Parents go to extremes for Hannah Montana tickets

By Belinda Goldsmith

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Some U.S. parents, desperate after Disney star Hannah Montana's concert tour sold out in minutes, are going to extremes with some paying $3,000 a ticket and fathers donning high heels in a race to get in for free.

The demand to see Hannah Montana, the TV alter ego of 14-year-old singer Miley Cyrus, has made the show the hottest ticket of the year, with seats reselling at an average of $240 -- topping the Police, Bruce Springsteen or Van Halen.

With the 54-date "Best of Both Worlds Tour" kicking off in St. Louis, Missouri, on Thursday, local radio station Y98 offered dads the chance to be their daughter's hero by putting on heels and racing 50 yards to win four tickets.

"We got a couple of hundred phone calls from people asking questions about where to get high heeled shoes big enough for husbands and about 150 men turned up in high heels," Mark Edwards, director of programming at Y98, told Reuters.

He said the field for the "high heel derby" was narrowed down to 50 runners and won on Wednesday by Matt Austin, who was competing on behalf of his boss who has a young daughter.

Edwards said everyone had been taken by surprise by the demand for tickets to see Cyrus, daughter of country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, who plays a teen-ager living a double life as a young rock star on the hit Disney Channel show.

SURPRISED BY RESPONSE

"We knew the show would be big but not this big. There's been an outcry as it's been impossible for regular people to get tickets with scalpers using software to get them first," Edwards added.