But wouldn't it just be a great Radio Ballad, with the voices of the miners and the rescuers, and the technical guys and the families who waited, and the union organisers. And the songs growing out of the interviews, and holding it together.

Why not? Why should we see the work of Charles Parker and Ewan MacColl as just a historical curiosity, and not as a signpost pointing us down a road that hasn't been travelled yet?