Perennial subject...

I always used to say that a folk club is somewhere you can get up and enjoy yourself and always get an appreciative audience who actually listen rather than treat you as background entertainment. It is great for that, but when you do branch out to other types of performance, you get a bit of a shock...

Many years ago at a folk club I was involved in, a locally well known performer who shall remain nameless did his bit and then, sat at the front, got his book out to read whilst others were performing! Didn't even get the message when he was asked, from the stage, if he had ever been chucked out of a library for singing?

Folk club audiences are a broad church to say the least, but just like any other artistic endeavour, you get people who are too focussed on themselves to notice the bigger picture.