I'm with you on this. Whenever puny clapping breaks out it's unbearably tense because you're waiting for it to peter out, as it invariably does.

I hate the clapping as well. It is the worst kind of herd behaviour (even when it isn't out of time).

At the recent Steely Dan gig in Liverpool the girl immediately to my right was both refreshed and exuberant and determined to heartily duet with Donald Fagen on every song she knew (everything prior to Two Against Nature). Clearly any remonstrations were not going to be peacefully accepted. So I was presented with a conumdrum; either to let this annoy me and become increasingly irate throughout as The Dan progressed towards their encore, or to adopt a zen-like calm and enjoy both the sounds coming off stage and the environment. Luckily she didn't have a bad voice so I decided on the latter and occasionally even joined in (and corrected her timing in Aja).

I suppose my point is that this level of unwanted participation is almost unavoidable so one can a) accept it b) get an ulcer or c) a punch in the face.

The thing that really hacks me off is the distracting light from mobile phones being held aloft.

On Portishead's PNYC album, there's a version of Roads recorded at some European festival (I don't have the album handy to check). The audience clapping on that sounds so out of place that I can barely listen to it (and in its original form, it's my favourite Portishead song).

Thankfully I haven't experienced too much of this kind of thing in my own gigging experience.

I saw the National in Dublin a couple of weeks ago - a great live band by the way - and nearly collapsed at the hilarity of people trying to clap along to 'Fake Empire'. Try that one.

Perhaps funnier though is to see how people clap - hands in the air or a polite clap along? - and to see their faces as they realise they're the only ones still doing it.

There's a Sigur Ros song that has a long silence in the middle and the last time I saw them lots of people whooped and cheered rather than staying quiet.

It didn't bother me so much, but on the messageboards the next day there were lots of people complaining about new fans who didn't understand that you are supposed to be quiet during the silent bit and that they'd "ruined it". Mind you the boarders were quite up themselves and were sneering at the fact that said new fans "don't even pronounce the band name properly" or didn't know the early stuff.

AND, in 1988 I went to the Amnesty International gig at Wembley, Springsteen headlining, there was a fan behind me who sang all the words to all the songs, very loudly, right in my ear. At the time I really minded, but now I look back almost fondly at the person who was so obviously a massive fan.

I sing along, but I do it quietly!

Duran Duran at Earl's Court a couple of years back - rather portly gentleman in front of us who was singing and dancing enthusiastically to every song (and shaking their moveable seating quite alarmingly), but particularly the new stuff that nobody really knew that well, as if to prove what a true fan he really was.

Not quite the same vibe but the worst thing is definitely the older generation at musicals, things like "Carousel", "The King And I" etc - as soon as the big songs come along, they're all "oh I love this one" and proceed to la-la-la along very badly. Either that or they get the bag of boiled sweets out and take forever to unwrap it. And there's a special sort of old person's boiled sweet wrapper designed to make the maximum amount of noise and before too long, you can barely hear the performance for the combination of sweet wrapper and audience members tutting.

Or people at those touring 70s disco music shows who insist on singing along badly with the likes of "I Will Survive", and when asked to put a sock in it, they say "we're just enjoying ourselves !" in a highly self-righteous fashion. Makes you wish you could vet the people you'll be sitting near when you book your tickets...

Twats waving their stupid mobile phones about almost ruined the wonderful Sigur Ros for me at the Hammy Odeon a year or two back. So I went to see them again in a venue where I could move around and move away from these morons.

The trouble with concerts is that everyone goes to them these days, not just music lovers and fans of the band.