His Valentine’s Day surprise blows.
A British man flew his girlfriend to Northern Ireland for a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert on Valentine’s Day week — only to learn he’d actually bought tickets to the Red Hot Chilli Pipers, a bagpipe band that’s more fit for a funeral.
Duncan Robb, of Chesterfield, England, plunked down cash for the $42 Belfast show in December and was surprised they were such a good deal, according to ABC.
“I thought what a bargain, there must not be many tickets left — and I snatched them up straight away,” he said, adding the “Give it Away” group is his girlfriend’s favorite band. “I saw the date was Feb. 10, so I could make it into a Valentine’s Day weekend.”
He pinned the row-Q tickets to a board in his house — but didn’t realize it was the Pipers, not the Peppers, until the couple flew to Northern Ireland last week, he said.
“It was only until the Wednesday before when my girlfriend wanted to know who was [opening for] them. She couldn’t find anything about the Red Hot Chili Peppers performing in Belfast,” he said.
When he learned his romantic gesture had gone awry, he took to Twitter to vent.
“Still can’t believe we’ve flown over to Belfast not for the @ChiliPeppers but to see the ‘worlds best bagpipe band’ @chillipipers … thought I’d got a rate good deal on tickets n’all. Had a nightmare,” he griped.
But Robb later said he and his girlfriend had fun in Belfast despite his flub.
“[We] just had to laugh about it. What else was there to do?”
An agent for the Red Hot Chilli Pipers — which bills itself “the most famous bagpipe band on the planet” — said it’s not the first time a fan has mistaken the bag blowers for the famous grunge-funk band.
“We’re always extremely careful in all advertising,” agent Douglas Gillespie told Newsweek.
“We’ve made sure to put kits and bagpipes on all the pictures. We would never ever try to pass ourselves off as the Red Hot Chili Peppers; we respect them too much,” he said.