Damon Albarn and Noel Gallagher, Teenage Cancer Trust, Royal Albert Hall, review It was like a memorial for the Britpop wars, the night peace broke out at the Royal Albert Hall. An audience of 5000 middle-aged former lads and ladettes, raised on the bitter rivalry between Oasis and Blur, were witness to an extraordinary armistice, as the greatest combatants of Nineties British rock took to the stage together. Noel Gallagher, erstwhile leader of Oasis, played guitar and sang backing vocals for Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon of Blur. As if to lay an official seal of approval on this unlikely rapprochement, Modfather Paul Weller was seated at the back, playing drums. This Britpop supergroup quartet strummed their way through Blur's epic Tender, while the audience raised their voices in celebration and wonder, bellowing "Love's the greatest thing that we have!" It has been nearly twenty years since the Blur versus Oasis feud broke out, forcing the Britpop audience to pick sides between arty pretension and stoic plebeianism, southern affectation and northern grit. The truth was, most of us liked it all, and just enjoyed the gladiatorial spectacle of rock stars slagging each other off in the NME. But here they were, after all the bitter barbs of yore, like veterans of a conflict who can't remember what they were fighting about but share affectionate memories of the trenches. "My sixteen year old self is very confused," one fan admitted to me in the bar. Mind you, confusion may have been the whole purpose of Albarn and Coxon's set. As if determined to confirm every accusation once tossed at them by Oasis, the Blur duo invited long forgotten performance poet Michael Horowitz to join them in a recitation of verses especially written for the occasion, while they noodled about behind him in a kind of free jazz improvisation. Weller joined for this too, on organ doodles. This apparently will be its only performance, which is possibly one more than it deserved. Gallagher introduced it by sternly instructing the audience to "Sit down, open your minds, shut the **** up and listen." If it had been 1995, he'd have been heckling from the front row. The mast to which he has pinned his own musical colours remains stoically unchanged since the nineties. His headline set was the usual mass singalong event. It's as if he can't write a tune that doesn't have the kind of melody drunken men like to bellow in bars and at football matches, simple and soaring, anthemic and cheery, with words so vague they mean whatever the singer wants them to. His band The High Flying Birds might all be top professional musicians but arrangements are basic to the point of pedestrian: they hit the chords, hit the tempo, bash out hooks and let the audience do the rest. Gallagher's fans sing along to everything he plays, greeting his solo material almost as enthusiastically as Oasis covers. Whenever he dips into his back catalogue, the volume surges. The most vociferous singing is done by men with unfashionable pudding-bowl haircuts and shirts hanging outside their jeans. The correct posture is arms spread, pint in one hand, like a football hooligan goading the opposition. For Wonderwall, one arm may be hooked over the shoulder of a girlfriend or wife, if available. For more rambunctious Oasis numbers, both arms should be thrown around a male friend. Plastic pint glass, preferably empty, may now be thrown into the air. It really is extraordinary. These songs don't really mean anything yet they mean everything to this audience. It is the church of Noel, a lung-busting collective celebration of lost youth. When they reach a final encore of Don't Look Back In Anger, the house lights are turned on, and 5,000 people are punching the air and singing in a great explosion of joy. It is Britpop's last night at the proms. For some people, the war will never be over.