Nigel,
'Twas but a joke - weak as it was.
However, the folk song scene is notorious for placing itself above criticism - hence the decline in standards. More often than not any adverse comment regarding a popular (or any) singer on the scene is greeted with howls of..... (well, scroll back through this thread and you'll find enough examples - including the Cap'n's penultimate posting).
I repeat, anybody who gets up before an audience and sings, dances, paints pictures, writes books... whatever creative endeavour, does so at the risk of having their efforts commented on, favourably our otherwise.
Being benign is one thing, being uncritical is something else - but there again, I'm not a member of the Cap'n's lodge so I presumably have no right to an opinion.
Jim Carroll