Ruby Wax cancels four dates, Sheffield gets 48 hours’ notice

A Thursday at the Memorial Hall, killed on the Tuesday

Ticketmaster’s listing for An Evening with Ruby Wax at Sheffield City Hall Memorial Hall on 10 September 2026 now carries one word where the buy button should be. That word is cancelled, and the show it applies to is tomorrow night. Sheffield City Hall had trailed it in the spring as an extra date, with the cheerful line “Tickets go on sale Tuesday 3rd March @ 10am”. So this was a room that had been selling for just over six months, and then it stopped with about 48 hours to spare.

The announcement went up on Wax’s Instagram on Tuesday 8 September, and Chortle picked it up the following morning. It names four towns, and it doesn’t explain anything.

“I’m incredibly sorry to share some difficult news. Due to circumstances outside of my control, the remaining dates of my ‘An Evening With Ruby Wax’ tour will no longer be going ahead.”

That’s Ruby Wax, as reproduced by Beyond The Joke. The report adds one more line: “We’ve done everything we can behind the scenes to try and find a way forward, but sadly this is no longer possible.” The shows she names as gone are Sheffield, Durham, Edinburgh and Kidderminster. Exeter had already fallen over separately – Beyond The Joke reports that the 4 September date was cancelled too, five days before anyone said the rest were going with it, and nobody has explained that one either.

The tour’s own landing page, rubywax.carrd.co, was still listing six cities when I looked: Colchester, Exeter, Sheffield, Durham, Edinburgh, Kidderminster. Each one sits under a live “TICKETS – BOOK NOW” link. Nobody has taken the page down, so every one of those buttons is still there to be clicked.

How do I get a refund for a cancelled Ruby Wax show?

Go back to whoever took your money. Beyond The Joke’s report ends with an instruction to anyone affected: “please contact your ticket provider or the promoter X Fire Live with any questions about refunds.” If you bought through a venue box office or Ticketmaster, that’s your first call. If you bought through the tour’s own links, the promoter is your first call. That’s a meaningfully different conversation, and I’ll come back to it.

What you’re actually owed is narrower than most people assume. The Society of Ticket Agents and Retailers puts it plainly in its buying-advice FAQs. “STAR members are obliged to refund at least the event price of a ticket if an event is cancelled and the promoter has authorised refunds.” Note the second half of that sentence. The agent refunds when the promoter enables it. That’s why cancelled-show refunds sometimes sit in limbo for a fortnight while everyone insists they’re waiting on someone else.

Fees are the bit that stings. STAR again: “Some ticket sellers will also refund any per ticket booking fees you were charged but others will not. If booking fees will not be refunded for cancelled events, this fact must be included in the seller’s terms and conditions.” On the Sheffield City Hall Memorial Hall listing for the earlier 26 February date at the same room, the price band ran £36.50 to £57.95. A note added that “Ticketmaster charges a handling fee of up to £2.75 per order (not per ticket).” Per order rather than per ticket is unusually kind by current standards – a fact that says more about current standards than about Ticketmaster. The all-in pricing rules that now force the fee onto the flyer don’t force anyone to hand it back when the show dies.

STAR’s other line is the one people skip: “You should always contact the ticket seller from whom you bought your ticket(s); as most problems can be sorted out with your point of purchase.” Boring, correct, and considerably faster than posting under the comic’s Instagram, which is where most of the questions have gone instead.

The promoter mostly books guitar bands

X Fire Live is not a comedy operation. Its own site, xfire.live, fronts a roster of James Morrison, The Fratellis, The King Blues, Torridon, Niall McNamee and Ministry of Sound Classical. The Fratellis play Helix Park on 4 September, James Morrison there on the 6th. Its Skiddle promoter profile describes the brand in five words: “Promoting grassroots music across the UK”. At time of writing it lists no upcoming events at all.

The bit that matters for anyone chasing money is where the tickets were sold. The Durham and Edinburgh dates were listed on tickets.xfp.events, under page titles reading “Ruby Wax Live: An Evening with Ruby Wax – Durham – Gala Theatre” and “- Edinburgh – Assembly Rooms”. That is the promoter’s own ticketing rather than a third-party agent. When the seller and the promoter are the same organisation, there’s no independent party sitting on the cash with a code of practice to answer to. I’m not alleging anything by pointing that out, it just changes who you’re chasing and how long the chase takes. I could find no published statement from X Fire Live about the cancellations at all – the front page of the site was still selling The Fratellis and James Morrison when I checked.

A music promoter taking a theatre-scale spoken-word tour isn’t strange in 2026. The touring calendar is stuffed, as anyone who’s watched the number of gigs a working comic gets per week keep sliding while big tours pile up can tell you. Comedy looks like low-overhead music: one person, one microphone, no backline, no crew bus. The audience-building job underneath it works nothing like a band’s, though. A half-sold 700-cap room on a Thursday in September doesn’t behave like a half-sold gig room on a Friday. Venue staff at the Memorial Hall now get to spend Thursday evening explaining that to people who turn up anyway, because a few always do.

Absolutely Famous is still out on the road

The distinction Wax herself is most keen on is that this is one tour, not her whole diary. From the same statement: “I do want to reassure you that this is only in relation to ‘An Evening With Ruby Wax’ and does not affect my ‘Absolutely Famous’ tour.” And: “Those dates, later this year and throughout 2027, are going ahead as planned, and I’m really looking forward to getting back out on the road and seeing you there.”

Her own site backs that up with a long list of theatre bookings: Corn Exchange Newbury on 14 October, Buxton Opera House on the 28th, Devonshire Park Theatre in Eastbourne on the 31st. Then a 2027 run out through Theatr Clywd, Shakespeare North and an Irish leg. Two 2027 dates are still on sale on Ticketmaster: Absolutely Famous at Mandela Hall in Belfast on 25 May, and Vicar Street in Dublin on 23 May – Dublin first, Belfast two days later, which is at least a routing somebody looked at a map to build. That show is a clip-and-anecdote night built with producer Clive Tulloh, going through her old television. Different product, different production spine behind it.

Same performer, same month, one tour cancelled and one still selling seats in Belfast, and the variable sitting under that is whoever underwrites the hall. Comedy audiences have been getting a crash course in that distinction all year, from Banana Cabaret’s Balham room reopening at £20 with no refunds if the lineup changes to festival creditor lists.

If you’re holding a Sheffield ticket, the practical order is simple. Your point of purchase first, in writing, with the booking reference. Ask specifically whether the booking fee is included. Then check the seller’s terms for the cancelled-events clause, because STAR’s rules say it has to be in there. And if you bought a pair for the Memorial Hall back on 3 March, you’ve been carrying that £2.75 handling fee since March, and whether it comes back depends on a clause you almost certainly didn’t read at 10am on a Tuesday.