Take That fans traveled hundreds—even thousands—of miles to camp outside Manchester's Etihad Stadium, hoping to secure the best spots for the band's homecoming show. Dedicated supporters began queuing from Thursday evening (June 18) and the early hours of Friday morning (June 19), with some arriving a day early for Saturday's performance.
The Circus Live tour has officially arrived in Manchester, giving fans the chance to see Gary Barlow, Mark Owen, and Howard Donald again as they revive their hit 2009 tour. Since kicking off in Southampton at the end of May, the tour has been praised for its impressive production values and hailed as the band's biggest ever.
Among those waiting for the first of three homecoming shows were friends Linnet Walsh, 55, and Louise Robbins, 53, who traveled two and a half hours from Worcester, arriving at 8:30 a.m. “There were already some people here for tomorrow,” they told the Manchester Evening News. The pair, friends since school, hoped to get as close to the front as possible. Both have followed Take That for decades, attending every tour since The Circus in 2009. “We nearly thought we weren’t going to bother again after the last tour—it was shocking,” they joked. Linnet picked Greatest Day as her favorite song, while Louise chose Never Forget.
Elsewhere in the queue, friends from Littleborough who arrived at around 6 a.m. fully embraced the occasion, putting clown makeup on one another. They also have tickets for Saturday night’s show, joking they’re “not going home” between the two gigs. They met fellow fans from Birmingham in the queue, who wore equally circus-inspired outfits and arrived at around 8 a.m.
A group of superfans from the Canary Islands took the prize for the most dedicated, having camped outside the stadium since 6 p.m. the previous evening—totaling 23 hours in the queue. Isabel, Martha, and Nayra said the effort was part of fulfilling a long-held dream to see Take That in concert. “We’ve had this dream since we were 13,” they said. The trio also saw the band two years ago but said this visit was about “completing the loop.”
Among those making lengthy journeys were Sara, Pepa, and Ari from Spain, who arrived in Manchester the night before the concert. They had been outside the Etihad since 3 a.m. to secure a front-row position, equipped with little more than a blanket. “No tent, no chairs. Just a small blanket. We’ve suffered,” they said. Sara, now 41, has been a fan since she was 10, while her younger sister has followed the group since age five. They named Never Forget and Shine among their top songs.
Originally staged in 2009, The Circus Live broke UK records as the fastest-selling tour in history, with over 600,000 tickets sold in under five hours and over one million fans attending sell-out shows across the UK and Ireland. The tour began on June 5, 2009, at the Stadium of Light in Sunderland and finished on July 5, 2009, at Wembley Stadium in London. It made a profit of £40,560,000. Now back for round two, fans' unwavering support was clear, with hundreds willing to travel across the UK and Europe and spend hours—or days—camping for a front-row view.
