The comment about the house was a throwaway remark addressing the more general point about how MacColl gradually became estranged from the group. The programme was actually about the Critics Group, rather than about singing technique, whatever the title may have suggested.

What baffles me about this thread is that people are getting so hot under the collar about this 40-50 year-old slice of history. The kind of ideas discussed by MacColl and his acolytes / collaborators had a profound and often beneficial influence on the folk world we've all grown up with. On the other hand, there was much else going on at the time, independent of CG, that also fed into it. I see nothing wrong per se with enthusiasts getting together in an attempt to improve their performance and understanding of songs, however quaint some of their ideas seem now, and however divorced they might be from the way Sam Larner etc did it. The idea that there is one particular way in which folk songs SHOULD be sung is not something I hear getting preached from many pulpits these days, so why not listen with interest to these voices from the past, rather than dismissing out of hand the whole notion of trying to get better at singing?