yes, I suppose worrying whether someone's been 'voted in' doesn't quite fit most definitions of folk music. Anyway, Billy Bragg's involvement in traditional music alongside his own songwriting grows all the time.

Mind you, I was thoroughly depressed by the negativity of the last 15 minutes where a lot of singer-songwriters were given an inordinate amount of space to whinge about how they were being excluded from folk's mainstream. Well, Bob Dylan (or Billy Bragg, or even the lovely Shane M, if you like) was excluded for a while ... but his songs were good enough to stand on their own merit and to enter into the tradition. Can't imagine many of the navel-gazing songs I heard in this section of the programme following the same trajectory.

This is not the comment of a Luddite - there's great stuff out there, with genuine blending of traditional tunes and dance grooves and brilliant songwriting too, the Beeb just favoured the stuff that IS excluded over the stuff that isn't (where were Capercaillie, the Afro Celts, and the late lamented Martyn Bennett?). As for the romanticized Nick Drake/Vashti Bunyan/Beth Orton bits AGAIN ... oh, puhleeese!

And did they REALLY use June Tabor's spoken input without including her singing, or did I just miss that bit?

Oh well, at least there's some folk on telly!

PS Nutty - quite agree. Even the clips from the miners' strike showed the admittedly fantastic Roy Bailey and Leon Rosselson coming 'oop north' to help out. They didn't show Alex Glasgow coming home from Australia to play fundraisers, or Mike Elliott, or Jock Purdon, or ..... Still, I suppose there were a few notable bits (Eliza, Kate Rusby, Gaughan, Kathryn Tickell, Moving Hearts and Lou Killen ) that redressed the SE bias a bit.