When I first heard 'The Raggle Taggle Gypsies' at school, at age ten, I liked it immediately. I didn't think, "hhmm, obviously an English song with, possibly, slight racist overtones on a number of possible levels and no longer relevant to working class people like me and my family (father a sheet-metal worker, WLD - about as working class as you can get!). By singing it I may be betraying my class and should be really concentrating on this new-fangled, American Rock 'n' Roll stuff wot other workers kids like me like, even though I don't like it".

I just liked 'The Raggle Taggle Gypsies'.

50 years on I now know about racism, the plight of the Romany people, the struggles of the British Working Class and Folk Song and the oral tradition. I've even met the great grand-daughters of Emma Overd, the Somerset singer who sang 'The Raggle Taggle Gypsies' to Cecil Sharp.

And I still like 'The Raggle Taggle Gypsies' and other songs from the British Isles like it. And I have a deep dislike, bordering on contempt for much commercial, popular music.

I also have a deep antipathy from those tiresome people who will insist that those things that I happen to like, or am interested in, are somehow politically incorrect or "not relevant" and I should be interested in something else. Such people remind me of those other tiresome people who insist on bringing Jesus into everything. Are you listening, WLD?