Heigh-ho, here we go again - the problem with folk clubs is floor singers. Readers of "Tykes' News" will know I've been banging on about this for years - this is an extract from a piece in 2012:-

Time to “nail my colours to the mast”. I’m a floor singer, and have been since 1965. A lot of my friends are floor singers, very talented musicians who can hold their own with any audience. Let’s not forget that some guests may not be all they’re cracked up to be – on more than one occasion I’ve sat through some quite well known act and thought “local singer / guitarist so-and-so could do as well as, if not better than this”. Yes there are floor singers who are not as good as others, but in my experience a lot of them are well aware of this and prefer to only perform on singers’ nights, and a good club will provide encouragement to improve. As for my own performances, I let the audience decide.

The festival scene in the summer is already more-or-less a “closed shop”, so do we want to end up with only concert clubs in the winter with no audience / local singer participation? All we would have to do is pay our entrance fee, sit quietly like good little boys and girls and listen to the pearls of wisdom from the stage above. Well I’m afraid the folk scene isn’t like that, and never has been like that. Participation, including floor singers, has always been what differentiates a folk club from other forms of entertainment.