I was hoping to go ‘out out’ and planned to treat the family to a night at the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury.

Hearing the mighty Micky Flanagan was bringing his new show to town on Friday, April 19 I keenly looked for details of how to buy tickets.

The website said they would go on sale at 10am on Saturday and I strongly suspected they would be very popular so I made myself an account with the theatre and made sure I was ready on the stroke of 10 for the ticket sale.

I logged onto the site in advance and constantly refreshed the page waiting for the sale to open.

However, the site kept saying tickets would be on sale soon so, after five minutes, I tried ringing the box office to see if there was a problem. Unfortunately it either came up saying the user was busy or I got an engaged tone.

Failing on the phone, I kept trying the website and it finally opened at 10.17am. Having clicked on I was informed I was 286th in the queue.

But, I quickly dropped down the queue and was under 200 in a matter of seconds, which I foolishly thought was good news. My more switched-on son informed me this was in fact a bad sign as it was likely the show was sold out and as soon as people ahead of me in the queue had found out, they were logging off immediately.

Less than 30 seconds later I was indeed taken through to another page, which informed me tickets were all gone.

So, was I naïve? Was there anything else I could have done to secure seats to see Micky?

It’s since emerged just 16% of the tickets available were put on general sale.

There was also a pre-sale to the Marlowe’s paying members. I suppose it’s fair enough to offer first dibs to those who are paying to support you.

Would touts, perhaps using bots, have managed to get in ahead of me to secure blocks of tickets?

The Marlowe Theatre may have handled this ticket sale perfectly and perhaps I was just unlucky.

Oh wait a minute, there are some tickets still available – premium ones for £200. I wonder what premium entitles you to, other than just getting you a seat?

Anyone got three ‘ordinary priced’ Micky Flanagan tickets they don’t need?