I’ve been promising to do an update for everyone on the Wembley show for a while now, and I’m finally getting round to it (sorry for the delay, was gathering information!). We have mostly good news, one slightly annoying thing, and then some more good news. Let’s get cracking.
As of just now, we have released an extra 150 standing tickets for the show (which you can get here, if any are left). Hurrah! This coincides with the information that we have now officially sold out the smaller capacity for the venue (8,000), and so are opening up the whole thing. Bonkers, as a certain Mr Rascal might say.
The annoying news, which is part and parcel with the above, is that we’ve had to abandon plans for a second stage. I’ve learned an awful lot about arena shows since we booked this gig, and some of it is pretty eye-opening. The health and safety regulations about where we could put a second stage were very restrictive, so in the end we opted for putting it by the main stage. However we then realised that as the show is on a Friday, many people could potentially be coming from work (so may miss a lot of an extended bill) plus there is a big expense of staffing a venue as huge as Wembley on an hourly basis. With the ticket prices being as low as they can, I can’t afford to do that; that meant that we were faced with a choice – either stage times were going to be disaster tight and I’d only be able to play for just over an hour myself, or we had to lose the second stage. I hope people don’t feel too let down on this score, but hopefully this explanation goes some way to showing my reasoning with it all.
The fact that we’re not doing the second stage did mean we could release some more standing tickets, as mentioned. I know some people are wary of getting seated tickets for the show. Having spent a day wandering the venue and checking it all out, I just wanted to say that the seated tickets will be getting an equally awesome show (and arguably better sight-lines and so on); and I can’t imagine everyone in them is going to stay sat down for long!
Back to the good news! I have the great pleasure of announcing that my good friend Jay, a.k.a. Beans On Toast, will be opening the show. If you don’t know his music already, check it out. That now is the full line-up for the show – Jay, Dan and Scroob,Billy, and me.
Next up, merchandise. We’re going to make some official Wembley T-shirts and posters to commemorate the occasion, which will be nice. But I’ve also decided that we’re going to have a fire sale of all the old shirts and hoodies that I have left over from other tours. It’ll be a little mishmashed, but in essence there will be a load of cool older shirts selling dirt cheap (under a tenner, certainly) when you get there.
Finally, yes, we are shooting a DVD at the show, and the lovely Greg Nolan is on board right now making a documentary about the run up, all of which will go towards a package including the show, the film, loads and loads of extras and so on, which will be out as soon as humanly possible after the show.
Right, that’s (hopefully) covered everything. Onwards and upwards!