Couple of points I'd like to clear up.
I apologise to 'Snail' if I have been heavy handed in my criticism of his Q&A; I certainly did not mean to give personal offence. If what he described is club policy, no matter what I feel about it, there was no reason for my shooting the messenger; (bad week – not getting any better – but no excuse for bad manners!) For me, the description touched a raw nerve and took me back to the days when superstar *A.C* would stagger on stage, try (unsuccessfully) to tune his guitar, mumble something about "near enough for folk" and throw up over the front row – (good days my arse).
I find it more than a little ingenuous for WLD (there go my fingers again – WD40 this time) and others to describe a suggestion that, at the very least singers should be expected to sing in tune and remember the words, as being exacting, elitist or driving people away. Any creative endeavour (that's what singing is) should have standards if it is going to have any relevance to others. This is especially true when he songs being sung are not our own, but ones which have been handed down to us. Bad singing will put very few bums on seats (as is shown by discussions such as this), and those it does manage to attract won't not stay there for long. I wonder if those who find my suggestion so offensive have any minimum requirements of their own as to what should and should not be acceptable at folk clubs.
Folk singing as a majority/minority interest (WLD again).
I was referring to the period of the present revival, when I suggested that folk-singing was never a majority activity. However, as far as the period when the tradition was active and healthy, unless WLD (or anybody) has information as to how popular an activity it was, we know very little about the singers and their singing. There are certainly very few contemporary accounts of traditional singing in the UK. If it was as widespread as suggested, I would have thought that Johnson and Boswell, Defoe, Cobbett, Bulfin and other commentators on social life, might have mentioned it, if only in passing.
Here in rural West Clare, which is reckoned to be one of the hot-spots for traditional song in Ireland, singing took a poor second place to dancing and music and, apart from the 'rambling houses' (homes were singing was popular with the residents), usually it took place at kitchen dances during the intervals while the dancers got their breaths back and the musicians topped up their drinks. Truth to tell, we simply don't know how popular folk singing was (or very little else about it for that matter).   
Somebody asked was I a singer.
Not any more. I was a middling ability singer for 20 years, residented at around 10 clubs during that time and had a working repertoire of 300 + songs. I enjoyed singing when I sang well and didn't when I didn't. I sang at my best when I worked at it and when I could no longer put in the time to work because of other interests (collecting and research) I gave up on the basis that if I wasn't enjoying my songs, why should anybody else.
Nowadays I only sing at sessions when I am 'Mrs Doyled' ("you will, you will, you will") and then choosing only from the half dozen songs I know backwards.
Harry Boardman.
My early experience of Harry was the same as Folkie Dave's, at the Pack Horse on Bridge Street, M/c with Terry Whelan, Tom Gilfellon, the wonderful Terry Griffiths et al. I hitched 30 miles up the East Lancs Road every Friday night to be there. Harry could make your hair curl with his 'Flying Cloud' and 'Grand Conversation' and your toes curl with some of that dire 'Deep Lancashire' stuff. I residented at his club at The Blue Anchor, which tended to be curate's eggish but usually enjoyable.
At the risk of prolonging this thread beyond its sell-by date, I'm curious as to what (if anything) people expect from a folk club – as a minimum and as an ideal.   
Jim Carroll
PS I find some of the contributions to this and similar threads interesting and not a little irritating at times. On the one hand you have the 'head-in-the-sand' approach (akin to the Emperor Nero's "Fire – what fire"?) On the other there is the 'Wanna sing- wanna dance' school who think that by discussing and even (god forbid) arguing the toss on occasion, you will frighten the horses and scare off potential performers and listeners. It's been my experience that discussing problems helps to solve them and more damage is done by pretending that everything is fine when it obviously isn't. Anybody who takes the trouble to put finger to keyboard in these harangues, does so because they care about the music and wants to see it survive.   Those who don't want to be involved – please feel free not to be.