Let me go back to where I started to join in.

There's one peach where Bert tells Norma Waterson, that he was never booked as a guest after they left their club in Hull. Just for a moment, one glimpses the real fangs of the factionalism monster

He was never booked as a guest before they left their club either as far as I remember. Once he left, Norma had no say in who was booked - she had left. I did - I hadn't. Suppose you were recommended an artist who was appearing locally and you had chance to see them and they turned out to have enjoyed unspecified excesses and gave an awful performance. Would you book them on the off-chance that they might be good when they turned up at your club?

Well we didn't. We did book people on reputation and we booked people on recommendation and we booked drunkards - look at the list - but we didn't book people who couldn't perform.

It wasn't that he couldn't sing the "13th verse of the Dowie Dens of Yarrow" it was that he couldn't sing the second verse of songs he did supposedly know.