£20 used to buy a night out, now it buys regret and a packet of crisps
When I first started my adventures into town for a night out, I’d have £20 and expect that to cover everything from the bus fare in to chips on the way home.
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Now I’ll be lucky if that covers 2 pints and a packet of crisps. If you want to see your favourite band now from anywhere near the stage, you’re weighing it against the cost of a mini break.
And if I am spending for £300 for a ticket, I expect to be on stage, with a turn on the drums and a complimentary canvas bag to loot the backstage fridge afterwards.
Even “free” fun is quietly slipping through our fingers. Open mic comedy used to be the last bastion of affordable entertainment; a microphone, a pub corner and the chance to see someone brilliant before they hit the big time. But even that’s a £10 minimum once you’ve factored in the drink you need to cringe through the awkward, up close deaths of the green wannabes, when five minutes listening to the world’s most divorced man complain about his ex defies the laws of time.
And as venues shut and margins tighten, we risk losing those nights entirely; along with the training grounds that let comedians and bands test and grow without needing a PR budget or a podcast deal to get noticed.
To add insult to injury, we’re also shamed for spending money on fun. The internet groaned with judgement and called fans mugs when tickets for Oasis went on sale and people were consulting the overdraft Gods. Funnily enough, no one in the crowd at those gigs looked like a mug.
Ultimately you earn money to afford your joy, and no one should get to gatekeep your happiness, but we’re guilty of gatekeeping our own. The cost of living has become a triple threat to fun: our money’s worth less, our pints cost more, and we’re all too tired anyway.
That impulse ‘one more drink?’ window that was the start of some of the best nights out I’ve ever had is a luxury item that is far too easy to talk yourself out of as a ‘sensible’ adult.
So if you can grab a handful of joy, and it won’t land you in financial ruin beyond a few days of beans on toast, do it. I’ll see you at the crush barrier.
Actually I won’t; I’ve got bad knees, so I’ll probably be toasting you nearer the back, whilst complaining that my Diet Coke cost seven quid.
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Vix Leyton is a consumer expert at thinkmoney and stand up comedian
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