By Jackie Burdon, Showbusiness Correspondent, PA News.
    Oasis' Liam Gallagher revealed a new hero tonight when he passed up two Beatles-connected artworks to pay 10,500 for a Jimi Hendrix portrait at a charity auction.
    "Jimi's the man, he's the law," Liam, 24, said admiringly of the legendary but ill-fated wild-man guitar hero, who died of a drink and drug cocktail in 1970.
    Millionaire Liam outbid keen competition for the black and white photo-portrait at the celebrity-studded Milestones auction in London tonight.
    "I am going to hang it there," said the irrepressible Oasis singer, indicating his crotch.
    In all art works by pop stars from Blur's Graham Coxon to Lou Reed and Kate Bush raised 176,700 for the War Child charity for young victims of conflict.
    Liam, at the prestigious event with fiancee Patsy Kensit, had been tipped to buy Holly Johnson's triptych tribute to the Beatles, which sold for 4,000, or Yoko Ono's bronze of John Lennon's famous wire rimmed glasses, which fetched 9,200.
    But instead he saved his bid for the head and shoulders portrait of smiling Jimi, which also had a connection with Oasis' favourite band because it was donated by photographer Linda McCartney.
    Sir Paul's fashion designer daughter Stella, in a revealing metallic gold top, was at Liam and Patsy's side as he bid for her mother's work at the auction dinner at the Saatchi Gallery in north London.
    Top bidding was 40,000 for a one-off CD version of the Velvet Underground's White Light White Heat by Brian Eno, one of the organisers of the event, who offered full commercial exploitation rights to the buyer.
    "It is a very limited edition - there is only one of them," he said.
    "Is it a bargain? It depends how well it does."
    The potentially money spinning CD was bought by Andy MacDonald, ousted head of Go! Discs and now founder of new label Independiente Records.
    A pencil portrait of Buddy Holly as he might have looked today which was commissioned by Paul McCartney fetched 16,000, the second highest lot of the evening.
    Blur's Graham Coxon, Eurythmics' Dave Stewart, Sinead O'Connor, Kate Bush, Bryan Ferry, David Bowie, Gary Barlow and Bono were among the artists who donated works in tribute to their heroes, all of which went for several thousand pounds.
    Among those in attendance on the night were Pulp's Jarvis Cocker, Billy Bragg, Lenny Henry, Malcolm McClaren, Sinead O'Connor, Cranberries singer Dolores O'Riordan, Radio 1 controller Matthew Bannister, Mariella Frostrup and Janet Street Porter.
    War Child, supported by the music industry, has raised millions for children suffering from the Bosnian conflict and has now branched out to help clear controversial landmines from Angola.
    Brian Eno said: "People are realising more and more that if the Government is not going to do anything on this issue and they want something done, they are going to have to do it themselves."

    By CAROL NAHRA Associated Press Writer

    LONDON (AP) -- For once, Billy Bragg was overshadowed at his own show. As he recently sang at the Mean Fiddler in West London, his fans' eyes were glued to the giant screen behind him.
    It was election night and the Tory government was falling.
    As the extent of the landslide became clear, Bragg gave up singing and circulated among the crowd, bear-hugging friends and chortling over the results.
    "What a night," he kept repeating, "What a night!"
    The night was a long time coming for England's foremost socialist songster.
    For more than 15 years, Bragg has used the stage as a pulpit to preach against the policies of Britain's Conservative government, in power since 1979. His political reputation was carved during the miners' strikes of the mid-1980s, as he played benefits in community after community torn apart by the strike.
    Bragg's seven albums, which usually sell about 100,000 on each side of the Atlantic, have produced a loyal following of Braggatics.
    Their dedication is proof that in the age of the apathetic voter, pop and politics do mix.
    "Pop is about entertainment, and politics is about debate. So I think trying to make an entertaining debate is a better reason to be in this job than just to sell T-shirts and beer," he said in an interview in Cambridge the week before the election.
    While the new Labor government is too conservative for Bragg's tastes, he's optimistic that Britain can now become a country "at ease with itself" -- a phrase stolen from the outgoing prime minister, John Major.
    Bragg says that Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bill Clinton resemble each other in a "puppy dog, can-do, baby boomer kind of way."
    "I see similarities in the fact that they have so much hope invested in them. It's a great burden. And they both have the urge to make opposites attract -- to make unions and bosses like each other, and rich and poor people be nice to each other."
    Bragg's shows, like his albums, are a skillful mix of love and political songs. Standing solo on the stage, he engages fans through stirring songs, modest humor, and impassioned rhetoric for the politics of the left.
    His latest album, "William Bloke," is quieter and more reflective than its 1991 predecessor, "Don't Try This at Home," which featured the exuberant "Sexuality."
    In the five-year hiatus between albums, Bragg became a father, which he frequently describes as a transforming experience. And this year, he turns 40.
    His new single, "The Boy Done Good," is a testimony to his happy home life and love of football, a topic that threads through many of his songs.
    On June 15, Bragg will join Van Morrison in New York to play at an Irish festival on Randall's Island.
    "For some reason, in the States I'm Irish," he says.
    But Britons know that Bragg is very much a London boy. His upbringing, in working-class Essex, in east London, has influenced his music for nearly two decades.
    He became a musician to escape the assembly line fate of so many of his classmates, who, like himself, left a dismal school system at the age of 16.
    "Every year at school the career master would come and take us on a day-trip to the Ford Motor Co. at Dagenham, which is the main employer in our area. And they used to tell us: This is the job we could do. So I'm here so that I don't have to build cars."
    His socialist leanings are a Thatcher legacy, he says.
    "She forced us to be political in the '80s; you had to take sides really. So from being personally political I had to sort of define myself as a socialist. And I'm still using that word, but I'm not sure exactly what it means anymore."
    Bragg is struggling, both on stage and off, to redefine his politics so that it fits within the context of the post-Soviet, Labor-led '90s.
    "The old idea of a socialist revolution doesn't mean anything to people anymore. At the moment I'm just back in that compassionate place before I was a socialist. We have to make a new politics, and that is what I'm trying to wind people up to do at these gigs," he says.
    He plans to keep using the stage to promote the "politics of compassion" which lie somewhere between Marxism and the "rampant materialism" of the United States, he says.
    "This generation has the opportunity to make a new left-wing ideal that does not have to exist in the shadow of totalitarianism - that's the challenge," he told the election night crowd.
    "It would be great if I could tell you when this is going to happen, what it's going to look like and where you can buy the CD-ROM," he said to cheers and laughter.
    "But unfortunately I'm only a singer-songwriter and I don't know these kinds of things."
    His fans might disagree.
End Adv for Weekend Editions, June 13-15 and Thereafter