When I go to craft shows, it seems that there are three sorts of stalls. There are the people with great technique, but they don't seem to have any interesting ideas as to what to do with it, and the people with some great ideas, but they just haven't got the technique, and the relatively few who have the technique and the ideas - and those are the stalls where you buy your Chrustms presents.

Well it always seems to me that Barber Shop tends to fall into the first category. Extraordinary skill, but not used to best effect. Singing the wrong songs, with the wrong feeling - for me, that is.

When I listen to a group like Coopes Boyes and Simpson, on the other hands, it seems to me - and if I'm wrong, correct me - they are doing essentially the same thing (even if there are only three of them), but picking songs that mean something and singing them so as to bring out the meaning. They are the third sort of stall.

But Barbershop can be fun, espcially when it escapes into the wild. I remember one time when a barbershop quarter, on its way to somewhere, dropped in to the Rising Sun in Eastwick one lunchtime, and decided to give the regulars a few choruses, and it was magic.