This is a long-overdue response, but it's been bugging me for days and days since I first noticed it and immediately had a question. Regarding The Villan's post of 13 Aug 04 - 02:37 AM about the open mic at Market Rasen, seventh message on this thread:

How can it be an "open mic" if you know all the scheduled performers beforehand? What's "open* about it?

In my experience (in the US, which of course might well be quite different from what goes on there in the UK), if the mike is "open," aspiring performers can show up on the evening of the show and be granted access to the stage/microphone/front-of-room/whatever.

Of course, those who wish to perform are expected to arrive early in the evening, to allow the MC/organizer a chance to set up some kind of ad hoc schedule. But if the schedule is already "etched in stone" before the evening begins, it's not what I recognize as an "open mic/mike" night.

I suppose that this is only a question of semantics, but then again, this whole thread is nothiing more than semantics, stemming from a request for definitions of a couple of common terms.