Surely there is a difference between heckling from those sat watching you and those at the rowdily back propping up the bar. In your immediate audience the friendly banter is more audience participation, poisitvely contributing to the entertainment, whereas drunken interjections from the back tends to be negative contributions from those who are just in the wrong venue on the wrong night.

Rightly or wrongly though, we have a long established culture of tolerance and equality in UK clubs and sessions, where we patiently listen and warmly applaud acts even when they are frankly not very good, or clearly can’t sing to save their life. I suppose there is always the hope, or fear, that one day they might be famous, and we can always say we saw them when they were just starting out. Cue anecdotes about Paul Simon.....