UK Recorded The Longest Hours On Queue Waiting For Taylor Swift

A Taylor Swift fan started queuing for the star 48 hours before she arrived in Edinburgh to start her sell-out UK leg of her record-breaking Eras tour.

Ellie Poulter, 19, is among the 220,000 fans excitedly awaiting the megastar’s sold-out performance to play at Murrayfield Stadium this weekend.

Tickets are still available on resale websites, but they have been spotted going for the eye-watering sum of nearly £5,000 as fans desperately try to go last minute.

Drone photos taken on Thursday showed workers setting up for the three-hour concert – where the American superstar, 34, will perform over 40 songs.

To make sure she gets the best spot for the concert, Ms Poulter was the first person to start queuing for the gig.

She said: ‘I think I’m the first person to start camping – there’s just nobody here.

‘I thought people were going to camp because people were queuing for the Paris shows for two nights.

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‘So I thought I was going to be camping for like a week before, but nobody else has ended up doing that so I thought two days would be fine to camp for that long.

‘I’ve got a tent and I’ve took a duvet and that’s it apart from my clothes – I have nothing and I didn’t come prepared at all.

‘I’ve got a hotel for the night of the show, so I’ll basically chuck everything in there and get ready, so I’ve got nothing on me.’

Ms Poulter is one of almost 73,000 fans who will fill the Scottish Rugby home ground each night.

She has only ever seen Taylor perform when she came out as a special guest at The 1975’s gig last year.

She says she thinks she will be ‘a mess’ when the singer starts performing on stage on Saturday and that she can’t wait to hear the singer’s 2017 Reputation album live.

Ellie, of Oxford, said: ‘I’m so excited – I’ve been waiting a year for this.

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‘I’m excited for the surprise songs but I’m more excited for reputation because that’s my favourite album.

‘I saw her when she came out with The 1975 and we got to hear Anti Hero for the first time ever.

‘I had a panic attack when she came out, I fell to the floor and was hyperventilating – I couldn’t breathe and I was very excited and I was crying a lot.

‘I’ll be a mess – I was crying when I watched the movie at the cinema so I’ll probably have a panic attack when she comes out.’

But Ms Poulter is not the only Scot to have a case of ‘Swiftmania’ as the Scottish capital has been gripped by the condition with huge signs in shop windows welcoming fans to the city.

Shops have been selling ‘in my Swiftie era’ t-shirts and the arena has even re-branded it’s Scottish Gas sponsorship to ‘Scottish Lass’.

Even the capital’s trams have been covered in adverts for the star’s latest album and hotel rooms have become hard to find.

Some hoteliers are charging a staggering £1,600 a night amid the shortage of rooms in the city.

The scale of Swift’s UK tour – which is also set to go to Liverpool, Cardiff and London – is said to be worth a boost to the UK economy of nearly £1billion.

A lot of that money will find itself in Edinburgh, with each fan predicted to splash out £848 on tickets, travel, accommodation, outfits and other expenses.

One fan even flew in from Texas with his wife to see the star before he goes blind.

Jared Dey, was diagnosed with diabetic retinopathy in both eyes in 2020 and was told he would be blind in 6 months after two surgeries failed.

He has already gone blind in one eye, and is losing vision in his second, but said he wants to see Taylor Swift perform with his wife Karina while he still has his sight.

Seeing the artist is one of the items on his ‘visual bucket list’ which included watching his wife walk down the aisle.

He said: ‘I want to see Taylor for for myself, and for my wife, she has been a huge part of helping me cross everything on my list.

‘One of the things that I’ve kind of realized in this whole journey is making memories for myself is also making memories for other people, and my wife is a huge fan.

‘Unfortunately, we were not being able to kind of see her in the States due to the price of the tickets. I wanted to make this memory for her more than anything else. So that’s that’s kind of where it all came from.

‘Taylor’s pretty much all she listens to all day long. So it’s it’s definitely one of those things where I know she’s gonna have a great time.’

The couple were originally coming to Scotland for a wedding that was planned way before the concert was announced, and decided to get the tickets when the date was revealed as not far from the end of their trip.

They paid £500 each for their tickets, which would be less than one ticket for the cheapest ticket in the States.

The surge in interest for tickets has caused anti-fraud organisations to issue a warning to fans that some offers to buy tickets online, especially on social media, could be scams.

But some fans are so keen to see the superstar they don’t seem to care how much money tickets cost.

Sophie Snow is among the most committed fans, with tickets to all three nights, and has meticulously planned what she is wearing to each show.

The 29-year-old said: ‘I think it’s going to welcome a lot of people to Edinburgh for the first time as a lot of international fans are coming.

‘I feel like these events aren’t as common in Scotland so it would be nice to bring a lot of people in because hopefully they will come back.’

As Ms Swift prepared to jet to the Scottish capital, Loch Tay was renamed Loch Tay Tay after the world’s biggest pop star’s nickname.

First Minister John Swinney even encouraged her to visit the popular loch.

Mr Swinney, who represents the area, said: ‘I really hope she has the chance to go and see Loch Tay – or should I say Loch Tay Tay – which is the most beautiful part of Scotland.

‘She’ll get a really warm welcome here and I know all of the Swifties will be so exhilarated by her presence in Scotland.’

Meanwhile, hundreds flocked to Murrayfield to buy T-shirts, hoodies and other merchandise in support of the US pop sensation.

Some began queuing from the early hours of the morning, and even took time off work to make sure they could join the queue.

Amid the excitement, Murrayfield Stadium had its Scottish Gas sponsorship rebranded to ‘Scottish Lass’.

One Edinburgh mum, who runs a TikTok account named Unorganised Mummy, documented her trip to the merch stand. In the clip she said: ‘Taylor Swift is playing Murrayfield this weekend, and you can buy merch on Wednesday and Thursday.

‘So I thought why not? Yes, the queue looks a bit intimidating but it really isn’t that bad.

‘Heads up, there’s only one lift. We queued up about 9.50am and everyone was happy. At 10am on the dot the queue moved really quickly.

‘Staff were coming round checking we were alright. You don’t need tickets to buy the merch if you’re there before 1pm.

‘I do have one gripe, there is no prices outside of the tents so you have to wait till you’re up there.’

To give her a ‘Scottish welcome’, The Reel Time Band, an 11-piece band made up of eight highland bagpipers and three drummers, performed her song Love Story on the steps outside the venue, while wearing ‘era-fied’ kilts.

The singer disclosed that she has Scottish ancestry at a gig in 2015, so the stadium sponsorship signage was also changed from Scottish Gas to Scottish Lass to highlight her link.

Roddy Deans, pipe major of The Reel Time Band, said: ‘Taylor’s tunes translate surprisingly well to traditional Scottish instruments.

‘We’re all huge music fans, so we’re delighted to help welcome Taylor to Scotland in the best way we know how.

‘It’s been a lot of fun recreating Love Story on the bagpipes and putting this ensemble together.’

It took the band 32 hours of rehearsal to practise their take on Swift’s song, and they have played for people across the world, including the royal family.

Bethan Hodges is going to the first gig tomorrow and revealed she was so excited to see Ms Swift, whose fans swap friendship bracelets, she has wept.

The 35-year-old said: ‘It’s my first time seeing her and I’ve been so excited that sometimes I cry about it. I’m excited for everything – the thought of trading bracelets makes me a bit nervous but I know everyone going will be lovely because Taylor’s fans are nice to each other.

‘I just can’t wait to see it in real life and hear the surprise songs.

‘I watch all the live streams of when she does other shows to hear the surprise songs and I’m just hoping she’s going to do one of my favourites.’

Eleanor Osada, 27, will be seeing Ms Swift twice this weekend and said: ‘It’s pretty much all on my mind at the moment. It genuinely feels like the run-up to Christmas.

‘The double whammy of having Paramore supporting the tour is the most mind-bending thing for me, as they’re my number one band forever.

‘As for the show itself, I can’t wait to experience the theatre of it all, and hear songs I haven’t had chance to hear yet – from Reputation onwards, for me.

‘It’ll be like an all-night singalong, and I’ll probably sing myself hoarse.’

There are some concerns the gigs could run into some issues, after the American singer has come under increasing pressure to break her silence on the Israel-Hamas war, with pro-Palestine concertgoers taking flags and placards to gigs in Madrid and Lisbon.

Meanwhile Portugal shows last week descended into chaos as furious fans tore down a fence after waiting for hours in the blistering heat to enter the Estádio da Luz stadium.

The arrival of hundreds of thousands of Swift obsessives has come with a plea from the City of Edinburgh Council.

Val Walker, head of the culture and communities committee, said: ‘Whilst we relish hosting the biggest and best events and want everyone attending to truly enjoy themselves, it’s important that we’re conscious of our residents.

‘We ask that visitors are considerate whilst enjoying our fantastic capital city.’

Twitter and Facebook have each received thousands of posts from accounts advertising tickets for but the superstar’s Edinburgh shows at far below the rates of official resale sites.

But Nationwide Building Society has warned Swifties looking for tickets to be aware of scams.

Research by the company revealed that the chance to see Taylor Swift is the most likely event to have been affected by fake tickets (20%) closely followed by football fans seeking tickets for the Euros (18%), the Wimbledon tennis championship (15%) and the Olympics and Paralympics (15%).

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Last year alone, more than 8,700 people reported they had been a victim ticket fraud, with a total of £6.7 million lost. This works out to an average loss of £772 per victim.

It seems extra caution should be taken when purchasing tickets through social media with 28% of scams taking place here – of which 60% occur on Facebook (with 80% of respondents aged 35-44 saying they’ve bought fake tickets via Facebook), ahead of Instagram (45%), Tik Tok (33%) and X/Twitter (17%).

But the tour has caused controversy with some Scots after it was revealed this week that charity bosses have raised fears that rough sleepers in the Scottish capital are being offered temporary accommodation up to 100 miles away to make way for fans flocking to the city.

Amid the pressure for rooms, Shelter Scotland said a number of the people it supports have been sent by taxi to Aberdeen and Glasgow. One was offered a place in Newcastle upon Tyne.

The housing charity has said it is ‘a blatant injustice’ for homeless people to be ‘in direct competition’ with tourists.

There is no evidence of homeless people being removed from accommodation where they are already staying.