"Women have had me over," says singer Liam Gallagher. "It's happened twice in the last month. After I've bopped 'em, they've gone and sold it to the papers and made money out of it. Fair play. But I've just come in their gob [mouth] and gone off, so therefore I've had them over. Tied one-all, baby."

Liam Gallagher does not make a terrific ambassador for Great Britain — or his gender, for that matter. Granted, he loves to hear himself talk. It's just that the twenty-three-year-old lead singer of Oasis is happiest when he's doing or saying something obnoxious and stupid, which means he swaggers through life in a state of almost constant euphoria.

Like now, for instance. The setting is the Brit Awards, England's equivalent to the Grammys, and Gallagher is onstage, bent over and pretending to receive an enema from the Best Album statue he and his band have just won for their second album, (What's the Story) Morning Glory? After a few moments, he strolls back to the podium for an announcement: "Fuck."

Then, Gallagher stuffs his hands deep into the pockets of the winter coat he's wearing despite the balmy indoor conditions. "Anyone tough enough to take us off this stage can come up now," he says. And although the room is a pasty sea of other British bands with one-word monikers — Blur, Radiohead, Supergrass, Pulp — no one takes him up on his offer. At this moment it's official: These five working-class kids from Manchester, England, are the kings of the English hill. There is no band bigger or more loutish in all the land.

Gallagher and the other members of Oasis relinquish the stage and saunter back to their table for more celebrating. Carrying a pint of lager and directing the charge is Liam Gallagher's twenty-eight-year-old brother, Noel, the band's lead guitarist and songwriter. Behind Noel straggle guitarist Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs, bassist Paul McGuigan and drummer Alan White, who replaced the band's original drummer, Tony McCarroll, just before the recording of Morning Glory last year.

It is Morning Glory that is the focus of the night, and with the help of the single "Wonderwall," the album has captured the rapt attention of the rest of the world. But it is the band's attitude — personified by the Gallagher brothers' enthusiastic drug use, fighting and self-consciously outrageous rants to the press — that has made Oasis their own traveling sideshow.

"We like annoying people," says Noel matter-of-factly. "It's a Manchester thing. It's a trait. We just like pissing people off."

Almost lost in the maelstrom are Oasis' two albums of undeniably catchy British Invasion-inspired pop. Horribly derivative, yes, but also incredibly addictive. What's more, the group has expanded on the pure bluster of its 1994 debut, Definitely Maybe, adding a softer, more layered sound for Morning Glory. While the first record was relentless rock & roll, the second gently winds its way through the songs. While Liam used to adopt a Johnny Rotten-style sneer, he now sings.

"I had no idea, even after the first album, that Liam could sing like he did on 'Wonderwall,'" says Noel. "I had no idea that any of us could play as well as we did on Morning Glory. I hoped we could, but I didn't know. The whole of the first album is about escape. It's about getting away from the shitty, boring life of Manchester. The first album is about dreaming of being a pop star in a band. The second album is about actually being a pop star in a band."

What being a rock star means most to the brothers Gallagher is freedom. Freedom, for the first time in their lives, to purchase what they want when they want it. Also the freedom to make complete and utter asses of themselves in any way they see fit.

We've got this reputation as being "hard-drinking, groupie-shagging drug-snorting geezers," says Noel, who recently made the ultimate rock-star move by hiring a bodyguard. "There's always people who want to test you."

Are Oasis in fact hard-drinking, groupie-shagging, drug-snorting geezers? Noel leans back in his chair and smiles contentedly.

"Yeah."