Loch Lomond is an Oasis for a weekend

Balloch on the shores of Loch Lomond is the place to be for Britpoppers this weekend, writes Beatrice Colin. Under the low-hanging clouds of the Scottish Highlands, thousands queued, drank and sang along yesterday as Oasis staged a concert on the scale of Sixties Beatlemania.

More than 80,000 people bought tickets for performances yesterday and today, some after queuing all night. The weekend has been overshadowed by a death on Friday and a bus crash in the nearby hamlet of Luss, but yesterday the atmosphere was buoyant, with fans from all over Britain, dressed in Manchester United strips or white sun hats, streaming from cars, buses and trains.

The locals looked on from their retirement homes with some horror. Clipped privet hedges sprouted a fresh crop of crushed beer cans. But the residents should be used to it. Since the late Seventies consecutive waves of music fans have flocked to Balloch.

Inside the gig, below a Scots baronial folly on a huge stage complete with enormous video monitors, bands such as the Manic Street Preachers and Black Grape performed during the afternoon, but it was Oasis that everyone had come to see and the frustration of waiting led to bottles being thrown in a series of scuffles.

Pandemonium broke out when the band's frontman, Liam Gallagher, arrived with his fiancee, Patsy Kensit, the pair of them displaying new engagement rings, and near-hysteria was renewed when the band took the stage as darkness fell. They drove 40,000 Britpoppers into a frenzy of adulation (a steady stream of them fainting) and established yet another norm for remarkable rock star behaviour: causing musical uproar in one of Scotland's most tranquil corners.