Well as someone who has probably devoted as much time and energy to the folkscene as most people in a job, I've got to admit -I'm not all that proud of the state of English folkmusic. And I wish it were in better shape.

My generation at least as kids we knew the main English folksongs through the government schemes like the radio programmes called Singing Together. In my lifetime we had all these tory governments elected who didn't believe in the nanny state, didn't believe in society - didn't believe in anything except making money and turning the country into a cultural bloody wasteland. We interspersed that with Labour governments who didn't seem to believe in anything at all much one they got elected.

We let complete prats dictate to us what real English folk music was about - as though we weren't English and should have been the ones deciding that. In fact we did that with all the arts - I remember going to an Art Gallery once and seeing that the artist had just filled the entire floor area with twigs. Why didn't we say something?

Somehow I wish us normal folk had been a bit more 'professional'.