Look Richard, you suggested I didn't want 'proper folk music' in clubs. I've disagreed with you. You've tried and failed to pick apart my 'off the top of my head' list and now you're moving the goalposts. I said that if there was a folk club locally putting on these sorts of acts I would happily go. In fact I would go even if the place was a flea pit with rubbish beer and all the charm of a pubic toilet.

I don't have a problem with old people. My dad's one. So are some of my friends.

Of course I don't expect Bellowhead to play folk clubs. Erm, I may be a few things but I'm not stupid.

I'm even prepared to concede that every single club in the country is a guaranteed brilliant night out (except the ones I've been to that weren't) and I've just been incredibly unlucky. Except I know from what others have said to me that this simply isn't true.

Maybe after years of going to see non folk music, often in small venues where the gigs have been organised by enthusiastic amateur promoters, by comparison the folk clubs I've been to seem a bit shoddy, tawdry, dreary. I don't usually measure the pleasure I'm experiencing by the number of times I look at my watch, for example.

I think I'll just have to admit that I've not really enjoyed my local folk clubs, put it down to experience and leave it at that. If the people who go there all like things exactly as they are, good luck to them. I'll just have to stick to CDs and the odd festival and concert and get my initimate, small scale, live music experiences outside of the confines of the folk world. It's a shame, but I haven't got enough spare time to sit through not very good nights out on the off chance that one day I might not be disappointed. I don't think that's unreasonable.

And like the atheist jealous of the believer, I want to like folk clubs.

I liked The Bothy in Southport when I visited. Bit far away to be my 'local', though...