I was amused by the guy selling a pair of "fanclub only standing tickets in an area right next to the stage"... for the Twickenham date. He had a heap of bids. I'm assuming these are the same tickets that I bought yesterday, only as they are called "general admission", I assumed that I would be on the turf at Twickenham and it was every man for himself - you could be at the front, or you could be 100m away behind 30,000 other people. I'm furious at the naked profiteering, but on the other hand, I marvel at the stupidity of the bidders. He's set the auction up so it expires before the tickets go on general sale too, so he will have sold them before he risks everyone realising they can buy their own tickets at face value (give or take the ticketmaster pound of flesh).

I was also amused by the guy offering his 4 seated tickets at Twickenham for £450 - pretty much double their face value - with the bold claim that they were great seats. Only, if you looked at his little map of the stadium, and the arrow where his seats were, you'd see that they were great seats for a rugby game (right on halfway) but pretty rubbish for a concert really.

Scum.

I idly checked Ebay last week to see what tickets for the NME tour to Rock City (featuring Bloc Party, the Futureheads and the Killers) were fetching. The gig was on Sunday night, and I had a look on Friday night. One guy was advertising a ticket which he had spare. Spare. He had no use for it. If no one bought it, it would be useless. The lucky winner would have to meet up with him outside the venue to pick it up, as there would be no time to hand it over in any other way.

His starting price for a ticket with a £17.50 face value?

£50.

When I was in the same position as this at the Hives gig at Rock City, and had a spare ticket because a friend had let me down, I went to the gig, and GAVE the ticket to someone who was about to buy one off a tout. It was no skin off my nose - my mate had already paid me. I didn't once think about seeing if I could make some cash, I was just concerned about a wasted ticket.

Ebay can be great, but I hate the fact that it seems to be turning everybody into touts - they buy more than they need and hope to turn an easy profit.

Scum.

And I know Bono has a world to save and all, but ouch! expensive tickets! £84 a seat for the Manchester date.

/rant

ST.
 

What night you going Swiss?