Hi Eliza,

sorry if you thought I was suggesting you were not part of the gang, or that the suits wouldn't have heard of you - that's so obviously not the case that I assumed it was a given! (And there are plenty of other artists who could and would have fitted the bill if there'd been room and they'd fancied it).

But I think you're worrying unnecessarily about this being some kind of ghettoisation. (Steeleye survived the humiliation, and they probably sold a few extra records. No real harm done).

I hear your point about relegating folk music to the past - but that IS after all folk's USP (and, like antiques, a lot of the point of it for a lot of people).

Smart marketing suggests starting from that, and then working outwards/forwards - which is exactly what you guys have done and fair play to you.

The opposite danger is that we only present folk as some disembodied modernist art from, which would risk breaking the link with history and tradition - or worse still, turning it into some sort of sociologicalist carbuncle.

If this had been the only exposure for froots music on TV this year I'd have agreed with you 100%. But it's not been, not by a long chalk. And it has to be said that if anything a majority of what has been aired has been quite right on, so maybe it was time for a bit of dressing up and mucking about. The tradition is chock full of it, after all.

I don't think this stripped anyone of dignity or sex. It was just tapping into the whole Les Mis/Sweeny Todd London Musical Hall swing, and no animals were harmed in the making.

Tom

PS And John from Kemsing, I do "accept the fact that too many viewer/listeners' on mudcat "are giving it the thumbs down for their opinions and observations to be ignored" - but then I'm not ignoring those things. Just asking those people to try to see the bigger picture and cut these guys a bit of slack. I'm not even sure that 'could do better' is appropriate, but words like 'rubbish' and 'terrible' and some of the quite personal attacks above are certainly not. (I hold to the view that you shouldn't write anything about an individual on a public web forum that you wouldn't say to that person's face. And this discussion has not changed my opinion).