I'm pleased to say it's something that doesn't affect me. I'm one of those people who can quite happily step up in front of an audience without a set list and entertain for a few hours...!

However, when I was about 18 (over forty years ago...!) I was to play the church organ for a service for the very first time, but I froze and couldn't play a note. It was a few months before I was comfortable with it, and by the time I was playing folk gigs in the late 1960s I was completely over it.

I do understand that ability plays no part in stagefright - people who have absolutely zero ability seem to be quite comfortable when demonstrating that very fact...!

Mind you, if I'm within about half an hour of the start of a gig, I find I'm not at all tolerant of people asking me searching questions which are unrelated to the gig itself, so I must subconsciously be 'focussing'... perhaps that's stagefright related?