eric the red wrote: "It was all good except the White Heather Club, which was appalling..."

The White Heather Club wasn't to my taste either, but it's not a good idea to dismiss the inclusion of this show on a BBC folk night dedicated to those years - the fact that it drew large audiences means it must have represented some kind of folk-ish music to a significant number of people in Britain at the time. Imagine mainstream terrestial TV of today broadcasting a regular show that focused on any kind of folk music, no matter how diluted. The fact that it was desperately, cringeworthily mainstream means it may have found its way into the homes that folk clubs didn't reach and perhaps encouraged some people to dip their toes into the revival when they wouldn't otherwise have got involved. And NormanD, to liken it to the deeply offensive Black and White Minstrels is surely a bit extreme. Yes, they were Scottish showbiz-lite performances that weren't exactly 'traditional' (and that word's a minefield it's probably best not to get into when you consider that most of the "folk" in Scotland of the time were more likely to attend showbizzy events than folk clubs), but they weren't non-Scots uncle-Tomming it up in an outright racist and demeaning way.

Sorry, I just worry when our concepts of good or bad taste affect how we view past cultural output. We should be glad there's at least some archive stuff still available. And some of those less controversial clips in the main Folk Britannia programme were fantastic!