Bruce is right - it's nothing to do with why people do or don't go to folk clubs.

As for the Wild Rover, there's often a little, superior-than-thou social snobbery in musical circles. Like those guitar shops with notices on the wall saying, "No 'Smoke On The Water'". (I managed to get one like this put on the wall just for me in the old original Guitar Junction shop in Worthing - "No 'Apache'" - as I used to play it on purpose in different styles to annoy dear old Dave Crozier).

If some singer or other wants to sing "The Wild Rover" then let him/her. I too have my dislikes but I have to listen to them in patience. I can't, for example, stand Eric Bogle's "And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda", which was churned out recently, with appropriate grimaces and closed eyes, at a recent singaround. The song - to me, I emphasise - now seems maudlin and pointless. I heard Eric B sing this at the Laughing Fish in Isfield when he first came to the UK (1982?), and didn't care for it then.

But then I don't care for 'protest' songs or songs with social significance. I like cheap, light-hearted drivel from the 1920s and 1930s. You know - stuff with no meaning whatever. Tosh.