Bryan,
I have just re-read your posting and find that I was wrong to include you in the list of people who seriously suggested (and continue to suggest) that those of us proposing standards for singing in clubs seriously want auditions - your reference to such was one of a number of (somewhat facetious IMO) alternatives for choosing floor singers - I apologise.
The slanging match that is in full spate is getting us no nearer a conclusion as to what standards, if any, should be applied to choosing singers for the clubs.
Bryan dismissed my original example as a "strange lady of forty years ago" - (think I have got that right) implying (I think) that persistent bad singing isn't a problem - not in my (admittedly now somewhat limited) experience I'm afraid - as I have said in the past, it was one of the two major reasons for my quitting the scene altogether.
The last visit I made to a folk club was to a bleak, cold, unadorned (not even a poster) room with the thud of a juke-box bleeding up from the bar and an audience of around twenty people listening to a nationally known guest singing rather indifferent versions of songs - well indifferently, telling stories (not too badly) and playing tunes (competently-ish). The lowlight of the evening was a lady, obviously a regular stepping out to the front of the room and tunelessly stumbling her way through 'Danny Boy' from a crib-sheet. That was in a club I know to have been in existence for at least twenty years and it wasn't several decades ago - it was last year.
Here in Ireland the general technical ability of singers and musicians performing traditional material is streets ahead of most of the performances I encountered in the UK, - not to say that there aren't problems; there are, but they certainly aren't ones of low or non-existent standards.
Jim Carroll