not as popular as they were in the good old days because folk music isn't as popular as it was in the good old days.

I have to ask you where the evidence for this is.

Sure there are less folk clubs - but there were few festivals. Now there are loads of festivals with much bigger attendances than virtually any folk club had. In these "good old days" there were very few sessions outside the Irish community. Now we have a lot of festivals and a lot of participatory sessions.

There were virtually no summer schools such as Folkworks. There were few musicians other than guitarists - most people were singers. Melodeons and fiddles were rare. No-one would have played an oboe in a session as I saw last week.

Fewer folk clubs that is true but much more folk music now than there ever was.

As for social aspects I couldn't agree more and I am certainly one who met members of the opposite sex. And yes it was the music but there was the social life too. We used to have weekends away when we met the members of another folk club, dwile-flonked, danced and - played and sang, but we were a bit unusual I suspect. All in the name of social life. And if there was someone you fancied there was a good chance you could catch them again next week for people went each week.

But my point is that we went to the club every week knowing that almost certainly it would be good because we had great residents and paid guests and people who were non-residents would only dare appear when they were good. We had obvious standards. Yes of course the odd duff one got through but they were rare. So were singer/songwriters.

Often unpaid guests were often aspiring artists doing the rounds - "let me do three songs and book me if you think I am good". That's what people did in those days, so there was plenty of talent available.

I have no idea what the social life is like nowadays and my wife would kill me if she ever found me doing research into the subject.