I know all about unsold tickets and empty theatres

My heart goes out to Owen Jones. The left-wing journalist is one of the headliners at a Labour party fund-raiser scheduled for next Saturday and, at the time of writing, 85 per cent of tickets remain unsold. It is particularly embarrassing for Jones, given that Rod Liddle managed to sell out the London Palladium last month.

As someone who has struggled to attract audiences to these sorts of things in the past, I have a few tips for Owen. First of all, don’t give tickets away, because those who have already bought them will ask for their money back. Unfortunately, that horse has already bolted in Owen’s case. Labour has sent thousands of emails to party members offering them free tickets, as well as free coach travel there and back, which hasn’t gone down well with those who have shelled out £35. One Twitter account, describing itself as ‘Socialist Workers in Europe’, has already demanded a refund. As the Tory councillor Stephen Canning quipped, ‘Glad to be in agreement with Socialist Workers that it’s just terrible when some people get things for free that other people had to work hard for.’

Second, try to avoid selling discounted tickets. Back in 2003, I appeared in a one-man show in the West End and when the theatre was struggling to fill the auditorium, it used to offer unsold tickets to the half-price booth in Leicester Square. Lots of West End theatres do this, but at £12.50 the tickets to my show were the cheapest of the lot, so we managed to sell quite a few. Trouble is, that would mean half the seats were occupied by elderly Japanese tourists. They sat there, stony-faced, as I regaled the audience with ‘gags’ about my failure to take Manhattan in the mid-1990s.