I've read the thread so far and am currently cogitating on my biggest frustration with a regular folk club I go to.

said club is quite small - 10 or so 'regulars', another 20 or so 'occasionals', and once in a blue moon everybody turns up at once. It's a far more fun evening when there are more people there - more voices to join in the choruses, a bigger variety of material... but when it's quiet it gets dominated by one of the regulars who seems to do most of the things listed above as pet hates - she reads off the words, stumbling and forgetting the tune as she goes, does songs that she happily announces she's only just found (or written) and then stops half way through... I'm sure you can imagine.

Now, we're a friendly club. Nobody has actually said anything bad to her (that I'm aware of) about her performances and we all listen carefully, try and join in the places she wants us to join in, and clap, politely if not enthusiastically. Various of the people who know her fairly well have, I think, made gentle supportive suggestions along the way, about type of material or delivery or whatever, and over the 5 years or so she's been coming a long she has improved a little tiny bit, and seems to really enjoy herself. She starts fewer songs, proportionally, than any of the other regulars, which is I think because she's self aware enough to realise that the applause for her stuff is sometimes a bit... polite shall I say.

Now, I don't have a problem with her coming and I want to be supportive... but I do worry that she puts other people off coming. The club is only just sustaining itself in terms of attendance, and we'd love there to be more regulars who are strong singers, so that every time it could be like the fun nights when all the regulars and occasionals turn up at once. But if someone new turns up and their first impression is that they'd have to sit and listen to bad songs done badly... they may well not come back. I do know quite a few local folkies who only turn up *very* occasionally and I know that in some cases it is precisely because of this woman. So the club suffers for the sake of being nice to one person.

so what do we do? unless she changes her attitude to the whole thing, I don't see her having got any better in the *next* five years either - maybe a tiny bit, but she's got a long way to go. The club might have folded by then for lack of numbers... or we bite the bullet and are a bit more bluntly honest with her, which might upset her and she might stop coming, which would probably be better for the club, although we'd all feel like horrible people – and I get the feeling half the people on this thread would condemn us for being cruel & unsupportive. Or am I wrong?