I'd forgotten Flook in the Middle School at Swanage some years ago. They really, really went for speed. Technically very able, but seemed top be playing for themselves rather than the audience. And the seating was too cramped for people to get out.

The same festival, a few years later, Ian Bruce - Scots, largely inaudible and incomprehensible in that setting. Material - so far as we could tell - a mix of maudlin self-penned and Rabbie Burns. Musically pleasant enough, but emphatically not working for us as songs. The realisation sank in that we had in fact probably heard him before - I recognised the left-hand fingering. Tolerated rather than enjoyed, but wanted to get the second half.

Belshazzars Feast were great in the second half, and , blow me, Ian Bruce got to lead the encore. What was funny - and funnier looking back - was various leading lights in the English Ceilidh scene muttering sulphurously in the pews around us. Conversation some months later confirmed our mutual view.

Gaughan being unintelligible is still the worst for me.