Last year I did a tongue in cheek magazine review of 2000 Awards where I put myself in the place of an average, uninformed UK radio listener. They gave an award to a song and didn't play the song, an award to Kerr & Fagan and didn't play their music, an award to Martin Hayes for best instrumentalist and didn't play any of his music. They gave two awards to Kate Rusby and only played her once. An award to Joe Boyd and Lucy Duran and did not say who they were or what they had done. An award to Topic Records and did not say why. The Folk Club of the Year was a club that takes place in a Golf Club Ballroom holding about 250 people, books weekly big name guests in a concert stage, has a resident band and no floor singers. They then played a four minute set by Eric Bibb who was there as a presenter, not a winner. When I suggested that an ordinary listener wouldn't know what the hell was going on, I got it in the neck from Martin Carthy, The producer, and the editor of a big magazine. These are the BBC's awards. They don't televise them. They don't give any extra air time to them - they hi-jack the single hour of folk music on their network. The awards are great and well done to the winners but as a piece of radio it is very uninformative. And if that single hour of cruelly edited radio supposed to be evidence of a BBC commitment to folk music as they say in "The Outlaw Josey Wales" - don't piss down my back and tell me its raining. I've just started this year's review. Watch this space. Bill Jones is at The Famous Willows Folk Club, Arundel on June 6th. I've been booking her since she was Belinda of "Moffat and Jones". Great talent!