Free tickets for Walliams shows to fill empty seats
HE’S raked in more than £100million from sales of his hilarious and irreverent children’s books.
But it appears that David Walliams’s tales have not translated as well to the stage.
Producers of his live show Grandpa’s Great Escape have been using a ‘papering agency’ to hand out tickets for free to help fill empty seats in giant arenas.
The companies are so-called after the theatre term ‘papering the house’ – the practice of filling an auditorium with freebies.
It gives the impression a show has been a success, but news of the tactic is likely to anger those who paid up to £50 a seat. One family who went to see the Christmas extravaganza in Nottingham last month found hundreds of empty seats.
Glasgow’s Hydro arena can hold 14,300 people, but on Friday afternoon the auditorium was barely a quarter full for the 4pm show and a later performance was cancelled.
Just before the event, Ticketmaster had tickets priced between £28 and £52. But Alexander Bird, 40, found tickets for £15 and snapped up four for him, wife Sharon, 41, and daughters Amy, seven and ten-yearold Anna. He said: ‘I found them on the offers website, Travelzoo.’
Shows in Newcastle and Liverpool have also been cancelled.
The papering firm Show Film First (SFF) offers members who sign up free tickets to a number of shows and gigs. It says its service means ‘producers benefit from a full auditorium and valuable feedback’.
Members are given tickets on the condition they do not tell other patrons where they got them from and how little they paid – often just a nominal booking fee.
Members using social networks are encouraged to talk about what they have seen, ‘but NOT about SFF or how you got your tickets’.
Grandpa’s Great Escape, based on Walliams’s book, stars Nigel Planer, 66, of The Young Ones as grandpa, a former Second World War pilot. It tells the story of how his grandson helps him escape from his care home Twilight Towers, run by the sinister Matron Swine.
Alex Bellfield, a theatre critic who saw the Nottingham show, said: ‘Producers and theatres are charging obscene amounts at the box office and are then left with 100s, if not 1,000s, of empty seats they need to fill for vanity to save face. So, instead of selling out at a reasonable price, they’d rather rip people off and give away the rest for free.’
He said the practice was ‘most insulting to the dedicated fans who are the first to snap up tickets at any cost’.
He added: ‘I’m sure Walliams isn’t aware of this cockamamie scheme, but staging a kids’ show with tickets starting from £30 with best seats at £50 is beyond my comprehension. Most families can’t afford this.’
A representative for Walliams referred inquiries to the producers. A spokesman for them said the issuing of complimentary tickets was ‘standard practice’, adding: ‘In this instance, tickets were offered to a number of organisations on a local basis, including Tickets For Troops and other charities, the NHS and the police.’
SFF is offering tickets to other shows including Rip It Up: The 70s featuring Olympian Louis Smith and the X Factor Live Tour. It failed to respond to a request for comment.
‘Most families can’t afford this’