Cllr Gavin Elsey tells BBC’s Paul Stainton that tickets will be going on sale this weekend at the Destination Centre for the JLS Embankment Concert in Peterborough scheduled for Saturday July 18th 2010. This interview was broadcast at 07:55 on Thursday May 13th 2010 in the Peterborough Breakfast Show on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.
(MUSIC: BEAT AGAIN)
PAUL: Now just a couple of months until Peterborough’s Aston Merrygold and the rest of JLS get down and dirty on the Embankment. The concert takes place on Saturday July the eighteenth. Tickets go on sale this Saturday. We’ll speak to Councillor Gavin Elsey Cabinet Member for Pop Music .. no for Regional and Business development. Morning Gavin.
GAVIN: Morning Paul.
PAUL: How are you?
GAVIN: I’m good. Yourself?
PAUL: I’m very good. Are you going to be first in the queue then Saturday?
GAVIN: I’ve already bought tickets unfortunately, so I can’t be first in the queue.
PAUL: OK. They’re going on sale at the Destination Centre. How many tickets are you putting on sale?
GAVIN: Umm. I don’t know the exact number. All I know is all of the tickets that were unsold nationally are now available through the Destination Centre. I believe there are a few thousand of them left. But I expect them to go fairly quickly, so I would advise people to not hang about. I believe they go on sale from ten o’clock and I would suggest people don’t hang about, because they will go.
PAUL: So we’re not sure but there’s a few thousand left. How many have been sold so far?
GAVIN: Off the top of my head Paul I don’t know. Ummm.
PAUL: You don’t know how many people are going down … how are you going to plan for it if you don’t know how many people are topping up, or we don’t know where we are?
GAVIN: Well. I I don’t know personally. the people who are organising it do know exactly how many.
PAUL: Right. That’s all right then. I was just a bit worried there.
GAVIN: Stuart Hamilton will know exactly how many. They’re planning for twenty thousand people and I fully expect that they will have a full capacity.
PAUL: Yeah. Ticket prices, a bit steep isn’t it? Twenty eight pound fifty, a littl bit high for kids and stuff?
GAVIN: Well it’s down to .. that’s liable to be down to the promoter but if you look at the price for tickets for concerts across the UK for headline acts which JLS obviously now are I think it’s no more or no less than anywhere else would charge.
PAUL: Yeah. It’s going to be a great day. We’ve got some great events lined up this summer, you know, at the Central Park, Peterborough Festival, Peterborough’s Youth Got Talent happening again, you know, JLS coming. We just need some weather, don’t we? Have you had a word about that?
GAVIN: (laughs) It’s the only thing we can’t control. You’re absolutely right there is a packed diary of events happening right throughout the summer. There is a magazine that people should be able to get which has got a full diary, a non-clashing diary, so that people can plan exactly what they want to do when they want to do it. and it is great for the city. There really is a full summer of events that everyone should do their best to partake in.
PAUL: Yeah. And if kids under fourteen do want to buy a ticket for JLS, an adult needs to buy one with them, don’t they?
GAVIN: Yeah. My understanding is that anyopne under fourteen needs to be .. the ticket needs to be purchased by an adult and they also need to have an adult with them at the concert, and that it’s restricted to, I believe, three under fourteens to one adult at the concert.
PAUL: Yeah. Are the Council making a profit out of this event at all?
GAVIN: (coughs) The event’s being run by an outside promoter. What we’re looking for is for the whole of the economy to make a profit out of it in that we’ve got several thousand people in the city that will be utilising lots more services than just the concert. So hopefully everybody will make a profit out of it.
PAUL: So the Council will hopefully make some money out of it for the Peterborough people yeah?
GAVIN: Yeah. Absolutely.
PAUL: OK.
Destination Centre Tel: 01733 452336
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