler MBE? 'Good luck to him, it doesn't make you a better person though does it? You've got a handle behind your name, I want the handle in front of mine. Did you get that?' 'Sir?,' I ask. George pauses to shake my hand for understanding his joke, bracelets clinking rings in a golden jingle. 'I don't know the boy but I don't think he has got much personality yet. But I can't be nasty about him. It's a lot of pressure for a young man.' 'Farage ain't no mug' Nigel Farage invited George onto his Talking Pints series, seemingly forgiven after he backed Remain in 2016. He is a convert now. 'They think he's a drink, a laugh but he ain't no mug. He's sharp as anything. I'll vote for him. I think he'll get in, he might do alright, he can't be any worse than what we're doing now.' When Telegraph Sport last spoke to George three years ago he said he hated kids, but it may have been an exaggeration. There is obvious pride in how his sons with Marie, Richard and Robert, are forging their own path and delight that the grandkids have reached bantering age. Richard's son Edward wanted his chain fixed on his bicycle 'I said I'll do it in a minute. 'When are you going to do it?' I said look, I'm just having a cup of tea, I'll do it when I'm finished. 'When?', I said why don't you go and play with the buses on the A12? He's 10 now, he said 'grandad, there's no buses on the A12,' he done me up like a kipper. 'They're monkeys with no hair, anything that's breakable they're breaking, mate. Don't worry about that, they find a way. If you've got a hole in a chair they put a finger in and make it bigger. But the worst thing you can do is give them everything because they grow up thinking they're going to get it all the time. They've got to work.' 'Be lucky' He is philosophical about his advancing years. 'I'm getting near to the gates aren't I? I know I'm a nice bloke, coz I say to everyone else 'go on you go first,' and push them in front of me. I feel like sometimes I'm f------ worn out here. Then I look out there and it's f------ lovely. All the trees, all the wildlife, I've got goldfinches, linnets, jays, jackdaws, deer that run through the forest.' It is a vast difference from his upbringing by a single parent, his father, who was also blind. His mother died in George's infancy, but his is no hard-luck story. 'When I was young and we were really, really cold my grandad used to make us sit around a candle. When it got really really cold he used to light it.' It has been nearly 90 minutes but feels like it could go on in this vein for another 180. I have a (smaller) home to go to, so make my excuses. George shows me out, stressing that whatever I write must contain humour. I tell him it would be difficult for it not to. He waves me off towards the remote-control gates, swinging open as I approach with his farewell ringing out across the driveway: 'Be lucky.'
