Agreed. Folk music is too often a 'Cinderella' subject which people feel needs to be 'watered down' to be appealing to the masses.

This programme isn't aimed at entertaining the masses - it is educating them by showing them what they are otherwise missing!!

Lots of people are turned on to Folk by hearing it done properly - and in a proper context.

Yes, the programme is somewhat parochial. How else will it get its message across?! Non-folkies are only people who aren't folkies - yet!!

The programme's slot is only an hour - of which fifty minutes (or less) is actual programme. If Ali starts filling time with other stuff that, as Harry has pointed out, happens on either side of the slot, the fifty minutes will be eroded further.

Better still, why not harangue 'The Parlour' and the country slot to include more folk?!! ;^))