IT is now inevitable that whenever tickets for a high-profile tour or concert go on sale they will “sell out in minutes”.

Since artists no longer make big money from record sales, relying instead on expensive tickets and merchandise at live shows, the hype is huge. When daylight breaks on the day of an online ticket release, fans are limbering up like Olympic athletes to get booking at the speed of lightning.

A friend recently told me how stressful she’d found it to book online for a show her young daughter was desperate to see. After faffing about with security codes and forgotten passwords, she just about managed to buy tickets before the website ‘egg timer’ ran out. “I’d rather queue up for an hour outside an actual box office than go through that,” she said.

We sit, hunched over phones and laptops, fingers poised, when tickets to go on sale, knowing that hundreds of thousands of other people are doing exactly the same thing, for the same event. I hate it. Like my friend, I’d rather queue at a venue and hand my money over to a human than cope with the stress of fastest-fingers-first online booking.

Standing in a long queue can be boring, but it seems a fairer system than buying tickets online. If it’s a big tour or show, you don’t have a cat in hell’s chance of going unless you book online - and then you’re up against seasoned touts buying up tickets to sell on for even more astronomical prices.

It has all become so clinical. We have lost the fun and camaraderie of queueing. I once had a laugh queueing through the night on a pavement with my mates to buy tickets for an event; we took snacks and sleeping bags and had little naps in shifts. I have a photograph, now 30 years old, of us huddled together in woolly hats, bleary-eyed, clutching flasks.

I love the T&A archive pictures of fans queueing round the block to buy tickets for Genesis at St George’s Hall in 1980. I remember going past them in a car when I was a kid; I had no idea who Genesis were at the time, but the long queue snaking through the city centre was quite a sight. Armed with waterproofs, blankets and sandwiches, the fans lined up patiently and with good humour. Friendships were probably formed in that queue, no doubt there were singalongs and a bit of flirting too.

We Brits have always queued, and we do it very well. So I was pleased to hear that the Wimbledon queue for matches hasn’t been lost to technology. Richard Lewis, head of the All England Lawn Tennis Club, said the system of queuing up on Wimbledon Common for hours or even overnight is one of the great traditions of the championships.

Mr Lewis - who, as a 13-year-old queued overnight on the pavement to bag a place at the final between Rod Laver and Tony Roche - spoke of the “amazing” atmosphere on the Common.

“People were really enjoying themselves. It’s just one of the great traditions of the queue, you hear stories of people who, on Saturday night, didn’t bother to go home and people seem to love it,” he said. “It’s an example where technology could change things...but you’d think very carefully [before] you did away with it. Most people say it’s a wonderful experience.”

There’s even an official Wimbledon Guide To Queueing, which says the queue is “as much a part of the Wimbledon experience as the tennis itself”. Queuers are allowed a “temporary absence” from their place in line to get food or use the toilet, but must not exceed 30 minutes. Quite right too. And no pushing in - we were here first...

* I RECENTLY woke up in the night to a low level buzzing noise I feared was a seething wasps' nest in my loft.

Next day I called the lovely folk at Bradford Beekeepers Association. One of them went to my house, quickly spotted a bumble bee nest in the guttering and reassured me it wouldn't grow much bigger than a tennis ball, and eventually the bees would leave it. Once I knew the 'buzzing' sound was the bees fanning the nest with their wings to keep it cool, I found it quite soothing at night. What a fascinating little world these incredible creatures inhabit.

* SOME might say Johanna Konta was right to take issue with a journalist's line of questioning after her Wimbledon quarter-finals defeat this week.

The British number one tennis player became frustrated at a press conference when asked about what went wrong in the match, losing her another Grand Slam opportunity, and said the reporter was "patronising" and "disrespectful".

I think he was just doing his job. Surely this kind of post-match 'grilling' is something a top level professional athlete should expect, and be able to cope with, without having a meltdown and claiming they're being "picked on".

We see stroppy behaviour a lot from tennis stars. You might say they're focussed. I might say tennis is a sport dominated by spoilt rich kids.