The mistake may be to assign Bellowhead as being emblematic of anything - except a good time and the following hangover. Spiers and Boden can and do create authentic English folk music. Do they stop being folk musicians when they become part of a larger band?

Younger people may hear their rendition of The Rochdale Coconut Dance and wonder as to its origins who'd never have given it a second thought. Folk isn't a reductive enerprise with austere perfection at one pole, it's a layered cake of ideas.