There was a thread about this last year I remember. And probably every year the Mudcat's been around.

I was just getting ready to go into the Oxford University Folk Society's weekly session in a room in a pub. Standing pissing against a toilet wall, the old black slate type with a gutter at the bottom. A stranger next to me suddenly says "Have you hewrd - they've shot President Kennedy."

Which at first I thought was some jokers attempt at humour. But up in the room everyone was sitting round looking shell-shocked. Especially the Yanks, including the Yanks who you'd have thought wouldn't give a damn.

So we spent the evening singing appropriate songs, like the Shooting of President Mackinley, which is the one I remember, and Civil Rights songs and so forth I suppose, and the non-Americans racking their brains for stuff that wouldn't seem tasteless, but I can't remember what that might have been. Probably a few Irish songs. And afterwards drifting round to people's lodgings gossiping trying to catch up with the news, such as Jack Ruby doing his stuff.