Actually Don you are telling me something new rather than reminding me of the Campbell – Fureys night as I always thought that they shared equal billing; however I was at that time very much a junior member of the committee having only been invited aboard a few months earlier after my club, The Royal Turf at Felling, had closed and I was still serving my apprenticeship. The Gilroy man has regaled me with that story many times since and it was my recollection that Alex, although I enjoyed most of his performance, divided the audience as some, as I stated earlier, had come expecting traditional song and many had come to see The Fureys. I will take issue regarding them being unknown for while it was some years prior to them hitting the dizzy heights that they were to achieve they were massive on the folk scene at that time, especially among the younger generation. We booked them twice in the previous two years at the aforementioned Royal Turf, to capacity crowds, and they were number one favourites at the other South Shields club, The Marsden Inn, at that time; so Alex was dead right about that!
Last time I saw Alex was at Barnsley Festival in 1979 when I caught the end of the Monday afternoon concert where he brought the house down and then set off back down to London where he was booked that night as part of a week's work around his usual haunts down there.
BTW Hootenanny have a look at MacColl's book "Journeyman" – he includes a farting poem in the section dealing with his early years.