Spawn of the devil....not quite. many of my best friends subscribe to some tradition or another.

theres this depressing thing going on though. Firstly - you think - oh its so sad that the folk clubs aren't full these days. then you go to a full folk club, and its usually full of the wrong sort of people.And you think we should be more exclusive, and the first thing we need to exclude is this f---ing awful music.

I think the tradition needs a major rethink. Mind you, I play the guitar and I think we guitarists see things differently. I think we should take on board Jimi Hendrix (and new music technology generally), and chuck out some of those long ballads. Not that theres a lot of people doing them - but they sort of underwrite and legitimise all the archaicspeak and incomprehensibility. they provide a backdrop for all these songs about the first world war and makes them seem up to date.

But seriously the next time, you're in a session and some bugger starts singing Sheath and Knife from an exercise book - you can't tell me the thought doesn't occur to you, 'I wish this bugger would take up cross stitch.........or something similarly inaudible'.