"There must be young people out there who are sick and tired of the X Factor music scene as it is at the moment"

There are and several have been mentioned already e.g Kat Gilmore and Jamie Roberts, and The Old Dance School, to name just two.

There are plenty of youngsters around who are interested in performing but before they can start climbing the ladder (if that's what they want to do) they often have to overcome withering prejudice at the most basic level. Even as an old fart who has no interest in doing anything above a grass-roots level, I'm sick to death of having to endure snide remarks in singarounds about singer/songwiters from Captain Birdseye impersonators who bawl out shanties in loud raucous voices and think that they're cutting edge folk professionals because they once had a booking for a 10-minute slot at The Cod Stranglers and Fish Gutters Club in Grimsby. I've seen quite a few very talented youngsters walk out of singarounds and folk clubs because of this sort of negative attitude and I suspect that many of them either give up with the 'folk scene' at this stage or by-pass the grass roots by going straight for stage performances.

It's not the enlightened people who book innovative artistes for concerts, festivals etc. who are the problem; it's the arrogance of the miserable old bastards who act as self-appointed gatekeepers at the front gates of folk music.