Thousands of tickets for the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park will be up for grabs in Oxford tomorrow.

The city has been chosen as one of six places outside London to distribute some of the extra 55,000 passes for the star-studded event.

The tickets will be available from the New Theatre, in George Street.

They will give music fans access to Hyde Park, south of the Serpentine Lake, to view Saturday's concert live on giant screens there.

Tickets are available from 3pm, but theatre bosses expect queues to line the city's streets hours before doors open.

Concert organiser Sir Bob Geldof announced the extra passes yesterday, following concerns that thousands of people would turn up at the park without tickets.

The concert will be the largest ticketed event ever to be staged in the UK and aims to raise awareness of poverty in Africa as part of the Make Poverty History campaign.

The London concert, one of eight taking place this weekend, will feature Coldplay, Elton John, Madonna, Pink Floyd, Robbie Williams, Paul McCartney, Keane, The Killers, Stereophonics and UB40.

About 150,000 tickets for the concert were originally allocated through a text message competition.

Joel Barnett, spokesman for the New Theatre, said: "We are delighted to be only one of six venues outside of London to have been chosen to distribute these tickets and consequently to be part of the largest ticketed event in history.

"We have been issued with a sizeable allocation of tickets."

Mr Barnett could not specify exactly how many tickets would be available in Oxford, but said: "The tickets will be spread across all venues, but here in Oxford we'll have a good slice of the cake.

"We are advising people to come early to avoid disappointment and anticipate there being a great demand for tickets.

"We are also arranging extra security."

Tickets will be issued on a first-come, first-served basis and there is a limit of two tickets per person.

Tim Hughes, Oxford Mail music writer, believes the tickets will go fast.

He said: "Oxford is a city that's always been big on music and is full of music lovers.

"This is a great boost for them and a chance to get in on something that's going to be the biggest gig of the year, if not the decade.

"It's an event that everyone wants to be part of and for those people who missed out in the text competition for tickets this is a great second chance.

"I'm sure it will prove to be massively popular and I'd expect to see people camping out and queueing overnight."

Doors will be open at the New Theatre until 7.30pm and will re-open on Thursday at 10am.

Tickets will also be available in Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Manchester and Southampton.