Memory tells me that I have never met Jim Carroll and yet we have known of one another since the 1960s. Indeed, starting around that time, we worked together in organising manageable folk club tours for the traditional singers, mainly from Scotland and Ireland, that we admired.
Since these days we have had discussions either by email or on Musical Traditions or here on Mudcat. Often we disagree. On this thread it has been because Jim sees virtue in Phoebe Smith and none in her brother whereas I am delighted that we have recordings of both and in their variety. All this is part of a wider disagreement about the nature of traditional singing style. Not that this difference is important except that, as Brian points out, it is a divergence of opinion that is being conducted on Mudcat without rancour and without descending to insult, which is some achievement compared with many recent Mudcat threads. It seems also to have the quality of making trolls fall asleep which can be no bad thing.

No, I am sure that I have never met Jim Carroll, but I have a sneaking suspicion that if we ever did meet that we would get on very well, like a house on fire, in fact, with the sparks of the heated discussions causing that conflagration. Being the sort of people that we are, we would probably ignore the 95% or so points that we are in complete agreement about and concentrate on the few where we could conduct a stimulating argument.