It's a quarter of a century since I was retained as a music columnist and as I never contributed to Idiot's Guide To Veal Calf Butchery, it is unsurprising that "guest E grundy" is unaware of my output. My most recent job was translating contracts for a brewer about to set up in francophone Africa and last Easter (I remember clearly because of the need to haul the commissioner into the Small Claims Court for non-payment) was some tripe about homeopathy. Such is the varied life of a freelance writer / translator.

I sometimes dream of the day when it becomes unnecessary to castigate a certain brand of bloke as a patronising, purposeless prat but as this is far from dawning, I know not if I will ever turn again to music journalism. However I have never reviewed rubbishy stuff I dislike, preferring to return tickets / merchandise, so the chances of my touching a trashy C&W CD are less than zero.

A musician friend remarked to me the other day that the very thought of Mudcat rendered him, simultaneously, suicidal and homicidal . When aforementioned patronising prats on Mudcat mistake a perfectly reasonable (though not very edifying) query about a song in a soap as an invitation to assess the relative merits (?) of Corries / M Jackson covers in a parody of a TV "talent" show, I see what he means and despair. As someone else also remarked recently: home taping didn't kill music. Downloading won't kill music. But a Simon Cowell ethos and dumbed-down media trashing scarcely encourages the British people to treasure their cultural heritage or even take it seriously. I sure as hell won't be "chilling out" till the tradarts get the funding, support and recognition they deserve.