Classical musicWho would queue for eight hours just to secure a particular spot in the Albert Hall? As the Proms draw to a close, Stephen Moss meets the fans who take promming very seriously indeedSue Brady, who has hardly missed a Prom since 1968, has been queueing since just before 11am for a concert that will start at 7pm. Andrew Campbell, at the head of the queue for the gallery with a fat sci-fi book and a folding chair, hasn't missed a concert since 1990. Philip Trueman, proud to say he was head of the Last Night queue in 1993 ("my best season"), has had a bad year and only been to 28 concerts. He blames living in Winchester. Sergei Mironenko, a Russian living in London, has fared rather better: he has been to every one this year. Dick Bawden (Dick B to his fellow prommers) has been attending regularly since 1942 and can't talk to me because he's rushing off to a pre-Prom talk. That's enthusiasm.
Welcome to the world of promming. It is Sunday afternoon and this group of music obsessives is preparing for the 66th Prom of this year's season, Handel's oratario Samson. By arriving at 11, Brady secured fifth place in the queue for the arena - the standing area downstairs at the Royal Albert Hall where you are guaranteed excellent sound at the cost of £160 for a season ticket (just over £2 a concert if you come to everything) and a cricked back (even in this cut version, Samson runs to three hours).
For the past 34 years, Brady - "the matriarch of the Proms," as one prommer describes her - has queued to secure her place on the far left of the arena, at the front near the exit. From here she has a perfect view of the stage, of her fellow prommers and of anyone attempting to sneak in during the performance. When someone does, halfway through a transcendent aria in Samson, she shoots a waspish glance to the steward near the door, who obediently bars the way to the latecomer. Prommers guard both their territory and the purity of their musical experience. Brady talks with horror of a recent concert at which the ice-cream seller came into the arena while the orchestra was still playing: she has yet to recover from this "dreadful" experience.
Position in the arena - and in the gallery far above in the roof of the Albert Hall, which has its own band of devotees - is everything. Prommers do not queue to get in (their season ticket guarantees that), but to get in early enough to secure the position they have held for, in Dick B's case, 60 years. The front row of the arena, next to the rail, which can accommodate about 25 people, is the prime site. If you watch the Last Night of the Proms tomorrow, wonder at those who occupy these positions, because they will have been queueing since the early hours of Friday morning for the privilege.
Queueing, most of the hardcore prommers admit, is part of the appeal. Today they are picnicking in the sunshine, drinking wine or scotch and preparing their Last Night strategies. "Queueing is part of the fun," says Brady. "We discuss a lot of things and we play cards." This is a happy queue. But woe betide the cheats, who arrive, shove a coat down and then disappear. They are instantly excommunicated.
"If people just float off to the V&A for the afternoon, that isn't queueing," says Brady, suddenly fierce. "We tell the stewards [officious men in bright red coats]: 'So and so has not been there for three hours, sort it.' They don't do it twice." There are dark stories of prommers ejecting Japanese tourists from the queue for pushing in, but Trueman insists they are apocryphal. You are allowed to leave the queue briefly to eat, get a cup of tea or go to the loo, though Brady did manage to get to a church service on Sunday. After 34 years, she may qualify for special dispensation.
"What you must never do is push in," says Trueman, a voluble twentysomething in thick glasses. "That's the sin against the Holy Spirit. That will not be forgiven. We queue. There are no reserved places." Unfortunately, at that point a helpful woman from the BBC, which organises and finances the Proms season, arrives with my arena pass. The prommers look aghast. "We've had problems with people on BBC passes getting into the arena before the queue and the stewards have to send them back," says Trueman. "They're entitled to a place in the arena; they're not entitled to a place near the front." OK, I won't be standing on the rail, but I do just about secure a spot in the third row - a sort of top 60 position.
Working out how many hardcore prommers there are proves difficult. This season, the BBC has sold 860 season tickets for the arena or gallery - these are people who must have attended at least a dozen of the 73 concerts that have been running nightly since July 19 and end tomorrow. But what's a dozen to an Andrew Campbell or a Sue Brady? The former reckons there are only a score of truly hardcore prommers who come to everything and put in the hours in the queue, but this sets the bar too high. This is like Donald Bradman adjudicating on who can bat; this is queueing among the immortals. Brady is probably closer to the mark with her estimate of 150 people who come to virtually everything, of whom around 80 to 100 queue for hours to get front spots in the arena or favoured positions in the gallery.
But who are these people? What brings them here night after night? What links them? Music, they say, of course. What Brady calls that "glorious noise", which has captivated her since she arrived from culture-starved Lincoln in 1968 and got hooked on the Proms experience. And they must be believed - this is not, as I had suspected, musical trainspotting. The prommers' passion is palpable and the listening experience in the arena intense. Cough and 500 pairs of eyes will be trained on you; sneeze and you will be despised; try to sell ice-creams and your life may be in danger. Sue has missed the last couple of concerts because she had a cold - even she was too frightened of the consequences of a stray cough in, say, the rondo of Mozart's piano concerto in D minor.
But music is only part of it: promming is as much about belonging as listening. The prommers talk about the "community of the queue"; others see it as a village. For these two summer months, they are among a group of like-minded friends who take over this great hall. A succession of the world's finest musicians stand just in front of them, playing and singing for what must seem like their benefit.
Trueman supplies part of the answer to what this is about when I ask him what he does. "I program computers that control cheque-sorting machines. It's very boring; music is an escape." But there is something else that strikes me as I stand in the third row and watch a small knot of prommers extemporise one of their famous shouts. "Arena to gallery: short back and sides, not much on top, and something for the weekend please" (this is Samson, remember). Later, when they are announcing how much money their post-Prom collections have raised for charity (more than £20,000 this year), they do an "arena to audience" shout. And that's when I understand: they do not see themselves as part of the audience at all. They are as much part of the performance as the players: this is their stage too, and they are determined to hog it.
Hence the shouts of "heave ho" when the piano is moved to the front for a soloist to perform. "This was a joke back in the 1960s," explains one prommer. "Now it has hardened into a tradition." There are others. Every visiting orchestra is welcomed in its mother tongue: German, Finnish, Catalan, and in the case of the Australian Youth Orchestra recently with a cheery "G'day, and welcome to the pommie Proms." Whenever the orchestra leader sounds an A on the piano for the orchestra to tune up, it is greeted with the sort of rapturous applause normally reserved for Martha Argerich playing Brahms second piano concerto. This may have been a joke in 1928; again, it is now an inviolable tradition. This could never happen at the Philharmonie in Berlin or the Musikverein in Vienna. It could only happen in England.
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