Who is Sara MacDonald, the Scottish ex-wife of Oasis star Noel Gallagher credited with the band's reunion?

In the fractious world of the Gallagher brothers, it was a split that drew relatively few headlines, but it is one that could well have paved the way for the Oasis reunion. 

In late 2022, Noel Gallagher and his Scottish wife, Sara MacDonald, filed for divorce, with the break-up becoming public in January the following year. It brought to an end a relationship that spanned more than two decades, but also sparked speculation that it could, one day, bring Noel and his brother, Liam, back together. 

Now, with the band confirming a series of major stadium gigs throughout the UK next summer, including two nights at Murrayfield in Edinburgh, some fans have been posting thank you messages to Noel’s ex-wife on X, claiming their divorce - and its financial implications - is the reason one of Britain’s most celebrated rock bands will soon be back on the road. Such theories are both simplistic and tongue in cheek, but there could well be a slither of truth in them. 

So for the benefit of those who are not die-hard Oasis fans, who is Sara MacDonald? The 52 year-old was born and raised in Edinburgh, the daughter of Rory, a PE teacher, and Norma, a French teacher. She was educated at Mary Erskine’s school in Edinburgh, and later studied for a degree in public relations at Bournemouth University. After a stint working in fashion for the Lynne Franks agency, she got involved in the music industry, joining the press and media department of the then mobile network, Orange, where she looked after its music endorsements. 

While working in Ibiza in 2000, Sara met Noel at the Space nightclub, and they became a couple soon afterwards. They married in 2011 in Hampshire, two years after Oasis split, and have two sons together, Donovan and Sonny. 

Noel Gallagher and Sara MacDonald. Picture: Dan Istitene/Getty Images | Getty Images

It has been claimed that the couple’s divorce cost Noel a “significant” proportion of his rumoured £53 million fortune, with reports suggesting that Sara received £20m as part of the settlement, as well as the couple’s £8m mansion in Hampshire. 

Some fans have speculated that the financial hit of the divorce may have led Noel to embrace the idea of an Oasis reunion, and during an interview on the Matt Morgan podcast at the end of last year, he hinted that the split had taken its toll. Addressing the fact that he would soon be living in north west London, Noel said: “I can get on the bike and go outside my wonderful ex-wife's house and give her a little wave and go, ‘You didn't take this from me!’”

There are, however, other factors in play - not least the extremely strained relationship between Sara and Liam. It reached a nadir in 2018, when in a newspaper interview, Liam remarked that he “didn’t care” if Noel, Sara, or their “******* kid” were subjected to abuse on social media, a comment that drew an angry response from Sara. That same year, Liam tweeted: “She's the reason OASIS is no longer. Have to put it out there, she's DARK.”

In an interview with Vogue in 2020, meanwhile, Sara told her side of the story, and said that when she and Noel split briefly two years into their relationship, Liam turned on her. “He rang me 11 times in one night,” she explained. “It was ‘******* bitch’ this, ‘******* bitch’ that.”