Peter Kay gave Paddy McGuinness private performance of his stand-up tour

Paddy McGuinness got the best seat in the house when his time came to see Peter Kay's return to stand-up comedy after years away.

That is to say that McGuinness got to see a private performance of the whole routine when he popped round to Kay's house and the comedian offered to show his mate the whole show.

When Peter Kay announced he was going back on tour again, it wasn't much of a surprise that demand for tickets to see one of Britain's most popular comedians was sky-high.

Fan buzz for Kay's return had been really strong after rumours of him working on his show in a series of 'top secret' shows started flying around, but then came the official confirmation.

Demand was so strong that fans almost immediately crashed the website set up to sell tickets to the gigs and then it kept crashing because so many people wanted to see him.

Twitter/@peterkay_co_uk

Unfortunately, some of the people buying tickets were scalpers who then tried to resell them at ridiculous prices.

So many people wanted to watch Peter Kay perform that the comedian announced a series of new dates for his sell-out tour. One person who didn't even need to buy a ticket was his old friend Paddy McGuinness.

The actor and comedian, who starred alongside Kay in Phoenix Nights, was chatting to Jamie Theakston and Amanda Holden on Heart Breakfast when he revealed that he got the private performance after the presenters asked whether he'd actually been to see the show.

McGuinness said: "Well, the weird thing about this is so he rings me up before he goes on the road and he says, 'come round, I'll talk you through a few bits and bats I’m doing on the tour'.

"Which you do when you’re writing stuff and what have you. You bounce it off people and stuff. So I went around his house and he’s talking through things. It's only me and him, his kids are out, missus is out, so we’re having a cup of tea."

"He goes 'I'll do it for you, I'll do the act'. I went 'there's really no need'. Slippers on, gets up, front room I'm sat on the couch. Full routine. So I've seen it."

Channel 4

This explains what McGuinness meant when he posted a tribute to Peter Kay on Instagram last year, which he ended by saying 'haven't got tickets' and 'don't need any'.

There you go, a top tip for anyone wanting to beat the queues to a hugely popular event and see it without tickets is to just have been great friends with them over the course of a lifetime - doesn't sound that difficult.

As for a potential career reunion between Kay and McGuinness, there's been talk over a potential Phoenix Nights reunion and McGuinness has previously said he reckons it'll come back at some point, but trying to get everyone together at the same time is pretty difficult.