Oasis are not a group noted for charitable works. They were one of the few acts who declined to play at Live 8 and, as Noel Gallagher explained to the audience on Monday night, when he asked his brother Liam if he would like to join him at the Albert Hall to perform on behalf of the Teenage Cancer Trust, the answer he got was “a sentence which included the words ‘f***’ and ‘charity’.”

Fortunately, Noel not only takes a more benevolent view, but had also persuaded Oasis colleague Gem Archer and percussionist Terry Kirkbride, to join him on an “unplugged-style” voyage around the more thoughtful regions of the Oasis repertoire.

With Archer alternating between electric guitar and keyboard, and Kirkbride stationed behind the suggestion of a drum kit, the 39-year-old Britpop icon sat centre stage, leaning over a Gibson acoustic guitar, and singing with an air of intense, almost pained concentration. He didn’t open his eyes until halfway through the second number, Talk Tonight, which, like all the others, was taken at a steady, mid-tempo stroll and graced with a tune that defied you not to sing along, if only in your head. By the time he followed it with Fade Away, much of the audience actually were singing along out loud, and as the show progressed, it was uncanny to observe how little Gallagher did to sell his songs, and yet how great was the corresponding effect. Armed with a remedial strumming technique, a handful of basic chords and a voice that only occasionally gets to take the lead when his brother is around, Gallagher commanded a degree of attention and affection that was out of all proportion to the apparent effort he put in to winning either.

With his craggy features magnified to huge proportions on the screen behind the stage, there was an unlikely sense of intimacy, despite the grand surroundings, as he navigated the soaring choruses of Cast No Shadow and Half the World Away and skated over the catchy falsetto vocal line of The Importance of Being Idle.

Paul Weller arrived in a slim, spiky swirl, raising the energy level just by walking on. With Gallagher in a supporting role, Weller knocked off a magnificent version of The Butterfly Collector followed by a good natured swing through the Beatles’ All You Need is Love. Gallagher was then joined by an eight-woman string section, and the furrowed brow returned for a string of romantic odes full of bittersweet masculine emotion including surprisingly moving versions of Wonderwall and Slide Away which he dedicated to “My lovely missus, Sara”.

The encores produced a plaintive reworking of the Smiths’ song There is a Light that Never Goes Out, a massively crowd-assisted Don’t Look Back in Anger and a rather dishevelled Strawberry Fields Forever, during which Gallagher burst out laughing – a fitting end to a show with do-good and feelgood factors both slotted firmly into place.

— Noel Gallagher headlines the Versus Cancer concert at MEN Arena, Manchester, March 30

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