After each of the opening three songs, all Warwick’s own, the woman side-mouthed to her husband, "do you think they’ll sing summat we know?" After the fourth such song her husband side-mouthed back, "I’d be flaming happy if they sang summat they know!" So, how do folk groups ever introduce new songs into the folk tradition?

On our first tv series The Houghton Weavers sang songs like Poverty Knock and Rawtenstall Annual Fair. These songs had been sung for years and were almost standard fare, but our producer, who had never heard them before kept saying how great they were and whether we had any other new ones like those. It was strange in those days, you are right. There was a perception amongst folkies that songs like The Wild Rover had been done to death, and yet when we sang them in concerts to the audiences they were new songs. There were some folkies who then said we were too commercial, and yet we were singing traditional songs. The Spinners suffered from the same attitude. There used to be a gag almost every act used at the close of a show: - If you’ve enjoyed us we’re so-and-so, if you haven’t, we’re The Spinners! But the only reason The Spinners were criticised was because they were the leaders, the ones to knock. They did a lot for folk music over here.

One of the first bands I ever booked was Saraband, a Rochdale group, (and here the world shrinks a little smaller as a member of Warwick’s first group joined him from Saraband!) and they sang the real contemporary stuff by Crosby Stills and Nash etc.. They had p.a. equipment and did sound checks for harmonies and all that, and boy that went down well with some organisers. "Tha’s not bringing that in ‘ere!"

When we used to do a folk club we would do three hours on stage. Then we got the tv series, became professional and started doing two hour concerts instead. We always reckoned that 60% of what we did was what the audience wanted, 20% was what we liked, and 20% was new stuff we hoped the audience would like. Because songs like The Blackpool Belle were so popular I do feel I’ve sung them out of my system. They were always in that 60% that the audience wanted, and they would feel as short changed as a Gene Pitney audience not hearing Twenty Four Hours From Tulsa if we didn’t do The Blackpool Belle.

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