Spot on, Compton. Smooth Operations (John Leonard &co) production company and Radio2 management makes the decisions about what to play and MH is the poor old figurehead wot gets all the bashing for it. He gets a bit o'fame too; I doubt I'd turn the job down if I was offered it. (as if I could do it...)

As long as Radio 2's policy is dictated from on high to be "celebrity led" (management's actual words) it's never going to be a credible supporter of folk music by many people's criterion.

BTW, nice posting from Squeezy John yesterday in uk.music.folk illustrating this very point:

when we were coming up with our material I volunteered a demo CD to them and the feedback was that it was not radio friendly and that our treatment of traditional song was too involved to do justice to the tradition. Now, nothing has changed in our music that was influenced by those comments - but our popularity has meant that we are now Radio 2 friendly. And that's the point. The Mike Harding show is market driven which I do not agree with in the case of a public service broadcaster like the BBC.

My "disservice" vote, by the way, goes to crass journalists who trot out old clichés about Arran sweaters, fingers in the ear and hey-nonny-no "local yokel" morris dancers... just for a cheap laugh. Not clever, not funny, guys, it just reads like the tired ramblings of a pissed old hack running on automatic. Unfortunately your average reader is taken in by it.

Anahata