Would you fly 18,000km to the United Kingdom just to take your teenager to an Oasis concert? Video / Newstalk ZB
Would you fly 18,000km to the UK just to take your teenager to an Oasis concert?
“Put yourself in our position,” Hosking told listeners on ZB’s Mike Hosking Breakfast show this morning. “Young person’s got the tickets, do you as a parent look to accompany them on the trip and J-I [join in] on the whole experience?”
It’s a quandary he discussed on air with wife Kate Hawkesby and journalist Tim Wilson.
Hosking and Hawkesby explained that their daughter had secured tickets to the Manchester leg of the Oasis’ 14-date UK tour in July and August 2025, a hotly anticipated string of shows that will see famously feuding brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher perform together live for the first time in 16 years, after reforming the band.
“Tremendous upset and excitement at our house over the success of us gleaning four tickets to the Oasis concert next year in Manchester,” Hosking said.
Tickets went on sale August 31 and 10 hours later had sold out after 14 million fans vied for 1.4 million available tickets. Punters reported technical issues including error messages and being kicked out of the queue.
“We got the news late overnight from the daughter who’d been online for three hours and we’d gone to sleep,” Hawkesby added, and she’d risen on September 1 to a txt message from her daughter saying “OMG GOT THE TICKETS”.
Fans from around the world grappled with limited tickets, long waits, high costs and surge pricing. Photo / Getty Images
“I wake up Father’s Day morning and I say to Mike just as he opens his eyes, well, guess who’s going to Manchester? And he’s like, not me.”
Hawkesby explained that as parents she felt they had to go, but Hosking and their daughter both said “no way you’re not coming”.
There was also the issue of the Oasis show. “We don’t have tickets,” Hosking revealed.
The four tickets were for their daughter’s friends, so if Hosking and Hawkesby went they just would be dropping them off, they explained.
Discussing her flying to the UK without them, Hosking said their daughter would be 18 by the time of the concert, and an “adult”.
Hawkesby expressed concern. “It’s a big trip by themselves and it’s a long way away,” she said. “There could be trouble. It’s an Oasis concert in Manchester for goodness sake. Any mother would worry.”
“Ask Kirstie Allsopp what she’d do,” Hosking joked.
UK TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp came under fire last month after she shared on X that she’d let her 15-year-old son go interrailing across Europe, the teenager and his 16-year-old friend undertaking a nine-stop trip. Allsop, who was proud of her son’s trip, told BBC programme Today that travel was safer now thanks in part to mobile phones.
Flying anywhere, let alone for a concert, isn’t cheap. Oasis fans around the world have expressed frustration at ticket prices for the reunion tour; standing tickets were priced at £150 (NZ$315), the cheapest seats were £73 (NZ$153) and a premium package was around £506 (NZ$1062).
When asked if her daughter’s bill was as much as $3000-$4000, Hawkesby admitted “yeah, it was” but that their daughter had paid for it herself.
For fans travelling from New Zealand to the UK for the tour, the stakes are high, with flights to secure and accommodation to book – hospitality will be in high demand, and the industry is expecting a multimillion-pound boost from the shows – let alone getting to the venue and back again.
ZB listener Jen weighed in. “Mothers always worry,” she said. “Sometimes you just have to trust and let them fly.”
Another listener advised to “let them into the wild”.
Hawkesby explained it was the context of the show, not just the distance from home. “I probably wouldn’t worry so much if she wasn’t going to an Oasis concert in Manchester,” she explained. “If she was just going to the UK, it might be all right.”
Oasis pictured in Withington, Manchester, in 1993. Photo / James Fry, Getty Images
She explained she was concerned about the fans. “The crowd Oasis brings with them makes me slightly worried.”
In their heyday, the Gallagher brothers had been considered by many as Brit Pop’s bad boys, and the Guardian described them as “the group for beery, shirts-off geezers”. Their 1998 Wellington show has been called “disastrous” and featured technical issues, on-stage fighting and drunkenness.
Oasis formed in Manchester in 1991, and many fans will now be in their 40s and 50s. Liam Gallagher is 51 and Noel is 57 – a considerable age gap compared to their teenage fans.
With her teenage daughter poised to travel to the UK next year for the tour, Hawkesby explained that letting go of the youngest of her five children wasn’t easy.
“She’s the last to leave,” she said. “It’s quite traumatic as a parent when your youngest is finishing up school and venturing out into the big wide world.”
