THE Parr Hall needs to get its act together.

My wife and I went on Saturday, January 30 to see the Ken Dodd show.

What a shambles.

We arrived 25 minutes before the scheduled start time and found ourselves in milling crowds outside the venue trying to gain entry.

It was some time after being in the queue that we found out that there were two queues – one for gaining admittance with pre-collected tickets, which we needed, and the other for collecting tickets at the box office.

We, together with a number of other people, then realised we were in the wrong queue and tried to re-join the entry queue.

This was causing aggravation and accusations were being made (probably correctly) that the new group were queue jumping.

This could have been avoided had a member of staff been available outside to direct its customers accordingly.

Once inside the full house audience waited in anticipation for the show to start at the scheduled start time of 7pm. This did not materialise until 7.25pm with no announcement about the delay.

Surely nothing else could go amiss? How wrong can you be?

With Ken Dodd in full flow various members of the audience located in different parts of the theatre complained to Ken that they could not hear him.

Many efforts were made to resolve the problem and Ken, being the true professional that he is, tried to interact with the audience to overcome the difficulty but without success.

Eventually the areas had to be cleared.

The Parr Hall has always had acoustic problems and sometimes one can hear other microphones still on as background noise. It needs sorting out.

The show itself was absolutely brilliant. Ken and his supporting cast gave us a show to remember and he kept his promise that the late start would not mean we would miss out.

He duly added on the extra time and we were allowed to leave just before 1am.

Perhaps the Parr Hall management may like to comment on the difficulties.

MERVYN WOODAGE Ryfields