Brighton and Hove is getting fired up about the Olympic Torch relay.

Excited residents snapped up 10,000 tickets for a concert at Sussex County Cricket Club within 45 minutes of them being made available yesterday (June 13).

Brighton-based hip hop duo Rizzle Kicks are performing at the cricket ground in Eaton Road, Hove, to celebrate the arrival of the torch.

The torch arrives in the city on Monday, July 16 and leaves the next day. It will enter the city at Hove at 5.55pm.

Weekend of Olympic events

A weekend of events will take place on July 14 and 15 in advance of the torch arriving.

Diana Carden, 48, from Mile Oak, snapped up the last available tickets at Portslade Sports Centre in Chalky Road. She said she will take her daughters Melanie, 16, and Heidi, 13, to the event.

She said: “I wanted to get four tickets but there were only three left so I will fight my husband for it.

“My daughters are really looking forward to seeing Rizzle Kicks.”

Shannen Ellis, 18, from Portslade, said her family is emigrating to Canada so the event will be a lasting memory to take to their new life overseas.

She said: “I am really looking forward to the day. I hope to study photography at university in Canada.

"I will take plenty of photos of the torch relay to remind me of the day.”

Tom Jennings, 18, said he queued for an hour with girlfriend Bryony Reynolds to make sure they got four each.

He said: “I’ll take my mum, dad and brother.”

The manager at Portslade Sports Centre, Graham Whittaker, said he was very pleased with how staff handled the ticket distribution.

He said: “We could have given away twice as many. We had an allocation of 500 tickets and we were able to hand them all out in about 40 minutes.”