Durban - Boy band One Direction had thousands of young South African girls whooping with joy or in tears as they queued with their parents and friends in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town for tickets to their three shows next year.
Durbanites appear to have accepted that big music acts are no longer coming to Durban, as they dutifully lined up at Overport City on Friday to snap up the final tickets for the Johannesburg performance of One Direction at FNB Stadium in March.
On Friday night, the hot trend on Twitter was calls for a second Cape Town show, as Capetonians who were not able to snap up Golden Circle tickets in time took to the internet to plead their case. Durban, however, does not get a single show from the famous boy band, but fans (who call themselves Directioners) appeared more than happy to make the trip to Johannesburg or Cape Town.
Fans queued for up to 17 hours to get their hands on Golden Circle tickets. It took only nine minutes for every one of the 8 000 tickets, at R915 each, to sell out and fans were left either in tears or in jubilation.
One fan tweeted: “No lie it is cold out here but worth it if we get @onedirection tickets. #TEAMNOSLEEP.”
Fans were limited to buying eight tickets each, but despite this, tickets disappeared almost instantly.
One Direction shot to fame after competing in the British TV competition The X Factor, which was created and judged by Simon Cowell.
After finishing third in the competition, the band signed to Cowell’s record label Syco Records and released radio hits including What Makes You Beautiful (2011), Live While We’re Young (2012) and Story of My Life (2013). - Independent On Saturday