After The Ticket Rush.
When I woke up
today, I logged into the Mostly Comedy ticketing system on the
off-chance, to see how sales were faring for next June’s show with Stewart Lee
and Norman Lovett (which went on pre-sale to our mailing list subscribers at
9:00am this morning), and was amazed to find forty-seven tickets had already been
snapped up in the first five minutes.
The day started
as it was set to go on. By 9:10am, we’d sold sixty-nine; by 9:20am, the tally
stood at eighty. Within an hour, we’d sold slightly more than the capacity of
our soon-to-be previous venue The Market Theatre, and minutes later, we had completely
sold out; by far the fastest tickets have gone for any of our events to
date.
We had expected demand
to be high, based on Lee’s last two visits to the club, but not as high as this;
particularly when the gig is still seven months away. It was extraordinary and
very exciting – and bodes well for how things will go in our new venue in the
New Year. That’s not to say that it will always be like this, but it’s a good sign. It’s great that
live comedy can provoke enough interest for people to be poised at their internet-enabled
devices, waiting for a show to go on sale; as Glyn put it, by text, “It’s like booking
for Take That”; more like booking for a middle-aged
two-man version (which isn’t far off the truth for Take That these
days).