"One Brian Peters, there's only one Brian Peters"

Kind of you to say so, Steve, although I suspect there will be sighs of relief in some quarters. Good to hear that Tigers fans are fighting back against corporate theft of their song tradition, though it sounds like you don't have to suffer the 'official' goal celebrations on the tannoy yet.

I'm sorry to hear about Jim's negative impressions of unamed London folk clubs. As I tried to hint, in listing what I'd heard last week down in t'Big Smoke (no need to apologise for quoting me, Bryan), you (Jim) might be pleasantly surprised by the music to be found at Sharps, Musical Traditions, Cellar Upstairs, Walthamstow, Islington, Croydon and others.

CS: Yes, people from 'the outside' often seem to enjoy folk music when they find out that it doesn't necessarily conform to their own stereotype. "I can't stand folk music, but I liked that!" is always nice to hear.

Re the so far unpublished collections, I've had a look at quite a bit of the stuff in Carpenter and, wonderful though it is, what we are not going to find there is a whole body of old songs previously unknown to us. There are, however, lots of great fresh versions of familiar songs, and some examples of quite rare ballads. You might, of course, claim that Carpenter was merely following a collecting agenda set by others before him - so he would be unlikley to record anything 'new' - but that's another argument.

Jim has already detailed how almost every collector in the last hundred and twenty years believed that they were preserving the very last vestiges of the old tradition, only to be proved wrong subsequently. I still feel, though, that the conditions required for 'folk music' (in the old sense) to flourish are gradually being whittled away.