Sorry Jim, that wasn't meant to be patronising, I was trying to convey that I also regard traditional music as important. But folk clubs have always embraced more than traditional music. My preference is trad, but I have heard plenty of good music in folk clubs which wasn't traditional, and plenty of performances of trad which have bored me rigid.

Where will young people discover folk music, now the clubs have declined? Serendipity, I suppose, just as most of us did. It will usually be a chance encounter with folk that leads people into it. I doubt many people discover folk at a folk club - they come across it elsewhere and that leads them to visit venues putting on folk music to hear more. In our day that meant folk clubs, today there are other options.

Some young people will have been introduced by parents who are folkies, or parents of friends. They have the internet - they use music streaming services which recommend new music based not only on what they have listened to before but what their friends are listening to. There is plenty of folk music on these services so it is quite possible that folk will be among the recommendations. For those who want to seek out the real thing, VOTP is on Spotify.

What they don't seem to be very interested in is sitting in the back room of a dingy old-man's pub with people old enough to be their grandparents, and who can blame them? We wouldn't at their age. They do things their own way, at venues which may or may not be called folk clubs. They go to house concerts and festivals. They are both listening to and performing folk music, and often to very high standards.

Times have changed, and there are other gateways into folk besides folk clubs. But I made this point several hundred posts earlier.