Liam Gallagher Threatened to Stab Sacha Baron Cohen for Not Making Fun of Him
The biggest story in the world of entertainment this week was the news that Oasis is back. Yes, brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher have patched up their differences — and by “patched up their differences,” I mean that they have agreed to occupy the same space while holding guitars in order to rake in hundreds of millions of pounds.
Of course, the Gallaghers have a reputation for being about as emotionally stable as their watermelon-smashing namesake was. And they don’t just feud with each other. Liam Gallagher once beefed with Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen, who presumably isn’t used to being threatened when he’s not dressed in a goofy costume.
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As Cohen revealed during a 2016 appearance on Conan, he met the famous rocker while accepting an award from GQ four years earlier. For some reason, Cohen decided to make a joke about Liam Gallagher during the speech, knowing that he’d be in the audience. Having been warned that Gallagher has a “history of violence” Cohen secured his permission in advance. But it was all moot because Cohen “didn’t get around to saying the joke.”
At the afterparty, things got real weird real fast.
Cohen was sitting next to Bono, when Gallagher asked him, “Who’s the fucking greatest living rock star?” After answering Stevie Wonder, and then Bono (presumably so things wouldn’t be awkward) Gallagher informed everyone that the correct answer was, in fact, John Lennon. Cohen’s friend then pointed out that Lennon was famously dead, at which point Gallagher stood up and proclaimed: “John Lennon is alive. I am John Lennon!”
According to Cohen, Gallagher immediately fell over, hit his head on a table and looked directly at the comedian as if he had pushed him over. As Cohen sheltered behind Bono, the “Wonderwall” singer aggressively questioned him about why he never told that joke about him.
Cohen scrambled to explain, but it wasn’t good enough for Gallagher who allegedly declared: “I’m gonna stab you in the eye.” Which surprised Cohen, mainly because he’d never heard “such a specific threat before.”
Thankfully, no blood was shed that day. “Eventually, he didn’t stab me,” Cohen admitted.
Some brave soul actually dared to ask Liam Gallagher about this anecdote, and he responded in the most Liam Gallgher way possible. “That fucking geezer Sacha Baron Cohen. He’s full of shit, mate,” Gallagher told Junkee in 2018. “Was that after I fuckin’ threatened to stab him? Was that that one? He’s a good comedian, but he’s a bit fucking jackin’ on, innit.”
Gallagher didn’t take issue with the suggestion that he threatened to stab Cohen in the eye, but rather, how many eyes he threatened to stab. “He said I was gonna stab him in one eye, but I said two,” Gallagher claimed, before accusing Cohen of being aligned with his brother Noel, and also being a member of both the Church of Scientology and the Illuminati.
Cohen, incidentally, later paid tribute to his awkward encounter with Gallagher by modelling the look of his The Brothers Grimsby character after the Oasis star, and including a joke about the resemblance at the end of the movie.
Which would have been a fun Easter egg, had literally anybody seen The Brothers Grimsby.
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