Huge mark-up on his tour show

Stewart Lee has slammed touting websites for selling his tickets at up to five times their face value – branding them 'utter bastards'.

He took to his website after spotting tickets to his current Room With A Stew Tour on sale for up to £99 – a nearly 400 per cent mark-up.

'I oppose touting because I want my shows to be accessible to all,' he wrote. 'So that everyone can come and hate them as equals.'

He said he tried to keep 'tickets as cheap as venues will allow me to make them' – for example by not playing venues owned by the ATG group, which has been slammed for high booking fees.

Chortle found Viagogo selling tickets for his show in York for £85, although tickets at the £21 face value were still available direct from the venue.

Lee urged his fans to join the campaign against the so-called 'secondary ticketing' being spearheaded by Iron Maiden. (Details).

However Culture Secretary Sajid Javid has shown no sign of wanting to clamp down on the market, calling touts 'classic entrepreneurs'. He has accused people trying to limit the trade of being 'chattering middle classes and champagne socialists, who have no interest in helping the common working man earn a decent living by acting as a middleman.'

StubHub is owned by eBay, whose current market valuation is $67billion. Get Me In is owned by Live Nation Entertainment, worth $4.8billion.

Lee added: 'Incidentally, I am adding more dates to some of the sold out shows so there should be no need to buy over the odds tickets from these twats.

'Please spread this around and end this nonsense. Artists shouldn't have to have their tickets sold at higher rates than they want them to be sold at. It is wrong. The Free Market, in this case, can fuck off.'

Published: 5 Feb 2015