"I just hope that folk from outside the north east don't think we're all as miserable as the Unthanks".

The programme was extremely well produced and edited. I particularly liked the fact the fact that each custom was lingered over long enough for people to grasp the sense of it. Also, the extensive intercutting of modern and archive footage to convey the feeling of continuity.

But why, and let me say that I have nothing whatsoever against the Unthanks whom I've never met and never heard, did they have to dominate the whole thing. Unthanks being tutored in sword dancing. Unthanks digging the Antrobus play. Unthanks tossing pancakes. Unthanks singing an unbelievably dreary song about the Allendale fire festival right in the middle of someone else's Allendale fire festival. (Yes, I know they're from Northumbria, and so is Allendale, but the place they grew up in is about thirty miles away from where the festival takes place. As a seasoned observer of calendar customs all over the country, I learned a long time ago never to intrude. They are not yours or mine. Calendar customs belong to local communities, without whom they would never exist.) It's their beanfeast and it's part of their lives, and without their involvement these things would never exist.

I don't know why it is, but every time anyone makes a documentary about anything to do with folk, they have to have a 'name' to front it. Doesn't matter a twopenny damn whether the 'name' knows anything about the item under scrutiny, just so long as they're well known and they can toss pancakes.

Remember the good old days when Bert Lloyd used to present radio and tv programmes on all manner of esoteric folklore subjects? Expert, erudite and entertaining, just the way it should be.