Diane Easby

obsessed by some dumb notion that by "professional" I mean "getting paid"

Well, one of your other major themes is that folk singers should be paid "properly". It does get confusing when different people are using "professional" in different ways.

So it seems professional means "in tune and time and knew all the words" which seems to be setting the bar pretty low.

Captain Ginger seems to think that the only alternative to professional is "crap performers .... inflicting their nasal bleatings, stumblings and fumblings on the public". I wonder which category I fit into or any of the other amateurs that make up the majority of the folk scene that I know.

Dave Polshaw doesn't seem to be doing a very good PR job for the Swinton Folk Club. Yet to believe that the population of Swinton is as talentless as he claims does take some swallowing:-)