ORGANISERS of Devizes Festival are delighted that ticket sales for this year's event are up by nearly 50 per cent on last year even before the box office opens to the general public.

New festival chairman Margaret Bryant said: "It's been a flying start with ticket sales to Friends of the Festival selling quickly."

Among the hottest tickets are comedian Arthur Smith’s show At Your Service and an evening with actor Brian Blessed. There are also just 23 seats left for the Café Scientific discussion Has Science Failed To Save Our Oceans? with Dr Simon Cripps.

Mrs Bryant, who took over the festival's top post this year, said: "We’re delighted that the programme has proved so attractive with our friends and hope that bodes well for sales to the wider public.

"Friends can still buy discounted tickets, so join up to take advantage of benefits for this festival."

Tickets for most events are now available to buy online and throughout this week 8,000 festival brochures will be delivered to houses in and around the town and several hundred more will be mailed out to those further afield. Brochures will be available from retail outlets and businesses in the town centre, libraries, pubs and villages shops.

An eclectic range of performers from the poet John Hegley and Mexican band Mariachi to Terry Waite and Showstoppers! with their improvised musical are appearing at his year’s festival, which runs from June 3 to 21.

Actor Brian Blessed is still remembered by many for one of his earliest roles as PC ‘Fancy’ Smith in the BBC television series Z-Cars and since then his career has spanned a variety of performance from Shakespeare to musicals.

But apart from acting he is an adventurer - the oldest man in the world to get to 28,500ft without oxygen and to trek to the magnetic North Pole on foot – a wildlife ambassador and a raconteur so he clearly has plenty of fascinating storytelling material.

Terry Waite CBE, the former Special Envoy to The Archbishop of Canterbury, became front page news when he was taken hostage in Beirut and held for 1,760 days before his release in November 1991. Since then, he has become an author, lecturer and patron of several charities, and will be talking about his first venture into fiction – a comic novel entitled The Voyage of the Golden Handshake.

Best known for stand-up, Arthur Smith has become one of comedy's elder statesmen: an Edinburgh Fringe stalwart and a club compere since the early days of the alternative scene, he still uses many of the same gags today. He's also become a regular on Radios 2 and 4, one of TV's Grumpy Old Men, and a writer.

Events take place at many different venues around the town, including Devizes Town Hall, Corn Exchange, The Wharf Theatre, various public houses and a number of churches.

For more information or to find out how to book online visit www.devizesfestival.co.uk. The box office opens at Devizes Books on May 20.