Hundreds of thousands of Britons have queued online to try and buy Peter Kay tickets, with the comedian putting on more than 20 extra dates to meet the demand.
After thousands of pre-sale tickets for Peter Kay Live sold out on Thursday and Friday, the Manchester Evening News reported that up to 2 million people had lined up on Saturday.
Many fans reported seeing messages on the Ticketmaster website telling them there were more than 300,000 people ahead of them in the virtual line – roughly the population of Nottingham.
The tour was originally due to end in August 2023, but the extra dates mean it will now run until November 2024.
Ticketmaster tweeted: “As expected, Peter Kay is very popular this morning. To make it as fair as possible, we’ve put everyone in the queue. Be patient and don’t be late or you’ll lose your place.”
A number of extra dates were added to the tour after “unprecedented” demand left many fans unable to access apps and websites that offer pre-sale tickets. These include two new shows in Birmingham, four in London and six in Manchester.
Channel 5 News presenter Dan Walker was among those in the queue, tweeting: “Trying to get Peter Kay tickets is like trying to get a GP appointment! “Please wait… there are currently 170,000 people ahead of you in the queue.”
Comedian Jason Manford joked: “Wow, lucky to get 2 Peter Kay tickets. 2 Peter Kay tickets for sale, £3500 each.”
Shortly before 11am, the Liverpool Echo reported that all tickets for the city’s M&S Bank Stadium were sold out.
Some ticket resale sites, such as Viagogo, had seats available for up to £1,000, with many people calling for more to be done to stop sales and control the number of purchases.
Others reported that the site had crashed due to high demand.
Kay’s return after a five-year hiatus was announced during a commercial break at the launch of ITV’s I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! during which Kay was seen carrying a rolled up carpet to a house.
The ad concluded with fans asking Kay if she had finally bought her mum a bungalow, a reference to the comic’s previous Mum Wants a Bungalow tour. Kay replied that she did, and that her mother now wanted a new carpet to go in there.
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Kay appeared on Zoe Ball’s BBC Radio 2 breakfast show on Wednesday and said he had been “overwhelmed” by the response to his return, even before his tickets could go on sale.
Announcing his new dates, the 49-year-old from Bolton said: “It’s good to get back to what I love to do, standup comedy, and if there’s ever a time when people need a laugh, it’s now “. for a date in London next summer, comedy fan Ben Andrews, from London, said: “There was a lot of pressure to get tickets, especially as I’m married to a northerner.
“I was in the digital waiting room from 9.45am and immediately had 50,000 people ahead of me. With 20k capacity, I had to cross my fingers.”
His wife, Sarah Farrell, from Manchester, added: “To give us a better chance I joined the queue too, but I did it late, in a panic and ended up queuing for 2024. In at one point there were a quarter of a million. people in front of me, so I went to put the kettle on.”
As well as touring the UK, Kay will become the first comedian to receive his own residency at London’s O2 Arena. He will perform there once a month between December 2022 and November 2023.
In 2010, Kay earned a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for the best-selling standup tour of all time, with over 1.2 million people.
He was supposed to hit the road in 2017, but canceled those shows due to “unforeseen family circumstances.”