Rhod Gilbert is postponed

Welsh comedian Rhod Gilbert, who was due to be with us this Wednesday evening was postponed today.  He has pneumonia, and was ordered by his doctor this morning not to go ahead with this weeks commitments.  If you know anyone who was due to be coming, please let them know.

 

Hopefully though we've also managed to get the message out to them.  On average, we only cancel or postpone 1 or 2 shows a year, and the alst time it happened so close to the event was around 3 years ago.  Thankfully though, we're pretty good at having procedures in place for things like this, and our team knew exactly what had to be done today.

 

The first I heard about it was an email from his Promoter at around 2pm this afternoon.  She was contacting us, and the other venues affected.  We immediately took the show "off sale", which means we stopped selling tickets, but at that point didn't give any indications as to why.  Before we communicate that the show isn't happening, we want to also communicate what IS happening instead.

 

Both myself and the Promoter were keen to rearrange the show for a new date, and that process, which invloved not just us, but also the other venues, was finished by 4.45pm.  We had a new date of February 3rd next year.

 

In the meantime, our Marketing team had drafted the Press Release, plus an email and posted letter, both of which would go out to everyone that had bought a ticket, to be doubly sure that they heard, and don't turn up on Wednesday.

 

At 4.45 I was able to say to the team "It's February 3rd, go for it".  The date was inserted into the documents, and our printer started printing the letters.  Throughout the afternoon they had also already printed all the envelopes and run them through the franking machine.

 

All available hands were on deck to fold the letters and stuff the envelopes.

 

By 5.45, one hour later, the email had gone, Radio Plymouth were making the announcements that the show was postponed, and I had over a thousand letters in my boot on the way to the sorting office.  They will be on doormats tomorrow morning.