Bookings Fees? - I'm out

Here's a mad idea for you.  If a ticket has a price on it how about there being a way to buy that ticket for that amount?  I think it should be illegal to advertise a price for something that is actually not the price and that you can't actually buy it for.  Call me a crazy muddle-headed fool  but the price to me is the amount you actually pay to get the actual thing.  No ifs, no buts, the price of a ticket should be the amount it says on the ticket.  Totally at odds with modern business practice I know. 

Here's a small example, I turned up to the 02 Academy in Leeds recently.  I took a special trip to the box office.  I didn't even want to pay by card (which incidentally is usually free except in the world of concert tickets) - and there was still a fee of a pound - to print the damned ticket!  The man pressed a button on his computer next to the ticket window and the roll of cardboard blank tickets rolled through the machine - that's a quid then - and the possibility of paying the face value of a ticket gone.

Another example - you used to be able to turn up to the First Direct Arena booking office and not pay a booking fee.  They've now introduced one - to keep them in line with others or some such we-saw-you-coming-you massive-mug nonsense.  It's several quid a ticket.  My back of the fag-packet calculation tells me they're adding a cool 15% and helping themselves to an extra up to about £75,000 for a sell-out concert - and the chance of buying a ticket at what is still euphemistically called (and I quote) 'the full ticket price' an impossibility.  Presumably the poor sod in the booth is getting minimum wage or something close...

So...that's me done.  I'm not going anywhere unless I can buy a ticket for the ticket price.  The rip off set of ****s 

Good Evening Duran Ballet!

I’m reliably informed by an audience member that when Duran Duran came on stage last night at Leeds (name of the bank it’s associated with deliberately removed) Arena one of the band said ‘Goodnight Newcastle’ - and had to apologise.  Blimey!

This is of course something of a cliché, but one usually associated with wasted rock bands doing massive tours and out of their minds on whatever.  But a veteran pop band doing a tour of UK enormodomes?

How difficult must it be to actually not know what city you’re in? There aren’t that many dates on the tour, presumably you get information from the tour manager, you get fans contacting you and old mates who want in on the guest-list mail and tweets and whatnot – and surely you can’t help seeing the odd sign out of the window of the tour bus?  So how do you actually prevent any of the information you’re being bathed in actually sinking in?  I'm beginning to think someone's not that bright...