'Al - perfect example of bad manners from the audience but, to be fair, did you do your homework at the Preston club? Don't get me wrong, no-one should be subjected to jeers but maybe you were just playing the wrong club for your music at the time. I think I said earlier that 'folk' is far to wide a definition and one man's meat etc.'

I was a young guy at the time. I could piss rings round most of the people in that room as a musician. I was totally into Woody Guthrie at the time.

Why, because he wrote about the world in front of him. There was him and Ewan. Everyone else thought the band Played Waltzing matilda was pleasingly modern. It was all right to talk about the first world war - ladies dancing at Whitsun etc. but not the world we lived in.

And that's what I wanted to do. Write about the shit I was going through as a young teacher in an inner city school.

I thought where I was, was a legitimate place to be. I still do. they should have respected it. And I sang in tune and knew the words. But i was treated like the village idiot.

some idiot singing The Mole catcher (unaccompanied natch) from an exercise book, that was de rigeur absolutely tootsie poo.

What has killed this movement stone dead is the attitude - my kind of music, right or wrong; in tune or out; words and tune remembered or totally forgotten; boring or utterly monotonous; tuneful or tuneless.