I flashed on this vision - upm on stage in a a folk festival, and youm doon't have a pint of beer in your hand, you have a bunch of bananas instead.

And that stops you getting nervous?

Well, as Sir Thomas Beecham said, you should try everything in life except Incest and Morris Dancing. (Except I'm not with him on the Morris Dancing).So bananas it is...

The "sing something you are sure you know" idea is ok - but it can be scary when you're singing something you know better than you know your own name, and then the next line just vanishes.

They always say that the best thing to do then is to go back to the last line or the last verse and keep going round until it sorts itself out. But when it happens it's hard to remember to do that. I tend to desperately improvise some line that fits in. Nine times in ten people will think it's just an interesting variant, if they notice it at all.

Always remember, faulty memory is how folk songs get better over a period of time. It's our friend.

And other thing noone seems to have mentioned is make sure you're singing the song in a comfortable key - which is probably about a semitone or two higher than it would be in private. (I find what is a comfortable key on the night sometimes by singing the song into a tuner, without any kind of musical instrument, maybe in the car, which is the best place to practice a song anyway.)

Kevin