So - they're not all perfect all the time. However on many, many occasions I'm sure all the people mentioned above have been perfect, and it's rather sad to hear these people in the "worst performance" category. I also have one or two sorry experiences when hearing performers I was really looking forward to, but the very worst performances I've heard have been from very amateur performers at folk clubs - which is what you might expect.

Let me add some positives to some of the negatives here.

Leon Redbone: Waterford two years ago - superb. Funny, quirky, great singing and whistling and guitar playing. An enthralling evening.

Van Morrison: One or two times at the Dome in Brighton. In good voice and good humour on both occasions - and, yes, I've also heard of occasions when he was truly disappointing.

Warren Zevon: on "Later with Jools" (TV) not that long ago - excellent.

And so on.

The fact that people can quote horror stories about "names" in the business reminds us that the names worked hard to become "names" in the first place. :-)