GARLIC READIES! IT’S PETER £1K
Fans flog comic’s £35 tickets for fortune
MONEY-GRABBING ticket touts started flogging Peter Kay tour seats for more than £1,000 just 10 minutes after they went on sale.
Fans with phone network O2 could get their hands on seats at selected venues two days before Saturday’s general release.
Some wasted no time cashing in as the firm’s website struggled to cope with demand.
There were complaints that the O2 app and website had crashed an hour before the 10am sale.
Technicians battled to fix the glitch and some of those lucky enough to buy seats were listing them on secondary selling sites.
One £55 spot in Manchester on December 2 was put up for £944.
A seat in Birmingham for the December 17 show was listed at £1,036 and seats at the O2 in London in January were up to £600. One person who missed out on seats said on Twitter: “This makes me feel sick.”
Another tweeted the blameless comedian to say: “This is disgusting. It’s so unfair on actual fans.”
Musicians like Ed Sheeran and Arctic Monkeys have criticised secondary ticket sites – which are not illegal.
The Monkeys declared war on touts during their last tour and cancelled some tickets. A scheme was conceived with the help of the FanFair Alliance, which lobbies against the “black market” in concert tickets, and was used by the Sheffield band.
Sheeran has also put plans in place to prevent touts cashing in on his tours.
Bolton-born Kay, 49, starts his first live tour since 2010 with two nights on December 2 and 3 at Manchester’s AO Arena.