What sells is sex. How about getting Simon Cowell to manufacture boy and girl electric folk bands - put on a pussycat dolls version of ceilidhs, break out.

Since Ruth - whose judgement I trust implicitly - has done you the honour of treating what you wrote seriously, I might as well do the same, but I still think the stuff about Simon Cowell is a wind-up.

You really need to get out more. Seen Glorystrokes? The name might give you a clue!
Catch them here

Richard I seem to remember that you said in an earlier thread this year, you didn't go to festivals much, and that you didn't go to concerts much. You see that is the problem with doing that. You haven't seen any of the sexy bands that play nowadays. Four years ago at Sidmouth we had screams from a youngish audience for a youngish group as the dry ice spewed out and the sound system started booming in the late night extra. The attraction? Bryony Griffiths and Black Swan Rapper.

Ever heard young women about the attractions of Jon Boden? Or Bellowhead? I was with a couple of twenty year-olds last weekend (at their parents party I hasten to add) and one was so jealous of the other because the first one had seen him in the street!! Saul Rose seems particularly attractive to younger women or even slightly older women for that matter especially those around 40.

There was knicker-throwing at the jig competition at Sidmouth.Yes, really there was. Getting like a Tom Jones concert that jig-competition. And they weren't even the winners.

But if you just go to sessions you are starting at a disadvantage. It doesn't happen much in sessions so perhaps you have been missing things.

Buy a festival ticket Richard, you might be surprised at what goes on in the world of folk!! But from what you write you are at a great disadvantage - you are down south. It all happens up here once you get to Loughborough and further north.