Gnu,

You're quite right, it WAS impolite of me to ask him to stop playing the bodhran in front of others.

The situation at the time was that his bodhran was SO distracting I had actually lost my thread in the song.

I had a choice of:

(A) Stop singing after making a mess of the song.

(B) Politely asking him to stop, apologising for having to ask (in front of the audience, ie: Sorry **, would you mind not playing, it's made me lose track of were I am in my song') then carrying on singing.

I chose (B) because it seemed the right thing to do at that time, and it still seems right now, a week later.

The suggestion that the organiser of the club sorts the problem is a non-starter, when a problem occured at the club a while back his response was to stone wall the situation.

John