I'm probably a bit late for this string, but I'd just like to pitch in for Show of Hands while I can. I'd never heard them until about a year ago, when a friend gave me the compilation Roots. Since then they've hardly been off my stereo. I listen to lots of different music - folk, blues, jazz, country and pop - so it takes an extraordinary band to dominate my listening so much. Sure, they come up with the occasional clunker, but when you're prolific that's going to happen. Bob Dylan's recorded a few turkeys along the way too. But the best of Show of Hands strikes a nerve in me that I didn't even know was there. Is it English? Is it British? Is it folk music? What is folk music anyway? No-one knows, and I don't care about the answer to any of those questions anyway. All I know is that three songs in at Cambridge Folk Festival this year, they had me in bizarre unexplained tears, playing a song I'd never even heard (The Dive, if you're interested).

Best song? There are too many, but if pressed I'd probably say that the instrumental break in Crow on the Cradle is one of the most achingly beautiful things I've heard in 58 years.