Tickets for the New Year's Day gig were for Brighton residents only

Twenty thousand tickets, sold online to Brighton residents only, were snapped up within five hours on Thursday.

But the �30 tickets began appearing on auction site eBay almost immediately, priced at up to �500 for four.

A beach party held in Brighton by Fatboy Slim, whose real name is Norman Cook, in July 2002 ended in chaos when 250,000 people turned up.

Council-approved

The New Year's Day gig, called the Big Beach Boutique 3, was officially announced on Monday.

Mr Cook said: "It's still subject to licence, and I'm very superstitious, but we're 99.9% of the way there."

The DJ said the police and coastguard had approved the plans, which were backed by the council.

Brighton and Hove City Council leader Simon Burgess said the 2007 gig would be "completely different" from the one in 2002, with one tenth of the audience in a contained area.