I think our guest, Sales trick, has picked the wrong target to have a poke at. The Finsbury Park fleadh was always cracking good value when I lived in London (up to 1995). And Noreen, why bemoan the range of the line-up? It's still not broad enough in my view, given that Finsbury Park is now a hugely cosmopolitan community.

Calling it a fleadh does not mean it has to be exclusively Irish, any more than calling it a festival would mean it had to be exclusively English-language. Once in a while some language throws up a word (eg rendezvous) that's so damn useful it gets poached, and I reckon fleadh is a good candidate for that.

But there are limits. For instance I once saw Barney McKenna playing mean banjo in the Mean Fiddler and had to get the Trades Descriptions people involved.