Peter Kay announces first stand-up tour in 12 years
Peter Kay has added a swathe of new dates to his latest stand-up tour, dubbed Better Late Than Never. The extra shows were announced after record-breaking demand saw the original 90 dates sell out within hours. The vast number of people hoping to secure tickets to the shows also crashed the O2 Priority website and app, which offers mobile customers early access to gigs and stand-up shows at O2 venues.
Extra shows will take place in Liverpool, London, and Nottingham.
Breaking his own record, Peter Kay has confirmed plans to perform a 28th night in the O2 Arena in London – the biggest indoor venue in the UK, with 20,000 seats. The Phoenix Nights star becomes the first comedian to perform a monthly residence at London’s O2 Arena, returning to the venue each month for the duration of the 110-date tour, which now runs until 2025.
Tickets for the extra dates will be available to buy from 10am today (Sunday December 11, 2022). Prices start from £35 – the same price as Peter Kay’s last stand-up show back in 2010 in recognition of the cost-of-living crisis.
Tickets for Peter Kay’s Better Late Than Never tour will be sold via Ticketmaster, SeeTickets, and Ticket Factory, to name a few. There’s no O2 Priority presale for the extra shows, so you’ll need to act fast to secure your tickets.
Peter Kay confirmed plans to add more shows during an interview with Sara Cox on her BBC Radio 2 drive-time show.
The 49-year-old comedian, who co-created award-winning show Car Share, returned to the stage on Friday December 2 after a 12-year break. Kay kickstarted his mammoth 110-date at the AO Arena in Manchester, where he was moved to tears by the warm reception from fans.
Speaking about the experience with Cox, he said the reaction to his tour had been “absolutely joyous” and described the first show as “brilliant”.
“It’s been amazing and people deserve a bit of joy,” he added.
Announcing additional dates in venues across the UK, Kay told BBC Radio 2 listeners: “First of all, I want to say thanks to everyone who’s bought tickets to my tour and I really do appreciate it. And we’ve finally managed to book some more extra dates.”
Peter Kay has announced new dates for this record-breaking stand-up tour, which go on-sale today (Image: GETTY • EXPRESS NEWSPAPERS)
Peter Kay’s marathon 110-date stand-up tour is called Better Late Than Never and ends in 2025 (Image: PETERKAY.CO.UK)
What time can you buy Peter Kay tour tickets?
A few tickets for already-announced tour dates are available right now. If you want to buy tickets for the new dates – including at the M&S Bank Arena in Liverpool, Motorpoint Arena in Nottingham, and the O2 Arena in London – you’ll need to join the virtual queue from 10am on Sunday December 11, 2022.
A maximum of 10 tickets per person and per household will be applied to all online orders.
Last time around, a select number of online ticket vendors, including Ticketmaster and SeeTickets, opened up waiting rooms for eager customers to bag their spot in the queue ahead of the sale beginning. As such, it’s worth checking ahead of time to make sure the same system – designed to alleviate the huge pressure on the servers from causing crashes or outages – is in-use again by clicking a little before the 10am start time for the Better Late Than Never sale.
How to buy Peter Kay tickets
Given that Peter Kay has already managed to fill thousands of seats across 90 dates with the Better Late Than Never tour, we’d expect to see some incredible demand for the extra dates. It’s likely that tickets will sell extremely fast.
To ensure you have the best shot of securing a ticket, it’s worth heading to the Ticketmaster page well before 10am. If you have a couple of internet-enabled devices at home – smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktop PCs – then it’s worth loading the Ticketmaster checkout page on as many of these screens as possible.
Expect to see incredible demand for these extra stand-up shows
This will increase your chances of bagging tickets to the popular stand-up. Ticketmaster has confirmed that it will allow a maximum of 10 tickets per person and per household during the Peter Kay ticket sale. Another effective way to increase your chances of going to your chosen gig next year is to team up with 9 other people.
If all of these people are also vying for tickets – ideally, with multiple devices each – you can dramatically increase the probability that you’ll get to the front of the queue before venues sell out.
Where to buy Peter Kay tickets?
Ticketmaster, SeeTickets, Ticket Factory, AXS.com, and Gigs And Tours will all offer tickets to the Better Late Than Never tour.
When did Peter Kay last tour?
The much-loved comedian had planned to launch an ambitious 14-month long stand-up tour back in 2017, dubbed Have Gags, Will Travel. However, the show was cancelled soon after tickets for the 90 dates went on sale.
At the time, Peter Kay tweeted a brief statement, saying: “Due to unforeseen family circumstances I deeply regret that I am having to cancel all of my upcoming work projects.”
In the years since the abrupt cancellation, Peter Kay has kept a relatively low public profile.
The funnyman returned to the spotlight to perform a number of charity gigs for Laura Nuttall, 20, who suffers from an aggressive type of brain cancer called glioblastoma multiforme. The Lancashire woman was initially given 12-18 months to live when she was diagnosed at 18, but fundraising enabled her to receive immunotherapy treatment in Germany.
The Better Late Than Never tour sees Peter Kay embark on his first nationwide stand-up show since The Tour That Doesn’t Tour Tour…Now On Tour, which saw Kay perform 122 dates.