One of the people deal with embarrassment is to make a joke of it, and the joke they make tends to be, to do it a lot worse than they actually can, in the hope that when people laugh they can take pride in the laughter as an achievement.

Being serious, about anything really, is felt as taking a risk, it involves coming out from cover. Maybe people involved in folk music start with a bit of an advantage here - we've had to come out from cover already, and we know we're a bit of a laughing stock to begin with, so we don't need to worry about it.

For a lot of us that's all in the past, and we got into it at a time maybe when it wasn't so stigmatised. I get the impression that the way young people often get over this is by being shit-hot musicians.

But the young people who are way short of being shit-hot musicians and who still get involved today - they are the ones I really admire; and maybe they are the ones who really matter most for the future, if the music is going to hold on to its capacity to be truly participative..