Reading-Leeds: The servers melt again

There are some things which are obviously always going to happen. Like Peter Barlow's drinking getting him and his strange child-unit into serious bother. Like Boris Johnson's cabinet of skellingtons being paraded up and down the street. And like the launch of tickets for festivals being bungled by the organisations responsible for them.

Mike E emailed about 6.40 to report that seetickets had collapsed - twenty minutes before the Reading-Leeds NME tickets presale was due to start.

I feel a little responsible, what with starting rumours that George Sampson would be headlining.

Elsewhere on the web, there's the usual complaints caused by an apparent inability on the part of ticket companies to predict popularity:

They're pretty much all sold out. How people get through I don't know, because I've been trying everything since 3 minutes to 7! & it pisses me off to see tickets on ebay already. If you're not going, don't bloody buy them! I swear they probably won't make much of a profit after ebay & paypal fees anyway. Grrr

Caused by the inability to design a system which degrades gracefully:

reading festival organisation is such bullshit this year. no tickets on the box office? tickets onsale at hmv at 7pm instead of the following morning? so. much. bullshit.

doesn't matter much to me, because i already got my ticket last year. & will continue to do so every year from now on, because it is IMPOSSIBLE to get them online. i was there, on the dot, at 7pm, refreshing four different ticket sites to buy a ticket for my friend. i was clicking for half an hour, & i didn't get through once. bull. shit.

And, I suspect, there's going to be more complaints when people start to see this sort thing popping up all over the place:

viagogo is Europe's largest ticket exchange, where fans can buy & sell tickets for live events and they are the ONLY official ticket resale partner for the Leeds and Reading Festivals.

Use voucher code VGG762 before April 19th and get 5% off the price of your tickets.

Meanwhile, more of the line-up has appeared on NME.com:

Main Stage
Kings Of Leon
Kaiser Chiefs
Placebo
Fall Out Boy
Funeral For A Friend
Deftones

READING SATURDAY (29)/ LEEDS FRIDAY (28)

Main Stage
Arctic Monkeys
The Prodigy
Maximo Park
Ian Brown
Courteeners

READING SUNDAY (30)/ LEEDS SATURDAY (29)

Main stage
Radiohead
Bloc Party
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Vampire Weekend
Brand New

The Kings Of Leon? Are you sure? Sure, the Sunday line-up looks pretty good, and you're not going hear complaints from here about Placebo. But The Kings Of Leon? Are they blackmailing somebody? Are they working undercover and need to be included at the top of the bill of every festival to help their cover stories?

Did Seetickets collapse under the weight of cancels?