There are rock wives, and there is Meg Mathews: the mega-spending, bash-throwing supernova with a fondness for apres-ski, drum'n'bass barbecues and hand-delivered roast dinners. Select talks to a host of friends, commentators and 'contacts' and asks the inevitable question: What is 'she' like?

"In preparation for my exotic holiday I've dyed my hair blonde again," wrote Meg Mathews in a recent edition of her Sunday Times "Yeah!" column. "It's not that I didn't think I have enough fun...it's just that I feel more co-ordinated when my hair matches my credit card."

Whether ironically intended or not, in the last six months such outbursts have come to define the most famous rock wife of the '90s. Every Sunday morning millions reach for the Style section eagerly looking forward to being appalled at the often indecent displays of wealth and self-promotion.

But is the inspiration for "Wonderwall" really the perma-shopping It Girl who brandishes credit cards like medals? Or simply a misunderstood PR who, because of her husband happens to be one of the globe's biggest rock stars, is persecuted and harangued for a lifestyle that most would heartily embrace at the drop of a Miu Miu hat?

First, a bit of history. Meg Mathews was born in Guernsey 32 years ago and brought up in South Africa. After attending a British boarding school she gave up on a foundation course in "boring old Norwich" and made her way to the more fashionable environs of Kensington Market. There she sold wigs until she moved to peddling clothes on the King's Road, where she met her business partner and best friend Fran Cutler - "We're buzzy people, people like to hang out with us."

There followed numerous jobs in the music industry, which included oragnising warehouse parties with Big Audio Dynamite, manning the doors for clubs like Ministry of Sound and l'Equioe, and most curiously of all, being Betty Boo's PA for a year. But it wasn't until she met Noel in 1994(he was going out with her Maida Vale flatmate, Rebecca de Ruvo at the time) that her public profile went supernova.

Now she has all the trappings of the moneyed urbanite. There's the personal hairdresser (Alexis), make-up artist (Ginny) and trainer (Johnny). Her and Fran's party consultancy 2-Active charges between £2,000 and £30,000 to organise anything from a restaurant launch to an awards ceremony. Even film roles have started to wing their way to Meg's doorstep after her cameo in the Anna Friel-starring 'Mad Cows'.

So, with not unreasonable curiosity, Select has gathered together a number of friends, colleagues, media experts and commentators to answer the question once and for all: Who is Meg Mathews?

Tim Abbot

The champagne gibbon on the 'Cigarettes & Alcohol' sleeve. Marketed early Oasis records at Creation, now freelance marketing consultant (Fatboy Slim, etc). Claims to have introduced Noel to Meg.

"I took her over to Amsterdam with this girl Kadamba Simmonds, that model who was murdered last year - she went out with Liam, Naseem, people like that. We all stopped in the room together, and that's where she met Noel."

"After I left Creation, I had an office above Meg's in Baker Street. She has paid her dues to get there. She used to work with Carl Flavour, who looked after Ronin and 23 Skidoo - they had a DJ, remix and production agency called Flavour Management. Who was the little dread guy they had...DJ f*****g Cheddar Cheese or something?"

"So anyway, rightly or wrongly, she was in the right place at the right time, and she grafted. Another thing I know - because I was f*****g there - is that Oasis wouldn't have had the input into medialand if meg hadn't opened the door to it."

"When they first met, she was a very switched-on, connected, fashionable person, and Noel was a bit of a cloth-cap, 'down from the north' bloke. She dressed him. She took the working-class, terrace semi-casual into a high fashion thing, and that complemented a lot of the growth of Oasis. Where they had an M&S style, an intrinsic knowledge of Fred Perry's and Lacoste, she took it a stage further to Gucci and Prada."

"It's dead easy to knock Meg now because she looks a twat when you read that column. She doesn't do herself any favours, but if people can't see that that column has got it's tongue so far up the cheeks of it's own arse it's smiling at you backwards...It is really having a laugh. If Murdoch's minions are that gullible, hats off. I'll write a f***er! Should be a bostin' read."

"I'm not part of their world anymore, but my rationale is, everyone's out there caning the f*****g cow, but it's like, 'Wait a minute...' Put it this way, if I was married to a bird with 20 f*****g million, I'd be arsed if I'd be out running other people's parties..."

Betty Boo [aka Alison Clarkson]

Formerly smouldering pop-rapper, now writing and producing for an as-yet-unnamed female version of 5ive. Meg was her PA in the early '90s. Currently contemplating relaunching her solo career.

"Before I met her she was a receptionist at a health club in Ladbroke Grove. Meg wanted to get into the music industry and a lot of people from Warners [Betty's record company] would go to this gym and Meg managed to befriend them. At the time I was travelling a lotand I needed some help and my A&R man suggested Meg. We got on really well."

"She was always very trendy. All the stuff that's fashionable now - like combat pants, the Stussy look I suppose - we were wearing six or seven years ago. We went shopping all the time together in places like Gucci and the same shops she goes to now. She's always loved shopping."

"She was very good at her job, very pushy. But I will say that she cared for me a lot; she's a very caring person."

Jenny Dyson

Features assistant at Vogue magazine and the writer of 'Wonder Walls', the first photo-article to feature pictures of the inside of Supernova Heights.

"I would describe her style as very much her own. What I really like about her is that she make a Chanel outfit look completely rock'n'roll. She's not a fashion victim - she knows what she likes and I think she's always been like that. It isn't like she suddenly met Noel, discovered shops and became famous."

"The way she wears a Versace dress is quite different to the way, say, Kate Moss would wear a Versace dress. Not only is she a different shape but she's a different personality. The thing is a lot of the people in the music business are all styled by someone else. Meg styles herself."

"I went to the launch of Marco Pierre White's Titanic restaurant and it was filled with loads of great rock'n'roll people. It was fantastic, and she was wearing an amazing lavender jacket and a floor-length A-line tweed lavender skirt, both by Chanel. She looked incredible. No one else could have carried that off."

Peter Howarth

Editor of Esquire magazine, who put Meg - perched atop a Jaguar XJS car - in their 'Best of British' 1999 calendar (she was March).

"With the calendar we tried to go for the type of women that our readers would go for, and it was far more interesting to get people like Meg involved rather than unknown 17-year old girls in bikinis. She was quite self-conscious about doing the shoot because she's not a model. But she was great, really got into the spirit of the calendar."

"It's really interesting that both Noel and Liam have married fairly forceful, high-profile women. They haven't got married to demure little housewives that want to live in Essex and hide in the kitchen. What Meg does in her own feminine way is offer the same opinions that Noel and Liam are famous for expressing - that she doesn't give a f***. But it's in the nicest possible way."

Victoria Clarke

Britain's longest suffering rock wife: the spouse of ex-Pogues frontman Shane McGowan, as well as a journalist and author, it was her answering machine Kurt and Courtney left the threats on in Nick Broomfield's recent rock doc.

"I met her in the Met Bar one night. Most people in there look like they really should have been having a better time for their money. Everyone is really aware of who's in there and who's looking at who. Meg told me that she'd bought the dress she was wearing in Miss Selfridge and she had this beautiful diamond cross that Noel had given her. I remember we were talking about this book I was writing about a girl who's married to a rock star who decides to become enlightened. And she said that was the kind of thing she might get into."

"It's vitally important for a rock wife to have a job outside of the husband's. I'm sure being married to someone like Noel she has to have a very stimulating and high-profile job because otherwise she'd get swamped. If you don't have your own life you simply become an appendage."

Suzanne Moore

Mail On Sunday columnist, author and one of the leading fem-centric commentators of the '90s."

I suppose with her column she wants to say, 'Here I am, I'm a personality in my own right.' But when somebody tries that hard you are always a bit suspicious. You read that she hangs out with Kate Moss and Anna Friel and that she goes skiing and I just think, 'Why can't you just enjoy yourself without telling everybody about it the whole time?'"

"At the moment there's a lot of great looking, confident young women who manage their careers alot better than women in the past. But how do you put Meg Mathews in that category? Kate Mos is Kate Moss and Anna Friel is Anna can act. I don't understand what Meg Mathews can really do. It's all getting a bit Paual Yatesy now which is always a bit sad."

"You also have to wonder why people can only be friends with people who other people know. This idea that there's this scene which ordinary people are excluded from and can only read about I find a bit distasteful. It's also quite ironic seeing as Oasis were saying, 'We are the people', and now they're saying, 'Well no, actually. Now we're the famous people who are totally different to you.' The only thing I do admire her for is the way she refuses to be some little wife who waits at home."

"Her fashion sense? (laughs) Again, it's all desperate. It's like, 'Look at me, I'm trying really really hard. I've got all this money to spend and I haven't got a clue what to spend it on.' It's all a bit '80s isn't it? If I was a rock wife I'd get a gun. I couldn't imagine anything worse."

Goldie

Regular barbeque guest.

"Meg's a f*****g cool woman, man, she's apillar of strength. It's just good to sit with real people when everything around you is so mad. You know, there's real people at the end of the rainbow."

Trevor Adams

Agency society photographer who's photographed Meg on a number of occasions.

"She's normally up for a picture, and does play up to the camera. You get some people who shy away from the camera and make sure you don't get a shot, but Meg will pose up with her friends and have a laugh. I'd say that it's always worth taking a picture of her because that picture will always sell. I think at the moment she's at her highest profile."

"The last time I saw her it was a ta aparty at Brown's, the after-party of Tara Palmer-Tomkinson's birthday party at Tramps. I'd say that if there's a good party on there's a 50:50 chance that Meg Mathews will be there."

Ben Turner

Editor of monthly dance mag 'Muzik', whose awards ceremony last year was stuffed with celebrities courtesy of Meg and Fran Cutler's company, 2-Active.

"Basically Fran and Meg said to us, 'Just give us a table and we'll fil with stars. Who do you want?' So we said ideally Kate Moss and Noel Gallagher. And that's exactly who turned up. It was very straightforward. To be honest, they didn't stay very long. They turned up, stayed for the awards then went straight to the Met Bar."

"The impression I get of their set-up is that Meg is hardly in the office and it's actually Fran that does most of the running around. Then Meg turns up to the parties and is almost the public face of 2-Active."

"I've met Meg a few times in the Met Bar and there was one night when there was a weird confrontation between her and Noel. I was talking to Pual from the lighthouse Family and Meg comes running over to him going, Aw f*****g hell, I love your music, you're f*****g amazing, you're one of my favourite bands,' blah blah blah. Noel then strides over and says to Paul, 'I f*****g hate your music, f*****g hate it because my wife loves it. Get out of here,' being totally serious. It was a strange moment."

Paolo Hewitt

Author of 'Getting High: The Adventures of Oasis', and currently writing a second biography of Oasis.

"I actually met her before Noel started going out with her. I remember being quite impressed with the fact that she was Matt Le Tissier's cousin - something which she just dropped blitely into the conversation."

"The thing that I really liked about Meg was that when she was working at Creation [as Artist Liaison, or party planner] she always managed to sort everyone out with tickets no matter how difficult the job. She organised the Knebworth hospitality area for Oasis and you can imagine what a mindfuck that would have been. But she'd return people's calls no matter who they were."

"I do think that she gets bad press. I can see what problems seem to have with her but in my experience she's always been a lovely person. I know that she goes shopping a lot and spends a load of money but she's only doing what most people would do if they ahd her lifestyle."

"The last time I saw them was probably a couple of Fridays ago before they were going off to Thailand. I popped round Supernova Heights and Meg had flu so she was curled up on the sofa. Mind you, I'm sure a good trip to the Far East would have sorted that one out."

• Select Interview Articles - index

c 1998 Andrew Turner

aturner@interalpha.co.uk

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