COULD Oasis's 10th anniversary hometown gigs possibly be any more of a Mancunian affair?

Noel Gallagher is on stage singing Half The World Away, the theme to The Royle Family, jokily dedicating it to the TV comedy's characters, cousin Emma, Uncle Jim and Auntie Barbara.

Waiting in the wings is brother Liam - surly, hungry-eyed and still seeming a bit crazy after all these years.

Somewhere backstage, Johnny Marr - formerly of The Smiths, perhaps now this city's second most influential rock group - is waiting to step forth as a special guest on Champagne Supernova.

And out in the noisy, sweaty, chanting, testosterone-charged, beery, back-slapping throng sits an off-duty Les Battersby (Coronation Street actor Bruce Jones, that is), occasionally punching the air in approval.

As Liam Gallagher snarled into the mic, and Noel stabbed sulkily at a succession of Gibson guitars, this band - multi-millionaire, elder statesmen of rock with platinum album sales - could still have passed for the raw, lean, artless young bloods who once trod the stage at the Boardwalk.

This is the 10th anniversary of Oasis. A decade of noise and confusion, some might say. The boys from Burnage graduated straight from venues like the Boardwalk to the stadia of the world. This was, amazingly, their first gig at their home town theatre, the Apollo.

Naturally, this set was a little nostalgic - lots of stuff from the debut album Definitely Maybe and a fair smattering from The Masterplan, their album of odds and sods and B-sides. But when your B-sides shape up like the heart-bursting Acquiesce and the afore-mentioned Half The World Away, then you can get as esoteric as you like with the set list and people will still love it.

If you looked around, you saw rows of spectators mouthing every word to every song.

This was a night for the dedicated fans, which is just what you had to be to even get a ticket for the two Apollo gigs - there is another tonight - which sold out in minutes.

The highlights? The caustic T-Rex riff of Cigarettes And Alcohol, Don't Look Back In Anger with a choir of 3,500 joining in and Noel singing She's Electric like a pub knees-up.

There was new material: The Hindu Times which had a flavour of eastern promise but was still more Motorhead than Kula Shaker, and Hung In A Bad Place, a lethally simple, muscles-rather-than-melody affair which would belong more on the first than the fifth Oasis album.

''You got any new bands round here, or what?'' Liam sneeringly inquired of Manchester in general, knowing full well that if we had, they had yet to creep out of Oasis's shadow.