Darkness tickets selling for £175

Tickets for the band's Norwich gig first went on sale at £12.50

Tickets to see The Darkness play near to their home town have been changing hands for over 10 times their face value.

The band who come from Lowestoft, Suffolk will be playing at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich on Monday night.

Fans trying to get their hands on tickets for the gig have been bidding over £100 on internet auction sites - with one ticket for the concert fetching £175.

When the tickets first went on sale in the summer they were priced at £12.50 and the concert was quickly sold out.

Ned Glasier, student union communications officer at UEA, said the demand for tickets had been huge.

Christmas aim

"We've never had a gig that has had so much demand before - we could have sold the concert two or three times over," he said.

"I think most of the people selling tickets on eBay will be people who bought tickets and then realised they couldn't go to the gig rather than organised touts but it's not something we can condone.

"It's not desirable that people have to pay that much to see a group."

Both singer Justin Hawkins, and his guitarist brother Dan, were brought up in Lowestoft and went to school with Ed Graham, the drummer, while Frankie Poullain makes up the fourth member.

The group has been tipped to be number one for Christmas 2003 with a song called (Christmas Time) Don't Let the Bells End.