Excuse me for five minutes whilst I vent and rant about how angry I am with Ticketmaster and other online ticket-sellers. You may be aware that this morning, tickets for six Morrissey gigs went on sale at 9am. Or you will be, when tonight’s papers come out proclaiming the gigs as being the fastest-selling concerts since the guitar was invented.

Like all die-hard Morrissey fans, I logged on at 9am sharp to buy two tickets to just one of the gigs. I was actually using my HTC Touch on the bus, navigating through the pages with GPRS, which was actually behaving itself for once. Not only that, but I had someone else attempting to buy tickets for me as well, on a computer at home. By 9:04am however, we discovered that our attempts to see the quiff-tastic Mozfather were in vain, as all the tickets were sold out.

Hang on – a 3,300 capacity venue, sold out on all six nights, within minutes of the tickets going on sale? It reeked of ticket tout exploitation, and has angered me to the point where I’m urging Ticketmaster and the like to implement new measures to block touts from ruining actual fans’ chances of purchasing tickets. For the love of Morrissey and all good music!…