>the other thing was the prominence of the Scottish contingent throughout the whole evening.

Its a hushed-up secret that various Scottish record labels and promoters had a meeting with Smooth Operations at last years Celtic Connections (jan 2004) to complain that they were never included in the folk awards - hence their sudden dominance this year.

As for sound, over the last few years the standard of engineering at BBC outside broadcasts seems to have gone steadily downwards. Which is odd as they should be world leaders, and its not as if they don't have people with the skill and expertise (Ralphie?). But I've witnessed some of the crimes against audio engineering first hand, and I can't understand what has happened. At most live events you will find the contingent of crew who just want to smoke fags with "stage crew" written on their shirt, but at the BBC you expect a bit more than that.

The band I work with have now resorted to taking three different engineers to any festival or event being broadcast - one for front of house, one for monitors, and another to mix the broadcast sound. You just can't trust people anymore, which is a shame.