Mark Watson locked out of his own gig

Show starts in the bar as no one can get into the theatre...

Mark Watson got locked out of his own show last night.

Audiences arriving at the Tobacco Factory in his home city of Bristol were surprised to see the comic sitting in the bar – as he couldn’t get into the auditorium or the dressing room.

In footage that has already racked up more than a million views on TikTok, the comic is seen explaining the situation to his audience, who were also unable to get to their seats.

With 15 minutes to go before the scheduled start time of his Search show, he told them: ‘We could do it here, but you paid for a seat and you paid to be in a room resembling a theatre so I just wanted you to know, in case it looks like I'm very complacent, just drinking at the bar, yes I am drinking at the bar, but I'm taking the situation as seriously as you are.

‘It’s no one’s fault. I've been here an hour ago to let them know I'm here, and the aim of that was that everyone would relax - but I say they've over-relaxed a bit.’

Last night at beautiful @Tobacco_Factory I had a pre-show issue. Posted this pretty ordinary video. It has a million TikTok views now. The first comments: ‘I dislike his voice’ (I’ve had other ones, mate) and ‘would like to see him on Apollo!’ (easy; go back in time 13 years). pic.twitter.com/sNnh55OxHY
— Mark Watson - you know, from TikTok (@watsoncomedian) November 6, 2023

He said this was not the first time that he had been unable to get into his own venue.

Last year, he held a surprise outdoor gig in Kettering town centre – buying the entire crowd drinks afterwards – after being forced to cancel a show there when the Queen died.

A spokesperson for the Tobacco Theatre explained: 'We had two sold out gigs one after the other for Mark yesterday, Mark showed up an hour or so before the matinee to do his sound checks with our technical team, which all went well, he then left the building for food.

'Our front-of-house duty manager then went to do their building safety checks and seemingly, as the title of Mark's show suggests, they all had to Search for each other afterwards to get him access to the space again.

'We're very grateful to both Mark and the audience for their good humour pre-show, we often open the house ten minutes or so before the start time, so business as usual in that sense. We're very pleased that everyone enjoyed the performance in the auditorium and not in the bar.'

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Published: 6 Nov 2023