When you are out and about dealing with the public and someone isn't so keen to our kind of entertainment or makes a rude comment perhaps due to being inebriated, it's best to deal with the situation as tactful as possible.

You can quickly lose and audience or alienate yourself by being less than tactful in your approach.

My life is a complete analogy and as such, I use analogies often when articulating myself.
Here are a few of my thoughts on using tact with some of my analogies.

• Hold your tongue, until it's under control.
  
• Make your point without making an enemy.
  
• Close their mouth, before someone else does.
  
• Get your point across without "Stabbing" them with it.
  
• Make them see your lightning without feeling the "Bolt".
  
• Make your groups feel at home instead of wishing they had stayed home.
  
• Make your point nicely, but not quite precisely.
  
• Tact is golden not silence! You cannot ignore a rude comment. Re-establish control!
  
• Know how far to go and don't go over the cliff with your comebacks.
  
• Try to describe them as they see themselves. This really works!
  
• Treat them like they know what they are talking about. Bring them into the fold.
  
• Try to change the subject without changing your mind on what you were about to perform.
  
• Try to take the stinger out of their comments without getting stung.
  
• Handle those porcupines but don't disturb the quills.
  
• Rub out the mistakes, just don't rub their noses in it.
  
• Rub folks in your groups the right way.
  

This is perhaps my favourite approach to deflecting a rude guest in my sets;

• Step on their toes as you deflect them, just try and not ruin their shoeshine and you will shine gang!
  

Be Tactful not Tact"Fool"~Israel

Here's to Shiny tips!
All the best

Wonderful insight, sir - gracias! There are far too many performers (not just magicians) out there (both street workers and theatrical/indoor) that have no idea how to handle these situations properly. We all have (or should have) our comebacks and quips, but there is a right time and place for them, and using them in the wrong place at the wrong time will not only paint you as a terrible person, performer and entertainer, but it will also put everyone else in the same performance/entertainment genre in a bad light.

'Tactful, not tact-fool' is right!

My thanks Dr. Ayala...I've read some of your posts in other forums! Great opinions and ideas you have offered hermano.

Something apropo on this day of fools!

Well stated and very important to remember.