By Debbie McGoldrick

Let’s hear it for U2’s massive fan base in New Zealand. The band is set to play its first show in New Zealand in 12 years next St. Patrick’s Day, and tickets sold out within 90 minutes.

No surprise there, you say, and tour promoters added a second show to try and cope with the demand. Unfortunately — another non-surprise — scalpers got their hands on a good lot of the coveted ducats, and started selling them on a website called Trade Me for thousands of dollars.

Many fans, though, weren’t buying, at least not immediately. They posted fuming messages on the website that wished all kinds of dastardly things on the ticket touts.

“I hope you bunch of vultures choke on your profits. Swine,” said one.

“Genuine fans who wait for years for this opportunity miss out because of scum like you,” opined another.

It’s hard to blame genuine fans for displaying such naked outrage. Some went even further, offering up fake bids on the site to try and stifle scalper sales.

U2, naturally, are on the side of their fans. “I think it’s despicable. It’s a growing problem in major concerts and sports events and something needs to be done,” the band’s tour manager Michael Coppel said.

Scalpers — whose activities in New Zealand, by the way, are legal — make a living preying on the desperation of others, and there were some Kiwis who succumbed and bought tickets right away. A pair of tickets with a face value of $99 were sold for $806 — a nice Christmas gift for someone, no doubt.