"I just meant that they all seem to be well connected throughout the folk circuit, there aren't many 'unknowns' even if they are not people I have personally come across before."

I think this is because it's a friendly scene. If I hear a record I like then I'll go out of my way to get in contact with the person who made it to say hi. No one stays unknown for long because they get welcomed into the fold very quickly. That's because folk music is populated with (mostly) nice people.

"unfortunately. the folkworld like the pop world,and probably every other musical genre is full of jobs for the boys,networking ,backscratching etc etc."

Sorry Dick, but this is utter rubbish. The acts that you are doing down work incredibly hard and thoroughly deserve the accolades they get. The people at the top of the "pro media-friendly folk" tree (as it were) got there through graft, not "jobs for the boys, networking, backscratching etc" - thats just plain insulting.

The Claque are great and I would recommend them to anyone, but you can't compare them work-wise to someone like Lau who are playing nearly every day somewhere in the world and live out of a suitcase. At one stage Jon Boden was doing 250+ gigs a year - thats five days a week non-stop away from home, with hundreds of miles of motorway driving every single day. There is, therefore, a reason why it was him I saw holding 700 frenzied people in the palm of his hand last night and not Barry Lister.

If anyone wants to know the secret handshake to the "inner circle" I can tell you right now - play as many gigs as you can, be nice to everyone you meet (you never know who'll turn out to be important further down the line) and make records that ordinary people want to buy. Good luck - I look forward to seeing all of you at the Folk Awards next year.

"Jim Moray of course already had two Folk Awards (Horizon and Best Album) from a previous year, while Chris Wood also won Best Contemporary Song for One In A Million a couple of years back and also won an award last year as part of The Imagined Village."

Yes, but I didn't win an award - Andy Partridge did.