Some time ago I went my girlfriend to a jazz club, something we don't do all that often. One comment she made was "Isn't it a relief to know there won't be a raffle?"

Where did this bizarre ritual come from? You don't expect to have raffle tickets pushed at you at an organ recital, football match, funeral, tarot reading or theatre performance. Folk clubs presumably got it from some other kind of public gathering in the Fifties, but what?