£30,000 ticket sales record

OLDHAM Coliseum beat its own record for ticket sales this year — by selling around £30,000 worth of tickets for NEXT year’s panto before this year’s show had even had its first performance.

The theatre set the precedent some years ago of opening booking for the following year’s pantomime on the first day of the current year — so tickets for 2015’s “Mother Goose” went on sale on Saturday morning before the first night of “Aladdin”.

Astonished theatre bosses saw the first £20,000 worth of tickets go in the first couple of hours and total sales of over £30,000 for the day — the highest amount ever.

“One person bought the entire front row of the stalls for 2015’s Christmas Eve performance — they clearly wanted those seats and weren’t prepared to risk not getting them,” said theatre chief Kevin Shaw.

“We love traditional panto at the Coliseum and clearly more people are coming round to our way of thinking.

“To sell that number of tickets on opening day this year was amazing.”

Tickets are still selling strongly for this year’s show too.