Don't matter that your post ain't Anglo specific, Ralphie - p'raps I should have labelled the thread 'Concertina'.

LDT - I'm glad it ain't just me - I thought I was going to pull a rupture on the bellows :-).

Thinking about it, I can think of a few players of the English I have seen/heard in the flesh :

Alf Edwards ; Alistair Anderson ; Mary Humphreys ; Barry Whatsisface (who used to accompany Jim Carroll in his singing days) ; Peggy Seeger ; Lucille, who used to play at Singers' Club, MSG ; "The Varmint", of Whitworth (Manchester University) Morris Men ; Mike Harding ; Steve Turner (Fanny Kettle [sp. ?]).

I should quite have fancied the English, but I may be the victim of some (spurious ?) folklore as regards the concertina :

I have heard it said that if you start playing on one kind, it buggers you up for the other ; and, you have to be able to read music to play the English.

Well : in the immortal words of Paul Graney (RIP) "music", forme (BP) is tadpoles on telegraph wires.

Mike Harding was playing his baritone one night at that club in the boozer on the corner of Wilmslow Road/Barlow Moor Road Which had more changes of name than enough - Cavalcade - and he commented : this bottom F# has been known to clear the top deack of a bus in 4 seconds flat . . .