the point you are missing OldNicKilby is that the people we are talking about here, are for the most part, unassuming folks with no aspirations to being a professional performer, who will get up and sing purely for the love of it, and probably because they see it as a way of supporting 'their' folk club.

As I said, did it matter that things went wrong with the floor spots I referred to earlier, not one iota!

I think you may also need to differenciate between a 'floor spot' at a club with a booked guest and a paying audience, which of course is the scenario the original article is aimed at, and a singaround, where there is no paying audience, and is, usually, a gathering of friends or aquaintances getting together for self entertainment, and in that situation, I would certainly expect people to be tolerant of less than competent singers/musicians, as if they are not, it defeats the whole object of a singaround, which sould be welcoming and all embracing.

There are those that expect the entire pub to fall silent for them when they sing at a singaround, and there are those who are not so far up themselves, and sing for their own pleasure, but it seems you would want to exclude them from singarounds!

I wonder, what do you do, are you someone capable of keeping the attention of an audience for a couple of hours, or just the armchair pundit who of course knows it all?