"Shoals of Herring was based, as many of them were, on actuality recorded directly from Sam Larner"

Yes, I know that, Jim, but the actual quote on the programme seemed to be suggesting that any first person narrative is by its very nature bogus. If you accept EMC's statement that to write in the first person is to 'pretend that you were there' you'd have to argue that interviews with a fisherman are a far cry from a lifetime of first-hand experience on a North Sea drifter. Perhaps he just didn't express himself very clearly. At any rate, I think that describing a piece of work produced to EMC's order by a member of the group as 'a bore', 'dishonest' and 'a hoax' oversteps the line of frankness into rudeness and arguably bullying. For all the benefits that some of those singers undoubtedly received, that remark alone made me glad not to have been in that place at that time.