Lewis Capaldi opens up about that Noel Gallagher Glastonbury entrance: "I hope he sees it - I love him to bits"

In an interview with Radio X, Gallagher decried the state of modern music and referenced Capaldi by name, saying “Who’s this Capaldi fella?... Who the f***’s that idiot?”

Capaldi's response came as he opened his Glastonbury set on Saturday afternoon, first playing Gallagher's comments on the screens next to the stage before swaggering on dressed in full Oasis gear – green parker and bucket hat (looking more than a little like Kathy Burke's try-hard teen Perry from Harry Enfield's Kevin and Perry sketches) – to the strains of WWE star Shane McMahon's walk-on music Here Comes the Money.

The Someone You Loved singer then shed his accessories to reveal a t-shirt emblazoned with Gallagher's face in the centre of a love heart, before throwing himself straight into his first song.

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It went down a storm with festival-goers and Glastonbury TV viewers...

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But despite the effort he'd put into hitting back at Gallagher, self-confessed fan Capaldi says the stunt came from a place of love.

In an interview with the BBC's Jo Whiley after his set, he explained the thinking behind his entrance and said of Gallagher: "I hope he sees it – I love him to bits".

"I’m a massive Noel Gallagher fan by the way," said Capaldi. "But Noel brought me up in an interview the other day, and said he wasn’t the biggest fan of the music, but I’m a fan of his so I thought the only way to do it – to do this Glastonbury, my first ever Glastonbury – was to play homage to a man who I love so dearly – a spiritual father if you will. So I had the parker and the bucket hat and I hope he sees it, I love him to bits.

"I think [the banter with Noel is] hilarious and I thought 'let's do it back and forth', I like it."

Capaldi did admit, though, that he was so focused on getting his entrance right that it initially distracted him from the reason he was actually at Glastonbury in the first place.

"When we first came out I said ‘well I’ll do this and it will be a laugh'," he said. "And I was so focused on walking out and having a laugh with that entrance that I forgot 'well I’ve got to play a gig after this'. So, yeah, the first half of the first song, I was like ‘oh god, I didn’t realise there was that many people out there’ and I was just kind of getting my bearings a bit.

"But we got it together and it was just so mental, the most mental thing I’ve ever done... and towards the end everybody was on their shoulders and it was the closest I’ve come to shedding a tear or two on stage."

Stream Lewis Capaldi's Glastonbury 2019 Saturday set – including that entrance – on BBC iPlayer