"The old habit used to be for a singer to stick a reminder sheet to the side of the guitar unobtrusively........!

So true, and equally true is the discovery we made that Sellotape and Blu-Tack can be extremely dangerous around some modern guitar-finishes. I have four guitars, which cost between £2k and £4k each, and I'm bollocksed if I'm going to risk ruining the nitro just to keep some moaning old bugger, who's got a bee in his antedeluvian bonnet about lyric-prompts being 'offside', happy.

So I have my iPad, which (shock, horror) I put on a low stand (or on the table in front of me if I'm at a singaround/session, and which has set-lists, lyrics, keys, capo-positions, tunings and background notes for each song, and which I can glance down at if I start to dry. I generally don't need it very much, but I refer to it if I have to. I feel no shame - I believe I have sufficient performance experience (coming up to 55years, in several genres, amateur and semi-pro) to perform as well as many, and far better than some, whose mental processes are such that they don't need prompts/aide-memoires.

And I heartily agree with the poster above, who said that non-narrative lyrics are not as easily recalled as narratives. Some of my songs are narratives, but a fair number aren't, and it's the non-narratives I tend to get confused with.

It is a fact that, as I've aged, I find retaining 'stuff' more difficult than in my younger days, but I apply myself to learning my songs - something I suspect many of the 'Big Black Music Stand And Loose-Leaf Binder Club' don't even try to do.

And, when these kinds of discussions crop up, I always wonder why it's deemed perfectly respectable for a fiddler/melodeon player etc. to have sheet-music stuck up in front of him/her, yet a singer/guitarist who has the lyrics and chords in front of him is regarded as holding the music in contempt? Why don't fiddlers and melodeon/accordion players who play tunes from music get accused of holding music in contempt?