Oxford News
UK rock icon opens up on ‘really tough’ times and Oasis rivalry
More than 30 years since the infamous Battle of Britpop, the Blur bassist also conceded that Oasis have “gained my respects” with their “great songs” and the “sweet groove” of Wonderwall.
In August 1995, the rivalry between the northern and southern bands erupted publicly as Blur’s Country House went head to head with Roll With It by Oasis.
The ensuing chart competition hit the headlines until Country House outsold Roll With It by 274,000 to 216,000 copies to reach number one.
Now, 57-year-old Mr James has admitted his admiration for the Gallagher brothers as he tours his new show Alex James’ Britpop Classical with a setlist of hits from the 1990s – including Oasis songs – brought to life with a full band backed by musicians from the London Concert Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra.
The bassist, who has become famous for his award-winning artisan cheese made on his 200-acre farm in Kingham, near Chipping Norton, said: “Well, do you know what? They’re great songs, we’ll have them.”
He added: “It’s like 30 years ago, but I think in the intervening years they’ve certainly gained my respect.
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“And not least for the basslines. I mean, obviously, great songwriter, amazing singer, but it’s wonderful to get the opportunity to give all these songs some patient study because they are all, at the end of the day, just great songs.
“You would get goosebumps if you just played, sung along with an acoustic guitar. Adding in the orchestra and the special guests and the stars and the production and everything knocks it out of the park.
“It was wonderful to just actually spend some time with all these songs, learning them and Wonderwall was actually about the trickiest.
“It’s such a good, sweet groove, it’s really gentle, lilting. I bumped into Andy Bell, the Oasis bass player who I’ve known for 100 and I was like, ‘Jesus, man, that’s f***ing tricky’. He’s like, ‘Yeah, I know’, so nothing but respects.”
Mr James, a father-of-five, said that he loved revisiting the songs of the Britpop era, adding: “I think the food of your childhood and the music of your youth is just absolutely baked on to your hard drive, you can never stop liking them.
“Even music I didn’t like very much when it came out when I was a teenager, I hear that now, I’m like, ‘Wow, that’s great’.
“I think what’s interesting about these songs is that for all the people kind of my age, who grew up with them, they’re baked in, they still give us goosebumps.
“But what’s interesting – and I think why this works – is because all these songs have found a whole new audience.
“I was flabbergasted when Blur got back together like how many of my kids’ mates, who never speak to me when they come here, they all bought tickets to the show, it was the same with Oasis.”
Mr James said he believed that young people had rediscovered music from the previous generation because not enough new bands had been emerging recently.
He said: “These songs have found a new audience, I think it’s partly for two reasons. One is everybody’s got access to everything, you know, we’ve all got massive, incredible jukeboxes inside our computers, so that stuff is just waiting there to be discovered.
“And the sad thing is, there’s just not many new bands coming through. I was speaking to somebody from a big management company last week, she was saying she hasn’t broken a new band in four years.
“And I think it is really, really tough. You know, a big artist is still a really, really big one, you know, Adele’s bigger than the Beatles and the Rolling Stones put together.
“Big still works, but kind of medium, and certainly not small, no chance. You’re either massive or you’re nothing.”
He explained that a large number of small music venues had closed down in recent years leaving festivals – such as Big Feastival which he runs on his farm in August each year – the main place to find new music.
He said: “They were all those places that they were the best fun places to play too, they’ve all gone, it’s a real tragedy.
“However, we do have a really vibrant festival scene. If you want to go and see a band, a festival’s best place to do it.”
Mr James said he was inspired to create the Britpop Festival show when he booked Ministry of Sound Classical to fill the gap after a headliner pulled out of his festival.
He said: “It was a brilliant show for rocking a big crowd and I just went running backstage afterwards, saying, ‘Look, we’ve got to do a Britpop version of this’.
“It just sort of kind of made sense to me, let’s just give people what they want – 90 minutes of hits with a bunch of great rock musicians, a bunch of great, incredible classical musicians, great singers, and some star power.”
He added: “I think there’s a fundamental kind of human need to all come together and have shared experiences, and music is a really good way.
“If you can bring people together in the sunshine and hit them with 90 minutes of hits, it can make life-long memories.”
Asked which songs were his favourite for the show, he said: “There’s a lot of winners, I mean they are all really great songs and they’ve all got great grooves.
“I’ll tell you what is really incredible is how the Pulp songs go down. It turns out everybody knows every single word. Yeah, I mean, Common People is just a gift to a festival crowd because it just builds and builds and builds and builds.”
When asked if he could see himself performing into his 80s like Sir Paul McCartney, he said that music was an important part of his identity and said: “You know, why wouldn’t I want to? My dad died in 2020, he was nearly 90 but he had dementia.
“He was a piano player but even when he didn’t know what my name was, he still played the piano, he could still play Blue Moon badly.
“And because music uses more of your brain than any other activity because there’s emotion, there’s motor control, you’re basically doing formulae when you’re playing musical phrases, it’d kind of a bit mathsy, so it’s both parts of your brain.
“And that’s the way I remember everything about my life is by what Blur record was out or what Blur tour, or who’d left the band at that point.”
On the prospect of another Blur album, he said: “Well, I’m going to see Damon (Albarn) at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium (for a Gorillaz concert) in a couple of weeks… but I’m always the last to know that.
“The shows we did in 2023, the best shows we’ve ever done without a doubt.
“That’s the first time we’ve ever got to the end of a tour without at least one of us going ‘F*** off never again’.
“We’re so lucky to have all those years of playing together, you know, when we do get back together, it just snaps back together straight.
“It was a gift, being able to play with the same people every day, year-in year-out, we were able to learn musicianship as a craft, you know. That is actually the only way to get good at anything is just to spend all day doing it for years.”
Alex James Britpop Classical will be performing as part of the Southampton Summer Sessions on Saturday June 13 before touring the UK and Australia.
On Wednesday, September 2, it was the Concours judging and private viewings to dominate the agenda for the day.
Twelve Concours classes were held across almost a century of motoring, including The Golden Age of Motoring, 100 Years of Carrrozzeria Touring, La Dolce Vita, 60 Years of the Lamborghini Miura and Passione Ferrari.
Two new classes also made their debut for 2026, Rare Breeds of the Digital Age and Hypercar Heaven, which recognise the growing importance of contemporary performance cars within the international collector market.
Judging will take place across Wednesday and Thursday, with the show field bringing together a 70-strong collection of classics, supercars and hypercars from around the world.
Some of the cars include Aa Maserati 8C 3000, Alfa Romeo Sprint Berlinetta, a one-off Maserati 3500GT Spyder Prototipo by Vignale, a very early Porsche 356 Split Window Coupé, Aston Martin DB3S, Lamborghini Miura P400S, Bizzarrini 5300GT, Ferrari 250 GT Series 1 Cabriolet, Bugatti EB110 Prototype, Aston Martin Valiant Prototype and the extraordinary Bugatti Bolide, one of just 40 produced worldwide.
Helen Pike has decided to step down as Master of Magdalen College School at the end of the 2026/27 academic year, the school in east Oxford announced in March.
MCS is one of the top performing schools in the country, ranking in the top 20 independent secondary schools in The Sunday Times Parent Power Schools Guide 2026.
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The new academic year will start next week, with Ms Pike preparing for one more year in charge before she hands over to her successor, who will take over in September 2027.
The first female Master at MCS, Ms Pike guided the board of governors to one of the most significant decisions in the school’s history, to become fully co-educational from 2027.
While there has been a co-educational sixth form at the school for 15 years, the school last month announced it will become fully co-educational over the coming decade.
Ms Pike said earlier: “I love MCS, and it is a perennial privilege to lead this remarkable school.
“Being Master of MCS is a brilliant job, and I am declaring my intention early in order to give MCS the very best opportunity to find the right Master for September 2027. I shall continue to do all in my power to further the fortunes of this wonderful school until then.
“I look forward to a new phase in my own professional life, one that builds on all that I have enjoyed and achieved in my career during the past 30 years.
“Having encouraged many cohorts of pupils to take sensible risks and to do something creative and different when the time feels right, I am doing just that.”
During Ms Pike’s tenure, MCS has been recognised as a Top 20 Independent School and South East School of the Year by the Sunday Times and won Independent School of the Year for Social Mobility.
Thanking her in his letter to the school community, chair of governors, Bob Price, said earlier this year: “Helen is an outstanding leader and will go with our sincere gratitude and warm thanks for her exceptional headship.
“She will leave the school in excellent shape for her successor.”
Recruitment for a replacement for Ms Pike is now under way.
Last month, Ms Pike congratulated pupils on their “outstanding success” in this year’s A-Level exams, after more than a quarter of pupils (43) achieved three A*s or more and 25 secured all A*s.
In total, 39 pupils from the 2026 cohort are heading to Oxbridge, while 22 have secured places to study medicine.
As part of the school’s expansion plans, MCS is preparing to build a new Science, Library and Partnerships building.
A spokeswoman said the new building will offer an exciting opportunity to reimagine the senior school site as staff look ahead to full co-education.
She added earlier: “With a vision to create a sector-leading science building in the centre of Oxford, the development will enable us to support an ambitious and forward-looking science curriculum, expanding to the emerging and rapidly advancing areas of robotics, AI and Big Data.”
Holding banners which read ‘For f**k’s sake, just stop oil’, the demonstrators took to the road in Parliament Square at noon today (Wednesday, September 2).
This was as Andy Burnham faced his first Prime Minister’s Questions, and many of the protestors glued themselves to the road.
The group demanded that the UK government stop approving all further oil and gas developments, and sign a Fossil Fuel Treaty to stop oil and gas extraction.
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Just Stop Oil say that the police are expected to arrest all those blocking the road, and that one lane has been left free of glued-on action takers to permit access for emergency vehicles.
Andy Burnham is due to make a decision on whether to allow more drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea.
Reverend James Crote, a Baptist Minister and grandfather from Chesterton near Bicester, said: “Today is my grandson’s first birthday. I have to take action for the sake of his future.
The 69-year-old added: “The government has been dilly-dallying about whether to say yes or no to the Rosebank oil field but, if we want a future for our children, there is no choice – it has to say ‘no’.
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“I am here as a Christian Minister because the Church has to speak out and demand that the government stops approving further oil and gas developments now. It’s time for us all to say ‘For God’s sake, Just Stop Oil’.”
Data from the Met Office indicates that 2026 was the hottest summer in UK recorded history, beating 2025, which was the previous hottest summer on record.
2026 was also one of the driest summers on record, delivering record-low food harvests.
Climbing temperatures have triggered wildfires across the country, and national fire chiefs said the wildfire risk facing the UK is “like nothing we have seen before”.
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Taking action, grandmother Victoria Ann Lynch-Staunton from Leamington Spa, said: “What is happening is beyond a tragedy.”
The 71-year-old added: “I beg everyone to join Just Stop Oil or governments will continue to prioritise endless growth and corporate profit over billions of lives – yours and your children.
“Wake up and smell the coffin. It is the responsibility of all of us to act now!”
A Just Stop Oil spokesperson said today: “We are all Just Stop Oil.
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“Every single person who fears deadly wildfires, devastating droughts, and spiralling food shortages is Just Stop Oil.
“The first duty of government is to keep the public safe – but by greenlighting oil and gas drilling, they endanger our survival while corporates and billionaires laugh their way to the bank.
“Every one of us feels alone and powerless in the face of this insanity, but we know there is massive political and public support for our demand.
“So we’re inviting everyone to join us at an online call on 3rd October 2026 – because it’s when we work together that we are powerful and win.”
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