The Carling Weekend Leeds Festival,Temple Newsam,Leeds

WOULD they, wouldn't they? Would both brothers turn up, fight, split up?

Shortly after 9pm came the answer, in typically blunt Gallagher speak. "Sorry to say this, ladies and gentlemen, this is not the funeral," Liam announced, with an alliterative swearword ahead of 'funeral' for added emphasis.

Paid a Premiership footballer's ransom to headline the Reading and Leeds Festivals, Oasis ended their summer of discontent with a reaffirmation of their intention to carry on despite falling sales and yet another article, this time in The Times' Metro, in which Noel continued his war of words with his younger brother. With Liam already in the process of being filed for divorce by Patsy, would Noel follow suit?

Last night's 90-minute set gave little evidence of a creative renaissance for the brothers: it was more of an impasse.

While any mudslinging was left to the crowd in the boggy fields between bands, the brothers mainly kept their distance bar one moment of sparring where Noel made a joke about Liam's wealth, only for the singer to amble across and throw out a riposte about having no money thanks to his divorce case.

You wished for more moments like that in a show where the pre-song announcements held the most interest, amid audience indifference towards this year's Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants material and gleeful, grateful re-acquaintance with such old friends as Wonderwall, Acquiesce and Cigarettes And Alcohol.

The opening Go Let It Out was dedicated by Liam to the newly released and dying Mr Kray; Live Forever was played in memory of the Leeds fans "who got it in Turkey", a gesture and sentiment well appreciated by in a city so traumatised by those bloody events in Istanbul.

Noel tantalised the 40,000 crowd by saying he, Liam, Andy Bell and the rest were splitting....their appearance fee for the purpose of indulging in a drink or two too many, and he ended the night by promising "We'll meet again, I don't know where, I don't know when, but we'll meet again". It might not have been a funeral, but nor was it a reawakening for a Nineties rock dinosaur inexorably for extinction.

By comparison, York's Shed 7 seemed positively perky and refreshed after parting from Polydor and signing up with Artful Records for creative independence. They packed out the Radio I Evening Session stage, with all the partisan tent shouting along as new dad Rick Witter worked the old hits into a frenzy, and reactivated guitarist Joe Johnson and keyboard Peter Pan Fraser Smith bedded in well. A fevered cover of The Who's The Seeker was in the trad Sheds style but an unnamed new number had Johnson turning acoustic and Smith supplying a solo. Still no harmonies from the meat-and-potatoes Shed 7 but they look in fine fettle for their second coming.

PICTURE: Liam Gallagher, told the Temple Newsam crowd it was not the band's funeral gig.

Picture: David Harrison