Then they realised that between them they would run out of songs halfway through the first evening

Don't be daft. My 52 Folk Songs project, recently completed, eventually saw me singing and recording 99 traditional songs; a few of those were Irish and one or two American, but a good 90 of the 99 were British & most of those English. I learned a few of them for the recording, but equally there are several songs I know that got left out; I reckon I've 'got' at least 60 English traditional songs. (Mind you, I have been doing this for a while - I started singing at folk clubs back in 2003.) Put me in a room with five or six folkies with 40+ traditional songs each, and we won't start to repeat ourselves for a good long time.

Sorry for the slight thread derail, but that perception that English folk song consists of Thousands or more, No John No and Glorious Ale really bugs me - it's totally unfounded, and I think it deters a lot of people from exploring the ocean of old songs that's out there. A two-hour radio programme devoted to traditional songs from England (and Scotland) would be superb. (And they could always lighten the mood with a few tunes.)

theleveller - I don't know why you care what 'traddies' (like me) think. People like me - who turned to traditional songs because of how different they are from the singer-songwriter mainstream - are a tiny and basically voiceless minority; we're never going to determine who gets awards or airplay. When are the anti-traddies going to get it into their heads that you've won?