A terminally ill Coldplay fan has described her VIP concert experience as the night of her dreams, despite missing out on talking to the band, who cancelled a scheduled meet and greet.
Brenda Courell was sporting a hoarse voice on Monday after attending Sunday’s show with her son and Friday’s concert with her best friend.
The 55-year-old from Donacarney, Co Meath, almost missed the VIP tickets for the lower Hogan Stand in Croke Park on Sunday as they were undetected in her email’s spam folder for almost a year.
She was gifted the tickets by the band’s PR agency, who had read her appeal last year saying that seeing Coldplay in Dublin was at the top of her bucket list.
Brenda had been given a prognosis of three to five years due to stage four cancer but, unbelievably, this was scrapped in recent months due to the shrinkage of two tumours, which has left her in partial remission and discharged from palliative care.
“I have such a hoarse voice now after all the singing. The concerts were just incredible,” said Brenda, who was also given two tickets by a kind-hearted donor for the show on Friday night.
“Friday was amazing and my best friend Catherine Tobin and I did so much walking to get there which took a lot out of me, but it was worth every step.
“Those tickets were given to us by Wendy Jameson from Duleek in memory of her brother who had died in New York just a month before she heard about my appeal.
“But Sunday night with my son Killian was the most emotional night of my life. It was the night of my dreams, to be there with my son.
“We were told when we got there that the meet and greet had been cancelled but we weren’t told why. I was a little bit disappointed initially but no, I’m so incredibly lucky to have even been there.
“We had seats almost on the pitch, we were that close to the stage in the lower Hogan Stand. The atmosphere was amazing. There were so many children and families there and everyone was just hugging each other.
“On the way in, I spotted Billy McGuinness from Aslan because he lives near me and then, of course, out he comes on the stage with the band to sing Crazy World, which had the crowd going wild.
“We were seated beside good friends of Chris Martin who asked us back to an after-show party but I was just too wrecked to go. I’m so proud of myself to have been able to do both nights but I’m just exhausted now. I’ll be resting a lot this week.
“To sing ‘Fix You’ with my son in that atmosphere, looking out at Coldplay was beyond words. Nothing will ever come close to that experience again.”
