What’s the first thing you should do when you play a concert, other than plug stuff in and check your flies?
That’s right, you work out which town you’re playing. The fastest way to alienate any crowd is to go onstage, mistakenly blurt out a greeting meant for another town located more than 250 miles away and get booed by the crowd because you’re obviously a dick.
Perhaps someone should have pointed this out to Usher before his performance at the Radio 1 Big Weekend festival in Maidstone, where he bounded out onstage and bellowed “Hello Manchester!” to a chorus of boos. Usher should be thankful he got away that lightly. This was Maidstone, after all – he’s lucky a pregnant 12-year-old didn’t stab him in the eye with a sawn-off bottle of Bacardi Breezer.