Always hesitating before applauding any public performance for fear of being the first to start clapping

….Or even the only one. At classical music concerts one doesn’t necessarily clap just because the music stops , for instance between movements of symphonic works, and to do so marks you out as the one ignorant yob in the audience and is highly embarrassing. However when these do eventually end you’ll notice a race to be the first to clap among the aficionados  – almost before the music has died away –  and they are just showing off that they literally ‘ know the score’. In the theatre there is often some confusion as to whether one should clap at the end of the scenes of a stage play , and an audience sometimes finds itself sitting in stony silence listening to scene-shifters moving the furniture around and bumping into each other in the dark. You feel awkward – you  think you ought to applaud if only to encourage the actors who will otherwise write you off as a bad audience and start ‘walking it ‘ . It only takes one person to start the applause off  and the rest of the audience will instantly join in . It’s a primal instinct and here’s the proof . Start clapping at the end of a film in the cinema ( if it’s a good one) : even in a conventionally no-clap zone the whole audience will take you up on it and do likewise. But, yes, you just can’t bring yourself to be that one person.  

(Vinnie Heaps,Warwick) - QQQQ*