Any stories of good blagging?

getting served when underage was such a great time

I started going out when I was 17 and never really had any issues. Not sure why as I didn’t really look old for my age - think maybe the aforementioned geek look made bouncers think I wouldn’t be a rule breaker or something so just took my word?

There was one indie club where everyone from college used to go,it was great.You’d know about 75% of the people in there and never any issues. One night one of our mates kept getting ID’ed. He had been in plenty of times and was with other people who didn’t have any issues so not sure why he was singled out. Anyway he spent all night just stood in the smokers chatting with people who came out until he found an opportunity to sneak in. He did so but instead of going in, he stood in the doorway and started cheering. Bouncer turned round and booted him out again. Think he just went home in the end

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Yeah, must’ve saved a shitload tbh. The first time I had to pay a real full adult fare back to Glasgow was pretty traumatic.

Went to see the Rolling Stones at Hyde Park in 2013. It was my 30th and my little brothers 21st that week, so our family had bought us tickets.
If you’ve been to one of these gigs in Hyde Park you’ll know that your standard pleb tickets get you about 3 miles from the stage, and the rest is a “VIP” area. Honestly it was so far away and it sounded like listening on a car radio from back there, so we simply HAD to blag into the VIP area.
There were no bars or toilets in the VIP so there was a really steady stream of people going in and out through the checkpoint. We clocked that the blue wristbands the VIPs had were exactly the same shade of blue as the labels on the water bottles the bars were selling, and which were littered all over the floor.
The fake wrist bands we made left a little to be desired so to complete the blag we bought four pints each and rolled our sleeves down, so that you could just see a bit of wrist band but to make someone put down or spill their four precarious pints would be a hassle and hopefully they’d wave us through. Which they did.

Pics or GTFO

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Friday 20th Nov 2015

I’d been out for a meal with people somewhere in East London, in that bit that’s just offices so empty by 9pm. I was walking to find a bus and went for a wee behind one of the big buildings, possible the cheese grater building. When I walked back to the front of it, the security people in the building appeared (quite a few of them for some reason) and shouted at me, “oi what do you think you were doing back there”. So I kept walking and said “what else was I meant to do?”

He then said “you have to wait, the police are on their way, stop!”

I still didn’t stop walking, laughed and just very clearly said “no they’re not”.

With amazing timing, my uber then arrived so again without having had to pause or stop at all, I just walked over and got in.

The person I was with couldn’t believe how confident I’d been. I pointed out that the security person might possibly have got me to stop until they claimed the police were on their way. But this was exactly 1 week after the Paris terror attacks. The police had other things to be doing.

There was exactly zero chance that they’d called the police, and even if they had, to call and say “a man did a wee, pls help” would likely have got them arrested for wasting police time.

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this is really really good work

getting all the pints as well, excellent technique

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been to Glastonbury a couple of times on a scam as well, where you pay someone to give you a wristband on the outside and then give it back to them on the inside.
getting in worked fine but after we’d given the wristbands back and were on our way to the campsite one of my mates walked up to a herd of stewards, like about 30 of them to ask for directions. they noticed she wasn’t wearing a wristband and they surrounded us until security arrived and took us away in a jeep.

you get taken to this processing station at the edge of the site where they take your details and take a mug shot of you :smiley: and then eject you with no transport or anythign in the middle of nowhere but right next to this pub. the pub is therefore filled to the rafters with drug dealers, hippies, chancers and some of the weirdest, funniest and in some cases most terrifying people you can imagine. we managed to make friends with the landlord somehow and got really drunk and he said we could camp in his field.

At closing time riot police arrived to clear out the pub, the owner pointed at us and said we were fine, and the police proceeded to quite violently remove everyone else from the pub and literally chase them into the night with batons.

When we were walking across the field to camp there were all sorts of people running about, getting pissed and fucked up, scheming, selling shit. A group of scouse teenagers wearing no shirts asked us if we could lend them a ladder.

Managed to get some sleep and then got a taxi back to the main gate where the scammer came and met us again and we got in fine and had a lovely old weekend.

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My friend got a job based on his answer to the question: “give me an example of good teamwork”.
Answer: Dunkurque

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fantastic Glastonbury tales there. Only once I blagged my way into glastonbury. 1999. Paid a bloke 5 quid for a stamp on my wrist. worked a treat. The amount of people getting in without paying was off the scale, people digging under the wall, ladders going up and over. Incredible. Pretty sure 2000 was the year they then put up the superfence and all the freebie fun was over.

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yeah this was post fence, would’ve been 2009 or so I think.

last fenceless glasto was the first time I went - 2000. such an unbelievably different vibe.

this just reminded me that the taxi we got the next day, we told the taxi driver our story and he said that the festival puts on a big party for locals in august or september to say thank you. and they show footage of the funniest brake in attempts on a big screen. apparently one year they spotted someone digging a hold under the fence and tunelling in, so security went and were waiting for them to emerge on the other side with a cam corder and handcuffs! anyway apprently when this guy surfaces he is literally dressed in a massive comedy mole costume.
dunno if true but v funny anyway.

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Can’t really call it a blag cos I didn’t do anything to deserve it but it was nice to check in to an already pretty fancy hotel in Oslo to be greeted with the words “we’ve taken the liberty of upgrading your room to a suite sir, I hope that’s OK”

It was very ok

I got some bar work at the Sydney Cricket Ground and did a couple of days at a bar on ‘the hill’ which was just a grassy slope full of ‘barmy army’ England fans getting wasted all day. It was unrelenting hard work and involved those machines that fill 16 plastic pint pots at once and lots of people waving cash under your nose to get served.

On the third day I somehow got lost and ended up in the Members’ Pavilion Bar. It looked really nice so I just said to the guy who seemed to be in charge that I was here to work the bar. He looked me up on his list but couldn’t find me, so I said “I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to be here” and he let me work.

Was great fun chatting about cricket all day with the members and I got to serve tea-time drinks (Wayne Larkin was 12th man if you’re interested).

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hahah. I first went in 1992 as a very fresh faced 17 yr old. Loads of crusties with dogs on string just driving in (for free I think) loads of dodgy and pretty scary robbing thug types as well. Was quite the experience. Not one person had glitter on their face that year :smiley:

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Managed to blag my way up from backstage/VIP at a couple of festivals to actually getting onstage/sidestage

Not really as fun as you might think

I went in 1990. The Happy Mondays were playing so there were loads of ‘baggy’ Mancs wandering about and people were openly selling crack and heroin. People were laughing at me for having a ticket. Absolute carnage. Also very small.

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as we walked in (92) we were arguing about something or other amongst ourselves. Old hippy guy pipes up “come on man, you’re at glastonbury, cheer up” then a dog cocked its leg and pissed on another crustie who was asleep next to their truck.

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yeah 16 year old me was the only person to buy a ticket in 2000.
there were so many people there, I think that year was the final straw for the authorities and that’s what led to the fence.
My main mental image is of that railway track pathway just lined either side with people standing on crates shouting “WEED, WEED, WEED” or “CRACK, CRACK” etc. And people coming round the campste with trolleys full of beer and drugs.
Glad I got to experience it once, although I do wish I was older and more ready to live it. I basically just got really stoned and watched the Bluetones 6 years after they were good.

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I was there that year too, my first time

Come to think of it I blagged that ticket

The Eavis family always gave free tickets to all the residents of Pilton and Bruton (the villages bordering the site). I got a freebie via a girl called Pippa who let me have one of her parents’ tickets as they’d decided they’d rather leave the village for the festival week :+1:t3:

Did the same in 1992, though from a girl called Gemma this time

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My ex sister-in-law lived in Pilton so got freebies but normally rented her house out for £2000 or whatever. My kids were little at that time so never really got to take advantage of it sadly.

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sorry for glastonbury overload.
i know a lot of people who have worked on the build in various capacities. because of the level of infrastructure, they actually need a hell of a lot of people on site way before, like 2 months, but they don’t institute the gates and ticket checks until about 3 weeks before. once the gates are operational, they do a full sweep of the site. apparently it’s literally like a massive windscreen wiper of stewards so there is no escape. except of course there is escape because people are blaggers, and so there’s all sorts of funny stories and ingenious and not so ingenious hiding places as the shout goes out across site “THEY’RE COMING, IT’s NOW NOW NOW!”

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The current Mrs PIF has been about 15 times and worked for some of those. I quite fancy it myself when I’m retired.

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