When her boyfriend presented her with tickets for row D, she was probably a bit reticent; that's a bit close to the front for a comedy gig; definitely within range of the man on stage.
When she got there and discovered that St George's Hall didn't have a row A, B, or C, she freaked. Needless to say, the stewardess didn't take long to find another couple; more safely located; who were only too willing to swap.
The 40 or so student types between us (we're on row J and, yes, I had a seating plan when booking) and the action (they looked like they were on a class trip) grumbled.
It's just as well the rest of the seventy-seven THOUSAND people who have bought seats on this tour weren't all as troublesome.
Seventy seven thousand.
When I booked our tickets about six months ago, this was one of a dozen or so shows being advertised on Russell's MySpace. Now it's one of over 50 essentially sold-out gigs including one at the Wembley Arena.
I think it's fair to say that Russell's ship has come in this year.
We weren't anticipating a warm-up act and, in fairness, Steve Hall realised that. His poundshop David Baddiel routine, basically a series of amusing situations featuring his dad, went down well enough, though. It wasn't until afterwards that I discovered that he's one of the contributors to the sometimes-hysterical We Are Klang, so I'm putting this down as a disappointment.
Not so the main man.
Russell bounded onstage just like he does when he knows he's got a winning line for the performance area on Mock the Week. Then he talked. And he talked and he talked and he talked. And we laughed and we laughed and we laughed and the world was, for an hour and a half, a much, much better place.
The highlights were, of course, the unscripted bits; the impromptu debate between members of the audience about the relative merits of pies and pasties with Russell playing Jeremy Paxman will live long in the memory.
But not as long as the shoe incident. He probably thought it a bit odd when someone asked if he'd sign his shoe, but Russell continued with his performance and had probably forgotten all about it when, 15 or so minutes later, a Nike Air Jordan flew past his head and crashed into the wings.
If the momentary look of terror on his face as his brain raced to process what had just happened was worth the entrance, his vengeance was priceless.
Having asked the young man to come down from the balcony, Russell brought support act Steve back onstage and invited him to indulge in some, shall we say intimate behaviour with the trainer.
Needless to say, the would-be Iraqi journalist(*) wasn't too keen on recovering his footwear and it's probably just as well because Steve suffered what the tabloids call a wardrobe malfunction on removing said shoe from his underpants.
Just in case there had been any doubt about his religion.
I sincerely hope that guy didn't have athletes' foot.
Amazing show; narrowly pipping Frankie and Jimmy to join Andy Parsons as my joint favourite comedy show of the year. Actually, no; give Russell the title exclusively just on account of the lack of recycled material.
We even managed to get out of the carpark before midnight.
(*) George Bush had shoes thrown at him by an Iraqi journalist during his "farewell tour" of the middle east just a couple of weeks after this gig; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7783325.stm
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