"please prove me wrong - please."

OK, I'll try. Well, for a start there's the songs of Richard Grainger, Brother Crow, Wendy Arrowsmith, Jim Radford, Anna Shannon, Penni MacLaren Walker...oh, and on Saturday, I heard Gordon Tyrell sing a superb song he'd written called Leeds Bridge. Not forgetting, of course, Mike Waterson. And that's just a few people I know of personally.

Every year Richard Grainger runs the Klondike Songwriting Award and there's always a host of really good entries, mostly from songwriters from the north east. This year it was won by Jim Radford, with Wendy Arrowsmith and me as runners up. From what I can see, the craft is still very much alive.