Some clubs were 'purist' and frowned on non-folk songs and musical instruments, others like the Lloyd/MacColl camp, used accompaniment and saw the tradition as an inspiration for creating new songs. I was a part of this latter crowd; I even regarded Dylan as worth a listen before he 'popped out' of the scene and went for the big bucks. I admired songwriters like MacColl, Seeger, McGinn, Tawney, Pickford and the many others who were creating in the folk idiom – it was really what we were about. With the Radio Ballads I really thought we'd made it – the perfect marriage of the tradition and newly written songs.

Jim, can I just dig a little deeper and draw you out further on this point of "creating in the folk idiom"? I'm interested in this because, whereas there appears to be a fairly clear chalk line drawn around the songs passed down through what we've called the oral tradition and the "folk process", the grey area which fuels part of these Mudcat debates is precisely this folk idiom.

I wouldn't claim to be a great definer of the folk idiom, but my sense of it is that the composers of the newly written songs were writing in their own voice, about the world around them, about their community, using the ballad and verse and song techniques of their predecessors. Can we perhaps take two or three examples of such songs and do a spot of comparison? Purely in the spirit of debate.

My first example is a song written by West Country singer Roger Bryant - "Cornish Lads" - which, in succinct language, describes the pain of the decline in the Cornish fishing industry and the tin mining industry. Great tune, great words, great point - sung by a local man about the world he inhabits. (This, as it happens, was sung unaccompanied beautifully in Lewes last Saturday by local singer Mike Nicholson). Using your definition of the folk idiom as a marriage of tradition and new composition, I would class this as a worthy example.

My second example is a song by Scottish singer Bert Jansch - "Needle of Death" - which, also in succinct and imaginative language, describes the death of a friend of his through heroin. Great tune, great words, great point - also sung by someone about the world he inhabits. Different theme, of course, but personal and direct. Now, whether you consider this to be in the same folk idiom or not, I don't know. It's a much older song than Roger Bryant's, of course, and from a different milieu. It's certainly very different in feeling and style.

The point I'm somewhat laboriously trying to get to is where, in the spectrum from McColl, Tawney et al to Jansch to Bryant - and beyond - is the next chalk line drawn? What, then becomes acceptable and in the folk idiom, and what is unacceptable and beyond the idiom - or the pale? We can pronounce - and agree - for example, on the boredom of hearing a not very good couple singing an Abba song from words and chords on a music stand in a folk club (I would certainly be bored). But at what point on the long line which connects, however tenuously, the songs that "fit" the folk idiom and those that don't would you say "stop"?

It's a bit like the old joke about the millionaire who says to a woman, "If I gave you a million pounds, would you sleep with me?" She thinks a bit and then replies, "Yes." He says, "If I gave you a hundred thousand pounds, would you sleep with me?" She thinks a bit longer and then says, "OK". He says, "Would you sleep with me if I gave you a fiver?" Outraged, she says, "Certainly not - what do you think I am?" He replies, "We've established what you are - we're just haggling about the price."

I should just add that I remember the scene around the time of Cyril Tawney and Seeger and McColl - too young to be part of it - but certainly conscious of things like the Radio Ballads.