Richard, consider in the bowels of Christ that you may be wrong.

Look at all the things you lot have held your noses at the mention of. All the virtuosity that was dismissed. All the songwriters with cogent things to say, and fanbases, In fact one folkclub in Nottingham in its last throes only filled up when someone like Clive Gregson, or that chap out of Decameron rallied the troops from their webpages.

The Irish theme bars was probably the only time I made a living playing an acoustic guitar. When discos closed down the Irish Showband business, many of the musicians drifted over here and played in Coutry and western bands that worked the miners welfare circuits - strengthening immeasurably the domestic scene that stalwarts like Tony Goodacre and Brian Golby had nurtured. The folk comedians who predated the new comedy movement. The performance poetry boom, which had its seed in the Liverpool poets of the 1960's, but flowered into the rant poets like Nic Toczek and John Cooper Clark.

All English people, expressing themselves in terms that English people 'got'. People who have brought creative excitement into the folk clubs if they'd been allowed access and welcomed. People reflecting Englands magpie cultural identity.