Bit of a catch-up…

Had a few good nights out over the last few months. Back in February I got to see Rend Collective play at the O2 Ritz in Manchester.

I actually thought I’d left a decent amount of time to get to the show. I’d not been to the Ritz before, so was quite surprised to see the queue to get in going from Whitworth Street, right round onto Oxford Road, stretching back quite a way. I originally thought it was a queue for Hamilton over the road at the Palace, but soon discovered it was the queue I needed to be in so joined the back of it. The staff were really slow getting people in, and it took ages to make my way down to the entrance. The support act was just starting as I arrived, so I moved towards the stage to get a good position.

It was a really good show – lots of energy in the room and the crowd were really up for having a good night. It turned out there were a few people I knew also at the gig, but only found out afterwards!

Then last month I got to see Peter Kay’s most recent live show at the AO Arena. I’d bought some tickets way back in 2022 for this show, so he’s been performing it for quite a while now! I saw him live for my birthday quite a few years ago, and he was really funny, and even though it was an arena show, you still felt part of it. This time I was interested to see if it felt new, or just a rehash of old material. As I said, I’d bought a few extra tickets, so I was joined by Chris & Debbie Mac (who I hadn’t seen for absolutely ages!) and Iain Cash.

To be honest, there were some really funny bits, but for me a lot of it felt a bit lacklustre. There was a big section at the start which is set up to feel like it’s spontaneous (but apparently it’s the same in every show!), that then just leads into getting the audience to sing along to old TV adverts! I do enjoy nostalgic and observational comedy, but this just felt a bit of a cop-out to me, and was just about throwing up memories but not paying it off, which I think he’s done really well in the past. Anyway, I’d probably think twice about going to a Peter Kay arena show in the future.

And then last night I went to Arcade Club in Bury again with Lee and Michael.

It’s always good fun there, although I’m still pretty rubbish at most of the arcade games they have there! It wasn’t as busy as the last time we were there, which was good, and I think I enjoy the racing games best – partly because you get to sit down(!) – but mostly because I’m not too bad at them!