Ah, now if you listened carefully, Donovan was of the folk scene because he spent a year or two bumming round europe being "bohemian" and this links him with the 'hobo tradition' as demonstrated by Woodie Guthrie......... Frankly it made no sense to me at the time, much like Donovan 'I'm working class, honest', himself.

On the whole I found it interesting. I was born in 1966 so I've no idea what went on at the time in question. I got into folk through Steeleye Span, because they had a popular hit single. My parents were into jazz and easy listening, so I had no idea the folk world even existed until my early teens.

I found the follow up programme a waste of time, why couldn't they just have included the few extra bits in the first programme? But I've got to say I've found the spoof funny, but that's 'cos I've met people like that in various worlds, not just the folk one.

The BBC has admitted, over the last few years, to how badly their archive has been handled. Huge tracts of film and VCR have been lost due to bad storage, programmes have been taped over (in the case of VCR) and much else has just been plain lost. For a long time there was an active policy of disposing of 'light entertaiment' footage as they had a lack of storage space. So a lot of stuff from the 50's & 60's just doesn't exist any more.

Unless the programme makers very actively went to private collections and libraries, I doubt they would have a huge resource to pick from - which, judging by the second programme in the evening, they couldn't be bothered to do.

Watching the programme did bring home to me how big the subject really is, though. 3 programmes just isn't going to do it justice.