Meanwhile... Martin Carthy - he isn't a writer... John Kirkpatrick, though, is very prolific. Without wishing to put John down in any way (I regard him as a mate, after all), Carthy is the bigger crowd puller of the two.

Interestingly, our local club had MC and JK on consecutive weeks recently (a most unusual occurrence to have two such big names so close together), and I think I'm right in saying the place was more packed out for the latter - although admittedly the difference in numbers was small, and there may have been other factors unknown to me that prevented people coming along to MC's gig. IIRC the JK gig set a new attendance record for the venue.