Ticket touts have long been a depressing feature of rock concerts and football matches... now they're using robot technology to beat you to a table at London's top restaurants.

The touts buy up reservations then sell them on to desperate diners for eye-watering fees.

Thanks to the now widespread use of online booking platforms, fine dining spots across the capital are being block-booked by so-called 'scalpers'. 

A website called Appointment Trader allows customers to bid on the bookings, where last night £403 would have secured a table for two at Notting Hill's Core by Clare Smyth on May 17, while a slot at Mayfair's Novikov would have cost £220.

Core by Clare Smyth in Notting Hill is among top restaurants where bookings are being bought up by touts to sell them online for extortionate fees

A reservation for two last night at the River Cafe was on offer for £284, and £256 would bag a May booking at Gymkhana in Mayfair. 

These staggering sums only pay for the booking and often cost more than the bill itself.

The lucrative business is made possible with simple software that uses bots to scour thousands of restaurants online and book vacancies on websites such as OpenTable, Resy and Tock.

Online reservation platforms have made block-bookings easier, with touts using fake names and contact details so they can sell them on without restaurants being aware

Touts are booking as many tables as possible using fake names, email addresses and phone numbers so that they can trade the bookings for small fortunes on Appointment Trader.

Restaurants will often be completely unaware that their customers are securing tables in this manner and are powerless to stop it without resorting to telephone-only bookings, which is likely to cost them sales.

James Chiavarini, who runs Il Portico in Kensington, told The Times he found the practice 'a little bit depressing' as 'restaurants are fundamentally a human-driven business'.