When The Houghton Weavers did the tv series Sit Thee Down in 1978 the producer chose that title because it so reflected Lancashire dialect, even though presenter Stuart Hall never quite got it right, and insisted we finish each show with Alan Bell’s The Minstrel because it included the lines: -

Which made it a perfect finishing song. Alan wrote a lot of songs about the Wyre area, living in Fleetwood. He wrote a lot of songs about the Wyre waterside and the music halls and the entertainers.

Thomas Edward Moss was one of those music hall entertainers and he challenged Alan apparently, saying, " you write a lot of songs about these people, I bet you couldn’t write one about my life!" So Alan talked to him about the highs and lows of his career and then wrote that song about Thomas Edward Moss, who is now buried in Fleetwood cemetery. It’s one of the loveliest songs ever written. As you said before, we talk about pop songs bringing back memories, but so do folk songs. You were saying about dancing at The Winter Gardens, Pam and remembering those days through songs.

McKee then demonstrated how far back her memory stretches by recalling that as a young girl she used to attend The Two Brewers Folk Club in Salford. She recalls paying kids a sixpence to protect the car. This diverts Mr. Prince down another lane of memory.
I used to go to The Two Brewers. I remember Jackie and Bridie. My first introduction to a folk club was when a friend of mine in Westhoughton took me to The Two Brewers. The resident group was The Four Folk, but I remember seeing Jackie and Bridie, Ralph McTell and The Taverners at the time. It was through watching The Four Folk that I learned that if the resident group is good the guest artist is a bonus, and I’ve worked on that basis ever since. When we ran The Cricket Club in Westhoughton for three years before running The Wheatsheaf we always said we would be as good as possible so that the guests were a bonus for the audiences. We even booked The Oldham Tinkers and Mike Harding and Mike used to joke that he didn’t like coming to our club because he was never sure he could beat us. Mike, though, gave us our first concert, asking us to support him at the Civic Hall in Swinton. Years later, when The Houghton Weavers got our BBC Radio Two series we actually were able to invite him.

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