Am I the only one who is fed up with having to book tickets to popular shows months (and even years) in advance? I already have tickets for next summer. I don't even know if I'm going to be living in this country then. But if I didn't buy them early, they'd be sold out.

Why do theatres do this? I'm sure it's nice to have the money upfront, but this has to be a huge inconvenience for many people. This is one of the reasons why so many tickets end up on Ebay. Some of the sellers are good old touts, but there are also loads of people who genuinely cannot use their own tickets. I currently have 200 quid in credit at the National because of a friend's scheduling conflict.

It's getting to the point where I'm scheduling parts of my life around theatre dates. This can't be right.

What do the rest of you do?

I normally buy the day of performance. When i went to NY last week i had 3 shows booked before I went and got the other 7 there (For Xanadu, Tale of two cites, TOS, Young frankenstein i got the ticks less than an hour before they started).

Only ever book in advance for new stuff like hairspray when it had just opened but even that was just afew weeks before.

That works for shows that are never sold out. I wouldn't dream of booking in advance for something like [TOS] because it probably won't even be open by the time I get to New York. But what do you do when you know that something is going to be a hot ticket?

Say, you want to see David Tennant or Jude Law play Hamlet. You'd be very lucky to get tickets at face value on the day. Would you book 18 months in advance or risk not seeing it at all?

These limited runs would sell out in a month just as well as in 18 months. I don't think the theatres would lose any money by holding back ticket sales. But it would make it a whole lot easier for people to make plans.

I don't mind buying tickets months in advance. It does mean I have to get a little creative when the day draws near to make sure I can actually get to the show, but I'd rather have to rejig my life a bit than suffer the annoyance of missing out on something great because I didn't book in time. I'm more than happy arranging my life around my show schedule. I booked my RSC 'Hamlet' ticket ten months in advance, and I'm only regretting it a little because having to wait until November is quite frustrating! But y'know, I could be dead by Sunday, and that would make my tickets for mid-September useless, and they weren't booked months/years in advance by any stretch of the imagination.

Mind you, I don't expect everyone to have the same theatre-going values as I do. I have a very dear friend who also booked her 'Hamlet' tickets months in advance, but real life caught up and she couldn't use them. And she's legitimately a massive fan of the play, whereas I just hate missing out on things. The transient nature of theatre is quite appealing in some ways, but terribly upsetting in others.

I think they probably would. Very few people are regular theatregoers, especially in places like the West End. Most of them go to the theatre once a year at most. When they want to see a show they'll look around to see what's available, and if they can't get tickets for their preferred show they won't monitor the situation and wait for more tickets to be offered. They'll buy a ticket to something else instead.

If you're selling tickets and someone wants to buy one then you sell it to them there and then. You don't give them an opportunity to change their mind because chances are they'll never change it back.

It really doesn't bother me. Partly because I'm obsessive about booking holidays way in advance and they're the main thing that would affect use of long pre-booked tickets (already have next summer's trip booked!), and partly because the number of times I was unable to use tickets due to circumstances intervening is minimal - a few cases of illness, one bereavement. Stuff that could affect me even if I'd booked a short time in advance.

Theatres might lose out by dropping far-in-advance sales but they could compromise with limited late releases, as often happens with concerts - I've been to many "sold-out" gigs, having missed the initial ticket sale, by just checking back every now & then, especially within 2 weeks of the event. It's a system I like a lot as, apart from allowing late bookings by those who missed out or couldn't plan far in advance, I thnk it has other benefits too.

I am sure that is exactly why they do it. They can use advance box office take to fund the upfront production costs - it is like a free bank loan. Given that, I don't think they should whine too much when tickets appear on eBay. I always think a way for them to maximise their upfront take would be to progressively increase ticket prices as opening night draws near, so those booking a year in advance get a cheaper ticket (say 75% of nominal face value) than those booking the week before (say 125% of nominal face value). So they cash in on "sold out" productions and organised theatre goers like us get cheap seats. Other industries (airlines, trains) charge booking-time-dependent rates for the same seat. Any producer can use this idea if they want, I won't charge commission.

I live about 2 and a half hours away from London so i usually do book my tickets in advance. However, for the last 3 weeks I've been living down here and have been buying most of my tickets on the day or a day in advance. I've seen 10 shows (ok my tenth is tonight!) in the last 3 weeks and had really decent seats for all of them. The worst I've had is a side view for phantom on the front of the upper circle and even that wasn't too bad.

Regional Theatre is very different though. I live close to the Birmingham Hippodrome and whenever I want to see a major tour there (blood brothers, cats, fame, mary poppins or next years WWRY) I have to book months in advance to get a decent seat because it's a bit of a naf theatre to see a show in.

Deciding on the best length to allow for advance bookings involves more than most people realise.

Make the booking period too short and people will be unable to get the seats they want, so the booking period needs to be long enough that the number of people turned away is small enough to ignore. If a show is selling well then the booking period will be correspondingly longer. (For most West End shows a six-month block of tickets released when there are three months of the current block remaining seems to be a reasonable pattern.)

On the other hand, long booking periods take away flexibility. Once you've sold tickets for a particular block of dates you can't easily cancel performances for special occasions or for renovation work. If you want to change the ticket price you either have to wait until the next block of dates is released or change the price for unsold tickets only. Increase the price and you don't get the benefit of the increase for the seats that are already taken. Decrease the price and the people who already have tickets moan loudly and create bad publicity. It follows that long booking periods are best avoided unless the current period is running out of seats.

On top of all that, the money isn't actually yours until after the performance. You can put it in the bank and earn interest on it, but it's not until each performance is over that you can be certain you won't have to give the money back. Therefore although a long booking period may seem like a good way to bring in extra money to cover a sticky patch in a show's finances, the show is effectively borrowing from the future and the debt will have to be covered.

This is the reason why a sudden extension of a booking period for a show that is known to be selling poorly is a sign of imminent closure. There are disadvantages to long booking periods and the only good reason for setting them aside is when tickets are selling so well that customers are being turned away. If that's not happening then a long booking period (a year or more) is a sign of desperation, as the show tries to borrow money from future performances in the hope that custom will pick up enough for the money to be repaid.

But what happens when a play isn't sold out? No more last minute deals or standby if the price on the day is double that of the price three months ago.