Thing to do, Les - is use that alcohol-based needs-no-water handwash stuff; like I say to the kids I work with when I'm storytelling - I don't want your germs, and you certainly don't want mine! This is ideal with Trumps & Gew-Gaws (Jew's Harps) too.

Otherwise, keeps your lips dry; I learned this sharing tabs round the back of the bike sheds, and in later years spliffs (in more enlightened singarounds). Warm a metal mouthpiece first so the moisture won't condense; Overtons were especially bad for this, in paticular the low-D and G 3-hole pipes - which I still have & love, but I replaced my low-D Overton whistle with a one handmade by my old mate Iain Wood over 20 years ago. Needless to say Iain's low-D is still my low-whistle of choice.

Check the World-Ethnic-Fair-Trade-Crafty type shops too; there's some lovely Indonesian 'suling' type whistles doing the rounds right now and at least one in every fifty (or so) is workably in tune with a tone to match (even the ones in the Blackpool Zoo gift shop) and there were some lovely lo-G (ish) bamboo whistles around a few years back with narrow fipples giving a bautuy reedy-recordery tone.

For the ultimate in whistles, check out the Fujara! Haven't got one yet, but it's high on the wish list (once Rachel get's sorted out with her new guitar...)

All this whistle talk and I can only remember two Irish tunes (Lord Mayo & Give me Your Hand) - but even when I played little else but the whistle I always prefered to (gulp!) improvise - even back in 1969 when I eight years old and my grandparents brought me a carved wooden whistle flute from their holiday in Yugoslavia. I've still got it too - you can hear it in the closing moments of Totentanz.