It seems to me that the advent of crib sheets has coincided with lower standards of singing at singarounds. Has one led to the other? Well, possibly.

All I can say is that there's a bloke who comes to one of the singarounds that I attend and every time his bundle of crib sheets gets bigger and bigger and he sings longer and longer songs. His voice hasn't improved though! He still mumbles and croaks tunelessly through these increasingly epic ditties. When its his turn, I contrive to head for the bar or the gents!

The other week, another bloke turned up with a guitar. He put his crib sheet on the seat of a chair in front of him and recited from it whilst bent over his guitar. His chosen material was a 27 verse ballad. All that I could hear was a Nic Jones guitar riff, repeated 27 times, accompanied by more, barely audible, tuneless mumbling!