Comic Sanderson Jones to personally sell every seat

Comedian Sanderson Jones is trying to fill a 500-seat venue by selling all the tickets personally.

Jones – a former door-to-door salesman – has booked London’s Union Chapel for October 14, and will only sell tickets to people he actually meets, with no phone, internet or venue sales.

And he also says he will tailor his show to his audience, since he will have chatted to them all.

He said the idea came during last year’s Fringe, where he claims: ‘I was the only comic selling tickets to his own show, on the streets, himself.’

He added: ‘Chatting to festival goers enjoying themselves in the sun was a cinch and, even better, it meantwas playing to a crowd of folk I’d met before.’

‘By the end of the run I had sold about 600 tickets and this thought came to me: if I could sell that many tickets to 25 shows, wouldn’t it be really fun, and quite silly, to sell all the tickets to one big show?

‘And with a bit of time to research and prepare I could customise it to the people who came.’

He will be selling tickets on the street, using social networking site FourSquare to let people know where he is, and also arranging to meet people via his website comedysale.com.

Jones will also be using the same method to sell tickets to this year's Fringe show.

Here he is explaining the idea:

Published: 2 Jun 2011