Good point.  Generally, the "President" has been somebody aristocratic and influential, and there are certainly good reasons for maintaining that, given that the Establishment in England doesn't have a terribly good record of taking the folk arts seriously.  Essentially, it needs to be a name that nobody can argue too much with, whether or not they actually know anything about the tradition.  I'd certainly go for Martin as a Patron, if he were prepared to do it (Ninette de Valois was one, and died last year), but I think that a -notional- figurehead needs to be someone that everybody has heard of. It'll be interesting to see what happens.