Oasis turn spies on SNL UK’s Burnham cold open

Saturday Night Live UK opened on the weekend of 26–27 September 2026 with a cold open that cast Oasis as Russian spies. Actors playing Liam and Noel Gallagher invited Prime Minister Andy Burnham to join the band, then revealed themselves to be agents running a phishing scam to obtain his personal details.

The sketch was hosted by Amelia Dimoldenberg. It leaned on the group’s Manchester roots, threw in jokes about Wonderwall, and nodded to Manchester City’s reported breach of Premier League rules. Oasis themselves were not involved. The piece is pure parody — another marker of how thoroughly the band still sit inside British popular culture more than three decades after they first broke through.

From the Rain to the sketch show

Oasis formed in Manchester in 1991, first as the Rain, with Liam Gallagher on vocals, Paul Arthurs on guitar, and Paul McGuigan and Tony McCarroll. Noel Gallagher joined a few months later, took over the songwriting, and became the de facto leader. By 1994 they had released Definitely Maybe, still one of the defining debuts of Britpop, and the following year (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? carried Wonderwall, Don’t Look Back in Anger and Champagne Supernova into every pub, flat and festival field in the country.

The Gallagher brothers remained the only constant members through the line-up changes that followed. After the split in 2009, Liam fronted Beady Eye until 2014 and then built a solo run from 2017 with As You Were and Why Me? Why Not., later adding Knebworth 22 and a 2024 album with John Squire. Noel launched Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds and kept writing. Live cuts issued in 2025 — Wonderwall from Dublin, Cigarettes & Alcohol from Manchester, Slide Away from Cardiff, Little By Little from London, Bring It On Down from Edinburgh, and Acquiesce from Wembley Stadium — show the songs still packing rooms on the road.

A sketch that turns that swagger and that catalogue into a spy spoof works because the public already knows the image cold. Wonderwall has been covered, mocked, chanted and sung back for thirty years; folding it into a phishing gag is simply the latest proof that the material has entered the national bloodstream.

What the cold open actually did

In the bit, the faux Gallaghers sweet-talk Burnham into the line-up before the mask slips and the data grab begins. The Manchester City reference keeps the joke local and topical. Dimoldenberg’s hosting frame is the only other production detail established so far. Nothing in the sketch claims any real-world link to the band or to foreign intelligence — it is television satire aimed at a Prime Minister and at a group everyone recognises on sight.

For listeners who still play Definitely Maybe beside the 2025 live singles, the interest is less the politics than the fact that Oasis remain the shortcut British comedy reaches for when it wants rock’n’roll attitude on screen. The brothers’ public profiles — Liam’s outspoken frontman presence, Noel’s reputation as the chief songwriter behind the hits — supply the silhouette the actors only have to inhabit.

The show has aired. No statement from the band or their camp has accompanied the coverage. The records keep turning over; the gags keep coming. That is where it stands on the Sunday after transmission.