This morning at 9am, tickets went on sale at the Royal Albert Hall for <a href="http://www.nme.com/news/102555.htm">Morrissey's latest London shows</a> there. I fancied paying my respects to the great man, and decided to go to the venue's box office in person, to check the seating plan and ensure I could get one of the ground-level seats at the side of the stage, where one can have a perfectly close view without braving the moshpit.
The question was, how early should one get there, in case there was a queue round the block? After some thought, I eventually decided on a mere 45 minutes before they opened. Partly because this is my limit for queuing time, and I loathe queuing, but mostly because I suspected that things are different from his 1988 gratis solo debut gig in Wolverhampton, where hordes of Mozphiles queued for hours on end, even overnight.
In 2002, London Morrissey fans, I suspected, tend to be a little more demure in their worship and eschew any sense of occasion when they can instead, for an extra fee, phone or book online with their credit cards, not minding too much where they sit. And £27.50 per ticket sees off any casual gig-goers. It certainly curtails my nightlife for a while. But it <i>is</i> Mr Morrissey.
I was right. There were only four other people there. A dozen more turned up at about ten-to-nine, but that was it. I got the ticket I wanted with no problem at all.
Amusingly, two journalists from Q Magazine were also in attendance, covering the whole tour. They were hoping for a nice photo of a big queue around the block. They were very disappointed at how much they'd misjudged things. But then, one of the journalists had a beard, so he is forgiven.
I suggested they cut out the queue from the Queen Mother's lying-in-state earlier this year, and stick it over this one.
Some of the four other people in the queue had their individual pictures taken and were interviewed, but they left me alone. Perhaps I don't look like a typical Morrissey fan. Bleached hair combed into a side-parting isn't that heavily associated with the Salford singer's iconography. But I may well feature in a photo of the whole queue, quietly reading my book.
This will probably be the only form of coverage Fosca get in Q Magazine. The singer being accidentally in a photo of a queue for tickets for somebody else's gig. And yet Fosca are the ones with a new album out in the shops on Monday, while Morrissey remains without a record deal after five years, and there's still no sign of a new release from him.
How very Fosca. And how very Morrissey.
