It's no longer just Alan McGee's Facebook friends who have heard the news - the legendary music mogul has announced a retirement from managing bands.
"It was on my Facebook," McGee confessed this week to BBC 6 Music. "My status said: 'Glad I'm not a manager any more, I really recommend it.'"
McGee bows out after 25 years of managing bands including Oasis, Jesus and Mary Chain, the Libertines and the Charlatans. It's only the latest step in his gradual withdrawal from the music business - in 2007 he began winding down his Poptones label, 24 years after co-founding Creation Records.
"I stopped doing the record company about a year or two ago because I think they're pointless things, like dinosaurs or trams or something," McGee said this week. "I think I'm a man of the times, kind of like Tony Wilson really. We don't really have a place in the music industry anymore because we actually like music.
"I think the prerequisite for being in the music industry is not liking music and playing the corporate game, agreeing with your boss."
Even if he's done with the management side of things, McGee emphasised that he is still "completely into music", advising new bands, organising clubs and generally "kicking about". But despite ushering into the world seminal art-rock records by the likes of My Bloody Valentine and Primal Scream, these days McGee has simpler tastes.
"It's only really Oasis, and the Creation thing, that I can still listen to and really enjoy ... That's not to say that I don't know that Loveless and Screamadelica were great records, at the time. I'm just not really into it any more, personally."
"You get older and you want life a little bit easier and to be honest, the fact that you can sing Oasis songs and you know the tunes."
• This article was amended on Friday October 31 2008. We meant 24, not 14, years, when we were referring to the length of Alan McGee's involvement with Poptones and Creation Records. This has been corrected.
