Noel Gallagher surprises 'dear friend' with icon prize at Music Photography Awards

Noel Gallagher has made a surprise appearance at the Abbey Road Music Photography Awards to honour "one of my best friends" Jill Furmanovsky with a special icon award.

The Oasis star described the music photographer, who has captured some of the world's biggest stars on camera in a career spanning more than 50 years, as the "best ever".

Furmanovsky's subjects include everyone from Stevie Wonder, Pink Floyd, and Bob Dylan, to Blondie, Kate Bush, and Billie Eilish. She started working with Oasis in the 1990s and continued to photograph the band and Gallagher over the years.

"She's a very, very dear friend of mine... and it's been an honour to have been associated with her for 30 years," Gallagher said on stage at the event at Abbey Road Studios in London. "I can only say that she is as lovely as she seems, she's one of my best friends, and I adore her."

Furmanovsky told the audience she was "so overwhelmed" to be honoured as a photography icon, especially as she had not been aware the star would be presenting the prize.

'They were on a comet, hanging on for dear life'

Speaking to Sky News earlier on, she said her body of work with Oasis is the one she is most proud of.

"I was just the right age to be working with them - I was experienced, I wasn't intimidated," she said.

"They were so fantastic. It was just a time when they were sort of on a comet, hanging on for dear life, and I felt like I could actually offer something in the way of my experience... they allowed me to be close to them, which was just incredible as a gift."

Furmanovsky said her first reaction was to feel "bemused" when she heard about the Oasis reunion announcement earlier this year "as there was so much against it... and it just didn't seem like it was going to happen".

The big question, then: did she get a ticket?

"I couldn't get tickets," she laughs. "I tried to... they'll let me in, though. They're going to let me otherwise I'm going to go to [the Gallaghers' mum] Peggy."

Joking aside, Furmanovsky said she would "absolutely" be there to photograph what will be history-making shows. "I've got to do it, haven't I?"

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On being named an icon and receiving the award at the legendary Abbey Road Studios, Furmanovsky said: "I really don't have words for it. When I was a teenager, I used to stand outside with my autograph book waiting to see the Beatles…

"I once took a picture of Paul McCartney with a Kodak Instamatic; I once wrote a letter saying, 'could I come into Abbey Road for my school magazine?' Which of course, they said no. I finally came here in the 1970s with Pink Floyd, I was allowed in. It was holy ground to me. And since then, I've come many, many times. It's like a second home. It's an iconic place."

As well as the icon prize, awards were handed out for live music photography, music portraiture and musical moments. Among the winners were Tom Pallant, for his picture capturing a guitar thrown high into the air over Wembley Stadium by Blur's Graham Coxon, and Frances Mancini, for a fiery picture of DJ and producer Darren Styles.

Winners were chosen from some 22,000 images entered, with Rankin leading the judges.