Golden ticket is music fan’s dream
A MAN has won entry to Radio 1’s Big Weekend, Reading Festival and the sold-out Glastonbury 50th anniversary festival after finding a golden ticket in a Cardiff park.
The golden ticket was one of four hidden across the UK as part of Radio 1’s Treasure Hunt run by breakfast show DJ Greg James.
Listeners of the show started searching for one of the four tickets at 7.30am yesterday, knowing that if they were the first to find one of them, they would be the lucky winner of tickets to some of the UK’s best festivals.
James O’Leary found the ticket in Bute Park after an unlucky student, Brad, found it in a portable toilet, but failed the final test that would secure his claim.
The three remaining tickets, in Scotland, England and Northern Ireland, were destroyed.
After failing to correctly enter the last three digits of the Radio 1 phone number, Brad left empty handed. But James got there soon after and had already looked up the number on the internet, and won the golden ticket.
“I just can’t believe it, I am still shaking,” said 32-year-old James, from Newport.
James, who has been to Glastonbury three times before, was left devastated when he couldn’t get tickets to the festival last year, even more so when he failed again to get tickets to next year’s festival, which is a sell-out celebration of its 50th year.
“I was in the park for around 45 minutes before Brad found the ticket. We had been chatting and I was gutted when I saw he found it.
“I had done a full walk around the park, looking on all the benches as the clue was it could be on a seat.
“I was just about to leave when I saw a blacked out Volvo and I thought ‘that is out of place there’, I knew Huw Stephens must have been in there.”
It was just by luck that James, who works in a bank, was off work, so his girlfriend told him to look for the tickets. I am going to take my girlfriend to Glasto, and I think I will take Brad to Reading.
“He seems like a good lad and I feel bad that he lost out on the ticket before me.”
James admitted he was kind of glad he wasn’t the first one to find the ticket as he probably would have got the question wrong himself.
“I don’t know who I will take to Radio 1 yet, it will all depend on who shows me the most love,” James joked.
Greg James’ Treasure Hunt saw four tickets hidden across the UK, with four Radio 1 presenters hiding close by.
James had heard Welsh Radio 1 presenter Huw Stephens chatting about squirrels at 8am and decided to go and check out Bute Park.
There was also a hint on Greg’s podcast, Treasure Hunt Clue, suggesting the ticket was on a seat.
James was crowned the winner of the ticket at 9.12am, in just under two hours from the treasure hunt kicking off.