May I ask how everyone deals with a really bad gig? I've just had a pig of one - and ,don't laugh, it was on Britain's March for Jesus day, so I'm not really even allowed a good swear! I did the first half-hour playing bass on the back of a lorry in a five-piece band, heading four hundred marchers up our main street - no problem at all, except for the speed bumps, and generally having a really great time. But our duo was to do a couple of guitar-and-harmonica songs at the end of the march, and in quick succession, the following happened – I stripped one fingernail playing bass on the band's last number, knowing that my first with the duo was to be a finger-picked ragtime. When the band finished, and while I still had my bass strapped on, the lunatic MC announced the duo onstage… I guess I was expected to pack the bass away, get out the guitar, tune the guitar, try and find some space to play at the business end of the PA, all in zero seconds. Then I picked up my small-body Tonewood, which has been a recalcitrant (there's a good Christian, I'm minding my language!) since I bought it six months ago – and the top E machine head actually seized up solid. I needed pliers to tune that string. And then… the PA howled, screamed and fed back with our duo begging the two professional sound men to help us get a level and a mix… to which they replied 'sorry, we're busy trying to get our portable CD player working!' An absolute nightmare, in front of a lot of people who know us. I dare not show my face in church tomorrow morning, I've packed all my guitars away in an upstairs room, and I'm even feeling scared to leave the house! Tell, me, please - short of slitting wrists and fixing a noose from the chimney, how does anyone else cope with an absolute nightmare of a gig?

- Ian B, Oxford