A pizza shop owner has been given a lifetime access pass to the Warehouse Project after his impressive effort to sneak in for free.
Ellis Hall, 23, tried to fool security at Mayfield Depot with a fake ‘lifetime access pass’ he'd created on Photoshop, ahead of the Adam Beyer Presents Drumcode event on Saturday (October 16).
Despite being sussed out by 'confused' ticket scanners, the youngster from Darwen, Lancashire, was allowed into the venue to join his girlfriend and mates.
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But the following morning he woke to hundreds of messages from his pals, sending him a link to a tweet from Warehouse Project co-founder, Sacha Lord himself.
"A new one last night. Someone tried to get in, by making themselves a “Lifetime Access Pass to WHP and Parklife.” Caused a bit of confusion, but impressive," Mr Lord wrote.
He later added: "Just an update. I've been in contact with the little scoundrel and given him a Lifetime Access for effort."
Speaking to the M.E.N, Ellis, who is a keen graphic designer, said he now plans to go to Warehouse Project every weekend, and says he's even given Mr Lord a lifetime pass for his pizza shop in return.
"I have always been into graphic design and my girlfriend does the ticket scanning on the door so she got a free ticket for Saturday night," Ellis said.
"I thought if it's just volunteers doing the scanning it will probably be quite easy to get in.
"I had no idea what the lifetime access pass looked like so I just created something on Photoshop that I thought would look right and printed it off to take with me.
"All my friends were telling me it wasn’t going to work."
Ellis took the train down from Darwen on Saturday night feeling 'pretty nervous' as it's the only line up he'd been interested in.
"Although I guess I’ll be going every weekend now," he said.
"I was in the queue thinking I was going to end up looking like a right fool.
"There was a young girl scanning tickets and she looked at the card a bit confused. I told her I'd designed the graphics for Warehouse Project in 2017 and that’s why I had it.
"She got this other security guy to have a look and he asked if I had won the competition. I was just like 'oh yeah' - he knew I was lying.
"He said are you having me on and I just laughed and said yeah I am. He must have been impressed because he let me in anyway.
"I had the best night ever."
The following morning, Ellis said he woke up to hundreds of messages from his mates.
"I thought, oh my god what have I done," he said.
"Sacha had contacted my mate as he tagged me in his tweet. I didn’t even follow Sacha so I hadn’t seen it before then.
"It wasn’t what I expected my big news break to be. But now I will be there every weekend."
The train journey from Darwen is about 40 minutes each way, but Ellis said it would be totally worth it.
He has now offered Sacha Lord a lifetime pass to his pizza shop in Darwen, Eddie's Woodfire Pizza, if the night time economy advisor ever happens to be in the local area.
"If he ever wants me to do any graphics for Warehouse Project I'll do it, but I do really love my pizza," Ellis said.
