You've made my point for me, jon. Would you apply the term amateur or professional to Tony Sullivan? Now if you'd told me you'd learned all your tunes form Pat in the pub, who'd learned them from his Granddad in Roundstone it would be a different matter. The business element runs right through the folk scene. And that's a good thing - and it does not, as someone on the BBC site claimed (I'm sure you saw it), make us all "baubles of capitalist, corporate greed."

That attitude does FAR more damage to the scene than a few tie die tee shirts and swirly 'folk trousers.'

But obviously the tune session end of things tends to be the least commercialised, and has the strongest aural link back into the tradition. My guesstimate is an average, which includes all those clubs where you'll never hear a song pre Bob Dylan, (that's trad - using the 'second definition' - to many) and it's mostly Steve Tilston, Richard Thompson, and Christy Moore (well, they think he wrote them anyway)!