Ah, bollocks to that. Let's not keelhaul Soldier Boy for a momentary - and uncharacteristic - lapse. It's not like the rest of us are angels anyway. Swallow hard and move on.

My guess is that few owe to folk as much as I do. Not only did I meet her at my first folk club, but falling in love with the songs helped my English tremendously (I was 20 and had only learned English 1 year before that). And even more, by being interested in the stories and events the songs mentioned, I started to get into the culture behind them, becoming "anglisized" I suppose.

A while later, I got my first and second jobs partly because of my (by then) good knowledge of English. And I got some of the best breaks at work for the same reason.

But even more important: through the years of growing up and growing older, folk music has been there in many guises, to cheer me up or help celebrate, to keep my feet on the ground when worldly success threatened, to help me express feelings through the songs of others. And when I came to my own "crunch" at 48, once more it gave me the opportunity to reinvent myself and gave me a new lease of life.

So I will always be grateful to James, Paul & Simon, Martin, June, Eric, Maddy, Dave-Ron-Ken, Jeremy, Johnny, heck I could be listing names till the cows come home. You can fill the surnames in, you know who they are.