I never learn, do I? I thought I'd post those links as some older readers would enjoy seeing favourite artists from 30 years ago, and younger ones could marvel/ titter at the way we were. I should have known that my stalker would pitch in and cause a row.

For what it's worth, you didn't get asked to make Open Door programmes, you had to put up a very good pitch for them and work at getting them. They also had to be made for/by an established organisation, not individuals or commercial operations. It was 1982, folk clubs were on the way down, and I had been co-opted onto the NEC of the EFDSS. It seemed like a good idea to put a taster of the good stuff that was around the folk clubs at the time into peoples living rooms. We all did it for free, all the artists did it for free, the folk club venue gave it for free. The BBC budget wouldn't have bought you Val Doonican's rocking chair on a normal TV show. I still think we did pretty well. What few adverse remarks we got at the time - other than several complaints about the absence of "folk comedians" - were bizarre stuff like "why didn't the women wear make up"?

Traditional performers (by which I mean older source singers and musicians), then as now, were virtually never seen in folk clubs, partly because they would be in an alien environment for many of them anyway. Whenever I ran festivals through the 80s I always booked and put on traditional singers and musicians - like the Coppers, Bob Roberts, Oscar Woods, Billy Bennington, Bampton etc - but not in formal concert situations with audiences sat in rows as in this TV prog, where they would have been like fish out of water. I could have pitched to make a programme about traditional singers and musicians, but it would have been a completely different programme (think Blaxall Ship film) and others would have done that better.

Why not just enjoy this little period piece for what it's worth: probably not a lot, except that as it turns out there's bugger all else on film to document that era. Which is hardly my fault . . .