Dick, they might be meaningless claptrap to you, but I don't see how Cristian or anyone else is going to have any hope of undertaking an academic study of the transmission of songs without understanding the concepts "tradition" and "revival". Are there such imperceptible differences in kind between Walter Pardon and Martin Carthy or Caroline Hughes and Kate Rusby that we don't require terms to define them?

There might well be no "traditional singers" (see, you find the term useful, too!) in 100 years' time, but I don't think it's too great a leap of the imagination to envisage Vic Gammon's successor on the 2107 Traditional Music Course at Newcastle, asking his/her students to prepare an essay entitled "The custodianship of English traditional song passed from the rural working class to the educated urban middle class during the period 1950 - 2010: discuss".

Yes, Alec and Greg, football chants are one of the last great citadels of the oral tradition. At Stockport County yesterday (County 2, Wycombe Wanderers 0, going up, going up, going up) there was a pleasingly wide repertoire, from 1970s favourites - suitably altered for 2007 - to songs I'd never heard before. Songs parodied included "Wild Rover", "Knees Up Mother Brown", "Oh Susanna" and "La Donna E Mobile" amongst others.