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It’s the end of a long year for The Comeback Kid and, staring down the barrel of Christmas in a New York hotel, Liam Gallagher is looking forward to a nice festive rest. Or, rather, to paraphrase the former Oasis frontman, is he f***.

“Kipping?” he snorts. “F***ing rubbish. Boring. I can’t handle it. Sleeping can f*** off.”

Ah yes, mere minutes into an audience with 45-year-old Gallagher it’s clear that his reputation as rock ’n’ roll’s mouth almighty is well earned. His views are varied, passionately held and come liberally littered with expletives.

Animals? Brilliant. “All of them, really. Obviously cats and dogs are great. I’m not into snakes and f***ing gerbils and s*** like that. Dolphins are good. Dolphins are f***ing where it’s at, man.” Whales? “Whales, alright,” he muses. “Fat dolphins, aren’t they?”

Even mealtimes get him animated. “Not arsed about lunch. Dinner time I’ll have a bite to eat. But I do like a breakfast. I have different foods for different seasons,” he expands. “At the moment, winter, I’m bang into the porridge. Then in the summer I have Weetabix with milk and a bit of honey. And spring and autumn I have melon and a little bit of that ham.”

Parma ham? That’s quite posh. “Yeah, well, I am posh. Posh boy, aren’t I?” is the proudly working-class Mancunian’s claim. “I’ve done well for myself. l like nice things, without a doubt. But I still keep it real with the Weetabix.”

He’s raring to get home for his sold-out arena tour of the UK. Tomorrow night Liam promises to the blow the roof off Alexandra Palace and his June 2018 booking at Finsbury Park sold all 40,000 tickets in five minutes.

It’s an eye-watering momentum kick-started by the didn’t-see-that-coming success of his debut solo album, As You Were. It enjoyed blockbuster first-week sales of 103,000, easily beating Sam Smith, Taylor Swift and, more importantly, last week’s bow for elder brother Noel’s third post-Oasis record.

“It’s been mega. It’s not curing cancer,” he notes “but there’s an appetite for a good album. The world moves so f***ing fast and everyone’s trying to reinvent the f***ing wheel. I’m not interested — the wheel’s alright.”

Double-fisting caffeine with afternoon coffee and a Coke, Gallagher nods sharply, satisfied with his response. He’s lean and oozes rock star swagger even slouched in a chair. Ready to answer anything, he gives as much thought to questions about his cereal habits as he does queries about 2017’s lowlights. “There hasn’t been any. I mean, we drew against Everton,” pouts the Manchester City fanatic. “That’s pretty s***.”

Later this month he plays in Manchester in the arena where 22 people were killed during an Ariana Grande gig in May. A week after the bombing Gallagher made his solo debut nearby, donating all proceeds to the fund set up to help victims. Was it a tough night? “Them things are, aren’t they? Guess you just got to go into it — you can’t change it. But what you can do is turn up, sing your little heart out and put a smile on people’s faces.”

Today he’s wearing a parka, of course, zipped up to the throat. Liam will wear it like that for the next eight hours we spend together, in this five-star dining room, in the changing rooms at the Rockefeller Plaza studios of Jimmy Fallon’s chat show, during his performance in front of the TV cameras, then back at the hotel for 60 minutes’ sprint-drinking before he and his manager-girlfriend Debbie Gwyther leave for JFK and the night’s last flight home to London.

Last night’s show at New York’s Terminal 5 club was the climax to a run of dates that began in Dubai. “That was the bollocks. I thought there would be loads of rules like, ‘Don’t jump up and down or you get beheaded’. But everyone was going off their tits, throwing beer about, lots of scrapping down the front. It was like being in England. So it was f***ing perfect.”

I tell him he was on blistering form, albeit for not very long. The show can’t have been much longer than an hour. Exactly, retorts Liam.

“It’s always the same way for me: the first six or seven songs are where it’s at then I’m like, ‘Do I have to do any f***ing more?’ It’s like a boxing match — if you haven’t knocked ’em out in the first five rounds it becomes a bit of a bore.”

Rest assured, however, that the scaled-up Ally Pally show will get a good 90 minutes, as will Finsbury Park. He doesn’t yet have any firm ideas about support acts for the summer event, not least because “there’s not many bands around that I like”. Pressed, he admits that he rates former Verve frontman Richard Ashcroft. “No one else.”

There’s not a good tune on the Ed Sheeran album? “I don’t listen to Ed Sheeran,” he says, face curdling in disgust. “I don’t really listen to new music.” So he couldn’t nominate an album of the year? “My album’s the album of the year. And I can say that because, as everyone knows, I didn’t write all of it. So as much as I’m in deep with it, I can actually sit back and go: that’s a stone-cold classic,” he pronounces with faultless Liam logic.

Conversation turns, as it irrevocably does, to his ongoing beef with his elder brother, who has himself been on the interview trail. “It’s ridiculous,” he fumes. “He’s embarrassing, that c***, the s*** that’s coming out of his mouth at the moment. He needs to have a long holiday with Bono.”

Personally, though, things seem in good order. After splitting with second wife Nicole Appleton — the relationship sunk in 2013 by the revelation that a fling with a New York journalist had resulted in a child — he’s “back on track” with their son Gene, 16, and Lennon, 18, his son with his first wife, Patsy Kensit. “Gene lives with me most of the time. It’s all good, man.” He and Gwyther share a Highgate flat but are moving to a house around the corner.

How is it living/working/travelling with his girlfriend 24/7? “I love it. She doesn’t like it so much but I’ve always kinda wanted that thing.” Does he behave better with Debbie around? “I do, indeed. Left to my own devices, I’d be sat on top of that f***ing Christmas tree,” he says, glancing at the 15-foot festive fir that dominates the dining room.

As for his own holiday plans, on December 27 he and Gwyther fly to Australia for some gigs and are then taking a holiday in Thailand. For Christmas, he’s “renting a gaff out in the Cotswolds. I think my mam’s gonna be with Noel ’cause of the kids and that. My other brother’s gonna come down,” he says of Paul, “Debbie’s family are there, I think Gene and Lennon are coming down on Christmas night.”

What does he want for Christmas? A deluxe copy of the new U2 album? “God, no,” he spits. “I’ve got everything, man… No, I tell you what I want: I want Our Kid to come to his f***ing senses. It’s in him, innit? That’s what I want for Christmas. Maybe a couple of s*** review and poor album sales, he’ll soon come round, won’t he? Listen, I enjoy the banter. But I’m f***ing arsed about reforming Oasis. I’m quite happy doing this. Just him coming to his senses. He used to be funny but now he’s just… not bitter. Just a bit mean-spirited.”

That Christmas wish, I’d suggest, shows how much residual love he has for Noel. “Yeah, I love him, man. He’s my brother at the end of the day. He’s just a bit f***ing snobby. A bit pompous. A bit like that,” he says, sneering down his nose and glaring around the room, “like some of these c***s here. Though I’m sure they’re all nice people.”

Liam is obviously having a fat dolphin of a time. Can he sum up 2017 in three words? “The obvious ones would be ‘as you were’. But let me see… Super. F***ing. Duper. That good enough?” Sure. And 2018 in three words?

“F***ing same again, man.”

Liam Gallagher plays Alexandra Palace tomorrow. As You Were (Warner Music) is out now