The intro question is vital. I remember once being one of the judges in the Cecil Sharp House London Folk Festival competition, & subsequently writing the experience up for Folk Review; mentioning in particular the difficulty of judging between a good but rather run-of-the-mill group, and a m-f duo whose singing was way above average but the resolute facetiousness of whose intros was a real pain-in-the-arse turn-off.

We judges were pretty-well divided, iirc; and the prize eventually went to neither, but to the agreed runner-up on all our lists.

≈M≈