Snail,
Any club organiser who allows their club platform to be used for lazy or inept performers to practice, is doing nobody any favours. It is insulting to audiences (náive as they may be), who turn up expecting to hear good songs well sung (folk songs – if you call yourself a folk club - and yes, as Richard Bridge pointed out, there is a definition of folk song, and if you mean something else you should call yourself something else).
It is deeply patronising to pretend that poor performers are anything but poor; if you want to assist new singers to improve, set up singing workshops. If they can't or won't learn - tough, let them try something else (Monty Python's one-legged actor applying for the role of Tarzan springs to mind). Allowing bad singers to humiliate themselves in public is hardly going to help them develop or to continue performing. It is still possible to hear recordings of Florence Foster Jenkins making a fool of herself in front of a Carnegie Hall audience because her well-meaning (and very wealthy) husband booked the place half-a-dozen decades ago .
Personally I don't care if your guest list includes Joseph Taylor, Phil Tanner Jeannie Robertson and Sam Larner (none of those you quote in your posting ((can't remember hearing Tom McConville)) ring any of my bells – sorry). As far as I'm concerned, a club stands and falls entirely by its residents, they are the ones who make clubs relevant locally and ensure the future. Good guests should be the icing on a well baked cake.
What you described in your Q&A was crap and if that is what you present, that is the yardstick that you'll be judged by.
Les FC;
I believe there should be a standard reached before any singer attempts to perform publicly, for their own sake as well as for the club, for the audience, and for the future of the songs. It is not a particularly high one: singing in tune, remembering and understanding the words, showing some understanding of the meaning of the songs and the disciplines that the genre demands – no, not opera; for me, and I guess for you, folk-song implies folk style and function.
Perhaps those styles and functions might be a subject for a separate thread (this one is getting a bit ungainly).
I hope you were not serious about being sorry you starting this thread. I have singularly failed when I have tried to post to this forum as a member and I rely on people like yourself and the Cap'n for brain fodder.
Jim Carroll