My favourite: "No cats". A group was put up in a local farmhouse by one of the organisers. Alas, she had a cat, to which one of the performers was violently allergic. I found him kipping on a bench seat in the venue when I went round with the vacuum cleaner the next morning. They inserted the rider for the next gig they did.

One band with unreasonable riders; the Roumanian gypsy band, "Fanfare Ciocarlia". Actually, it wasn't the terms themselves; it was that they were written in German. I turned up at the venue to help unload sound gear and found the organisers frantically searching on-line dictionaries for a translation for "Kein Huhnefrikase". Luckily, I could point out that it probably translated as a greasy, gristly chicken fry-up.