DO you love the theatre, gigs and stand-up but the prices make you wince?
You don’t need to spend a fortune though – as there are bags of secret loopholes and clever hacks to experience all sorts of culture, from Shakespearean plays to comedy gigs and arena concerts for virtually nothing.
An app puts you in line for Harry Potter and The Cursed Child in LondonCredit: AlamyNoel Gallagher performed at locations across London – and nearby residents were put into a lottery, but received discounts anyway. This is similar for many gigs UK-wideCredit: Getty
Before you know it, you could be gushing to your mates about the “must-see” West End musical or cool band you saw – and you don’t even have to bankrupt yourself. Here’s how to get the best deals…
TodayTix
This app lets people book highly discounted last-minute tickets to West End and off-West End shows.
It operates worldwide, so if you are on holiday in New York you could pick up a Broadway bargain, too.
Our reporter saw the hit play The Book of Mormon for a knockdown price in the Big Apple, booking in the morning, and it was problem-free. But we’ve also taken advantage of their “rush tickets” and “digital lotteries”.
Every year the BBC offers tickets for people who want to sit in the audience – not just for Strictly but multiple showsCredit: PAPeople waited for months to see Hamilton, paying huge amounts, but a lucky few got £10 ticketsCredit: ITV Press Release
Rush tickets go on sale inside the app on the day, usually at 10am, and get you seats for a fraction of the price – typically £25 to £30.
Shows including The Devil Wears Prada and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child are included among the options.
Lottery tickets are picked from a pool – the most famous example is Hamilton, which usually sells out months in advance. People can “win” them for as little as £10.
Our reporter won £10 lottery tickets to see Orlando Bloom get his kit off in Killer Joe in the West End in 2018 via TodayTix – so it really works!
SeatFillers UK
This connects slow-filling productions and gigs with eager audience members… it’s win-win.
Called ‘papering’, it’s a technique theatre producers use to fill empty seats and create buzz.
However, while the app is free and used nationwide – you submit your county and where else you might like to watch things – we can’t actually tell you what could come up for grabs.
Because some audience members will have paid full price for tickets, you’re strictly forbidden from shouting out: “I’ve got a freebie!” so discretion is a must.
Central Tickets
If you can be discreet, then Central Tickets will be perfect for you. Like SeatFillers UK, it’s free to join and it works on the same principle.
You get tickets to gigs, the opera, dance, shows and comedy shows for between £4 and £15. It’s got a 4.9 out of 5 Trustpilot rating with more than 3,000 reviews.
The cash goes towards an admin fee – but they also raise money for NHS Charities Together.
The Audience Club
This costs £5 a year – or is free if you’re a Blue Light Card or Defence Privilege Card holder.
It’s largely London-based, but is perfect if you live in or near the capital or regularly visit and love the arts.
You can browse hundreds of shows, including West End ones. But it also offers quirky, niche plays – great if you love branching out a bit!
ShowFilmFirst
Founded in 2001, don’t let the name fool you – this isn’t just a movie seat-filler platform; they also offer theatre, comedy, music and days out.
Happily, it’s free to join and it’s not just London. You can find offers as far afield as Manchester, Birmingham, Bath, Cardiff, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Leeds, Bristol, Belfast, Nottingham, Brighton, Southampton and even more.
Young people can get £10 tickets to the National Theatre and there’s also a ‘friday rush’ – Killing Eve’s Jodie Comer performed there in 2023Credit: APDubious the apps work? Our reporter bagged a £10 lotto ticket to see Orlando Bloom in the buff in Killing JoeCredit: Getty
There’s only one catch – afterwards you have to fill out a quick survey… but that’s nothing for a free experience!
My Box Office
You can either choose a lifetime membership for £12.99 or an annual membership for £5. Once signed up, you’re offered seats through papering – usually paying an admin fee of around £1 to £5 per show.
They deliver access to more than 42,000 events, from burlesque to cabaret and even sports.
Tickets For Good
This initiative requires a small booking fee but gives free tickets to major events for NHS staff, contractors, students, teachers, education staff and charity staff.
It also gives tickets to volunteers and people associated with The Ticket Bank – those who might face barriers that make it trickier to access live events, for example, unpaid carers.
It operates across the UK, so people might see anything from West End musicals to stand-up comedy, and UK music festivals to live sporting events.
National Theatre Concessions
London’s National Theatre offers £10 tickets to 16–25-year-olds – and you don’t have to live in the capital. You can book online.
Additionally, every Friday the theatre issues a limited number of “friday rush” tickets for the subsequent week – even for sold-out shows!
If you’re Midlands-based, then a trip to Shakespeare’s birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon, might be in order.
The RSC offers £10 tickets for 14–25-year-olds for shows performed there.
The discount is available on its website here. Not Bard going!
Festival ballots and free tickets
Live near a major UK festival? Then check if they run residents’ lotteries for free shows or heavily discounted tickets.
Our reporter snagged free tickets to see Skepta and The Streets thanks to a lotto win in Crystal Palace, London, and bagged cheap tickets to see Blondie, Iggy Pop and Noel Gallagher for the same reason.
But similar schemes exist if you live close in other parts of London, Sheffield, Winchester, Oxon, Dorset and Bucks.
You can similarly volunteer at many festivals and receive free tickets.
Occasionally this offer is emailed directly to local residents, as with above, but bigger charities also offer it for events like Glastonbury.
Writer Becky Pemberton told how her friend watched Glastonbury in 2022 for free, having volunteered.
Meanwhile, she enjoyed the event too as she helped out at a toasted cheese sandwich stand which she found out about through “word of mouth”.
She said: “I worked on a cheese toasty stand and got a free ticket for Glastonbury in 2022 (plus fed during shifts!).
“I did it by Pyramid Stage and saw Billie Eilish and Diana Ross. My friend also volunteered for the charity WaterAid and got in for free too. We’d meet up after our shifts and danced the night away into the early hours without having paid a penny!”
Sit in the audience at massive BBC shows like Strictly
This is all done by a random draw – but you might get lucky!
From Strictly to Bookclub, there are loads on offer and they come up all the time. Crucially, they take place all over the UK, with shows being filmed in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Leeds, London and Margate.
If you fancy your luck visit the Beeb’s site here.
The Voice UK semi-final will see the ITV contestants fighting for a spot in the coveted final
The Voice UK returned to screens on Saturday night (Image: ITV)
The Voice UK has finally whittled down its semi finals line up.
ITV viewers were glued to their screens as the singing competition returned on Saturday night (October 17) for another week of The Battle Rounds. This time it was the turn of Kelly Rowland along with Tom Fletcher and Danny Jones to pick their semi-finalists.
The coaches pitted their contestants against each other and selected their three favourite performers with help from guest mentors. Kelly was joined by singer-songwriter Delta Goodrem, while Tom and Danny invited their McFly bandmates Dougie Poynter and Harry Judd to help them through the tough decision.
Who made it through to The Voice UK semi finals?
In the end, just three contestants from each team made it through to next Saturday’s (October 24) show. Read on for the full list of contestants set to face off in the semi-finals.
Team Tom and Danny
Frank Raven
Jack Algar
Ciiara Nyx
Fans at home were thrilled with the coaches’ selections, as one commented on social media: “Absolutely amazing lineup!!,” with a second adding: “Good choices! Hard decision as they were all really good xx.”
Team Kelly
Lascel Wood
Monique Nicholson-Porter
Aaren James
Team Kelly also received praise from viewers, with some fans predicting they will be difficult to beat. “THE TEAM TO BEAT!!,” commented an Instagram user. Someone else agreed, posting: “Excellent choices for team Kelly.”
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Last week’s episode saw Sir Tom Jones and will.i.am choose their own semi-finalists, with help from Paloma Faith and Cheryl, respectively.
Team Sir Tom
Molly J
Cate McHugh
Amãlia Estradas
Team Will
Naná Aldrin-Quaye
Sonna Rele
Diogo Ferreira
ITV viewers can tune into The Voice UK semi-finals next Saturday at 8.35pm on ITV1 and ITVX. Only one artist from each team will be chosen to progress to the final. Whoever wins the show walks away with a recording contract with Universal Music Group and a huge £50,000 cash prize.
The latest episode of The Voice UK is available to watch on ITVX.
The beautiful spot is perfect for pensioners seeking a relaxed lifestyle
14:27, 12 Oct 2026Updated 14:35, 12 Oct 2026
Best town to retire in Spain as expats praise ‘affordable living’
New analysis from World Atlas has named the best Spanish towns to relocate to. They are all stunning, overlooked locations, ideal for retirees seeking a peaceful and authentic way of life away from well-known resorts such as Benidorm or the Costa del Sol.
The research highlighted seven picturesque towns with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants across Spain that feature “walkable, historic centres with accessible recreation, including coastal paths, mountain trails, canoeing rivers, and reservoirs a short drive from the front door”. On Reddit, expats praised the “affordable living” and the “amazing regional food” of some of these picture-perfect locations.
Trujillo, in Extremadura, was named the best small town to retire in, with the lowest housing prices of around €717 (£605) per month. Locals praised the town’s authenticity on social media, with one saying that “life is more or less affordable, with no uncontrolled tourism problems, and food is amazing”.
Trujillo was followed by Arcos de la Frontera, in Cádiz, which has an estimated population of 31,046. Experts at World Atlas noted: “For retirees who want a classic Spanish white town with water sports on the doorstep rather than just mountain views, Arcos is a rare combination.”
Baiona, in Galicia, was also named one of the best places to relocate to. The charming town in northern Spain has a population of 12,380. World Atlas stated: “Baiona offers a version of coastal Galicia that pairs history with a genuine beach-town feel, at a price most Mediterranean resort towns can’t match.”
Other places included the picturesque town of Sitges, just half an hour down the coast from Barcelona, and Cangas de Onís, best known as the historic gateway to the Picos de Europa National Park.
Cromore Retreat in Northern Ireland’s Portstewart has just opened a series of the kind of bubble domes that have been setting Instagram and TikTok alight this year
If you’ve been on Instagram or TikTok this past year and your algorithm has a travel slant, there’s a very good chance you’ve seen the bubble tents.
There are countless wanderlusty clips of people twirling around in large inflatable dome tents that look as if they’ve been blown out by a giant with an oversized pot of bubbles. They are striking, beautiful structures, standing three or four metres high, often on top of rolling hills or in the middle of woodland.
But to my eyes, there is also something a little insubstantial, let alone gimmicky, about the translucent tents that had left me wondering if they were more Temu yurt than Glastonbury tipi. So when I visited Portstewart in Northern Ireland at the beginning of this week, and was given the opportunity to stay in a bubble of my own, I was intrigued and a little skeptical.
The bubbles in question are set up on the grounds of the Cromore House, built by the town’s founder John Cromie back in 1776. From the outside at least, the considerable property appears to be empty today, having recently ceased operating as a care home. If anything, the lack of movement at the grand house was a benefit. For the duration of my trip, I didn’t see a soul, which left me feeling cut off from the world in exactly the right way.
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The outside
With the lockbox keys, I let myself into a private, wood-fenced area with trees lining the perimeter and a dome in the centre. “Won’t they see you naked?” my wife had asked when I explained that the accommodation walls were completely see-through. Happily, ‘they’ may as well not have existed, so private and snugly tucked away are the bubbles.
The location is perfect. A 40-minute walk out through the woods takes you to the highly rated Portstewart Arms, where perfect pints of Guinness go for £5, or you can stay on-site and enjoy a steam in the communal sauna.
The inside
Inside the bubbles is where the action really is. On a brisk October day, I was relieved to find the dome warmed to a very snug 22 °C thanks to a ground-source heat pump. My particular accommodation, the McDonnell Suite (named after a former estate owner), consisted of three domes squashed together.
One is occupied by the shower and toilet, which are wisely hidden from the rest of the dome by a partition wall and from the outside world by some tastefully opaque section of dome. It comes complete with an information-rich smart tablet and a high-tech touchscreen mirror.
The central bubble stands in for the living room. A low coffee table sits between two armchairs, a comfortable spot for reading. There’s also a tea and coffee area with a Nespresso machine and a fridge stocked with a breakfast hamper from Chestnutt’s Farm in Portrush. As in Covid, there is a joy in the isolation that comes with bubbles. Instead of trooping over to a breakfast buffet, Cromore Retreat guests are given everything they need for a solitary and delicious start to the day: soda bread, strawberry jam, granola, absurdly creamy butter, and a little bottle of particularly thick milk.
Hungry after an afternoon’s surfing, I ripped this open a good 14 hours early and tucked in, in the third and final wing, the bedroom. Here you will find a wide four-posted bed with curtains around the side but no roof, allowing you to wall yourself in and watch the stars twinkling through the tree canopy above.
At the end of the bed is a large standalone tub in which I ate my way through the breakfast box while enjoying a long, needlessly indulgent soak.
The final feature, and arguably the stand-out, is the private hot tub that sits outside the dome. To my shame, I did not bubble in it, forgoing the ultimate indulgence of a solo jacuzzi on a Monday evening in favour of a second bath and then a quite flawless night’s sleep.
The verdict
I was entirely wrong. There is nothing gimmicky or insubstantial about these see-through domes. They are pure, indulgent, slightly silly fun, right until you check out and step into the bubble-bursting Northern Irish drizzle.
Book it
Stays cost from £235 a night, with breakfast hampers costing an additional £20. Go to cromoreretreat.com/book
