Guilty as charged, Ake. But I needed to make a living. I knew how to play the guitar. The hours fitted in with me being a carer. Yes my level of competency was deeply resented by the folkerati, but on the other hand, the room seemed and still does seem to light up in anticipation when I walk into a folk club. That's a less and less frequent occurrence, as the great unplugged/acoustic music revival goes on apace.

Doubtless, if I hadn't been desperately in need of the NHS for the care of my wife, I would have decamped to another nation - like most of my contemporaries who couldn't stomach the trad folk agenda - with all its inconsistencies and craziness.

But to be honest, I think the English folk clubs really missed out. It failed to adapt. The kids who had a lot to offer were working class grammar school types - and so many of them ended up playing in Irish bars from St Petersburg, and Oslo to the gulf.

The idea that folk music was something that belonged to tiny communities preferably pre-industrial belongs to that era where Vaughan Williams and Percy Grainger were morris dancing in the garden.

Our generation saw it as a valid artistic movement that offered the possibility of self expression.

Still we'll all be dead soon and it won't matter that we lost the battle and the war. Worse things happened.