A PRIEST who obtained last-minute tickets to see Oasis with his son said that he “felt like God was involved”.
The Revd Huw Thomas, Priest-in-Charge of St Michael's, Flixton, in Manchester diocese, told the Church Times that his son, Billy, and he “had the night of [their] lives” after a woman gave them her tickets.
Seeing the band play live was especially poignant for Huw, as he and his late wife had been devoted fans and had introduced their Billy to the music they both loved.
Mr Thomas, who had purchased seated tickets to see the two brothers perform in Wembley, said that he sold them when a “friend of a friend” offered him a pair of standing tickets for Heaton Park, in Manchester.
Yet, when the concert date got closer, the friend “went quiet and didn’t respond to phone calls or texts”. Mr Thomas thinks that he “must have sold them at a higher price [to someone else].
“So I was gutted. I had just been left in the lurch. I had to go back to my lad and say, ‘We’ve no longer got any tickets,’ he’s crying his eyes out, and I was panicking not knowing what to do.”
Mr Thomas spent three weeks trying to obtain tickets but “was getting no where” as the ticket prices went “sky high”.
Like many other fans, Mr Thomas and Billy went to “Gallagher Hill”, a sloping area in Heaton Park given that name by fans for its view over looking the concert venue, to hear the performance. “It was good, but it wasn’t quite the experience.”
In a last-minute attempt to get in, last Wednesday, Mr Thomas and Billy stood outside the concert venue holding a sign that read: “My son grew up in his cot listening to baby Oasis lullabies. The music never left him. He knows every word to every track. Please help him to realise his dream and watch the best band he’s ever known.” He said that, although fellow fans were sympathetic, they couldn’t help.
“People kept coming over, giving us free alcohol, but no one had any tickets.”
Yet, just before the concert started, a woman saw them and offered them her tickets for free, as she had a family emergency to attend to. “I felt like God was involved, the moment she caught us in the midst of her own crisis and problems,” Mr Thomas said. “She thought beyond herself and her own pain to help out others.”
Billy said: “I was feeling a bit shocked because we got in last-minute, but it was just brilliant. It was an incredible atmosphere.” He had had hopes of getting in to see the band “at the start when we were first there”, but by “half an hour before they came on the stage”, he had nearly given up.
Mr Thomas’s favourite Oasis song is “Live Forever”, played at his wife’s funeral: she died of cancer several years ago. Billy also counts that among his favourites, along with “D’Yer Wanna Be a Spaceman?” and “Cast No Shadow”.
“It was a dream come true,” Mr Thomas said. “I just felt someone was watching over us. I felt my wife was a part of the night. From the minute we got there, and throughout the gig, we just cried our eyes out, like tears of joy. We were surrounded by so much love.”