Richard Bridge has never, to my knowledge, ever clapped eyes on me and certainly knows me not at all yet persists in mistaking me for someone else - some impresario maybe? - that I am not.

(Who's Charlie Pride anyway?)

The musician friend I referred to earlier who now lives in a land where the tradarts are taken seriously and receive adequate state funding has vast experience of ACE applications from both sides as he once had a day job assessing them as well as having successfully obtained funding for his own work. Forms filled in haphazardly by clueless "f*lkies" invariably gave him the biggest headache and made him ashamed of his own association with the genre. He now teaches and gigs wherever proper remuneration is forthcoming (i.e. rarely in Britain).

The very little I know of Richard Bridge is that he has a well-paid day job and thus probably gives never a thought to such considerations. I know not, furthermore, how he conducts himself at festivals but suspect he is one of the "f*lkily"-clad, tankard-waving perpetual amateurs that rampage around seaside towns making a bloody nuisance of themselves and saddling the genre with an even worse name in the eyes of the general public.

My reference to the lifelong musicians who live and play in your very own neighbourhoods was for the edification of those who seemingly imagine the "f*lk star" to be a species let out of a cage to perform on stages nowhere near where you are. On the contrary, everyone has them on their doorsteps, they are part of their communities and some even survive on their earnings, but not many in this country.

Richard Bridge persistently imagines I live out my life in the professional concert world but the truth is I rarely go near it, thus reinforcing my conviction that he's thinking of someone else. I have conversely, in the past, been banned from parts of the circuit for writing less than favourably about the nefariously greedy activities of certain self-styled luminaries, one especially who took 45% of the artists' gross fee for himself.

I have never promoted music myself (in this country anyway). The climate is just too unfavourable, given the hostility and ridicule of the majority who fail to understand it and the overall ignorance of that "minority group" whose interests it is supposed to serve. Since its components are so disparate and warring, anyone pursuing such a pointless aim is on a hiding to nothing.

I believe adult literacy tuition is available cheaply or even free. Perhaps providers could be encouraged to subscribe to those dinky Mudcat ads to encourage clients from among those incapable of reading and assimilating posts and thus spewing out replies consisting of such unremitting tripe.