Buy your own gig

You might not have heard of Owngig.com yet, but it’s a new website that allows users to specify a performer that they’d like to see live, state where they’d like to see them and, importantly, how much they would like to pay.

The idea is that if sufficient interest (read: cash) can be pledged then Owngig will liaise with the artiste in question and make the gig happen.

So, let’s take an example. Let’s say I’d like to see Britney Spears live at The Luton Omnidrome and would be willing to pay £10 for the pleasure of this gig. I join the site and state this fact.

If more like-minded people echo my request then we form an internet audience, at some point we reach a critical mass and before long someone’s banging on Britney’s dressing room door with the glad tidings that there’s £50 in it for her if she shows her face round Luton way.

Given that this is the internet we’re talking about, it surely can’t be too long before the irony-hungry masses are offering Amy Winehouse loose change to appear in Oddbins car park, or pledging £300 each to see 50 Cent perform in the bear enclosure of London Zoo (I bet he would as well).

Inevitably, there will be some kind of safeguards to ward off this kind of high-jinks but for daydreaming potential it does pose an interesting question: which act, where, how much?

And frankly, Amy Winehouse or 50 Cent and the bear pit (which co-incidentally also sounds like the title of the best children’s pop-up book ever) would be preferable to the gigs that are getting close to being arranged.

Under the misleading heading of a comedy gig, the second most requested scenario is the six people who have said that they will pay to see Jeremy Clarkson. Jeremy Fucking Clarkson. You can only assume that the stated location for the gig is on the wrong side of a nuclear containment facility.

Don’t think it couldn’t happen either – on 22 November, the site has already unleashed a terrible evil on the world: The Blow Monkeys live on stage at The Prospects of Whitby pub. Be afraid.