Eric Bogle and John Munro, Broadstairs, August 2009

Michael Cross allows his bottom lip a small wobble

Eric Bogle has two fine words for the BNP’s Nick Griffin. As this is a family website, I won’t repeat them, but they received a rousing cheer from the congregation at his farewell tour appearance on Saturday night. Actually, given the level of adulation in the concert marquee, Bogle would probably have got a cheer for “Heil Hitler”, though with some head-shaking at the old boy losing it a bit.

A touch of alzheimer’s would have been in character. Bogle and his long-time guitar accompanyist, the stylish John Munro, flogged the old-geezers-having-a-pint routine for all it was worth. Total fake, of course. In the best folkie tradition, Bogle is much too young to have experienced the subject matter of his anthems. Although The Times once reported that the composer of No Man’s Land had been killed in the trenches, by my reckoning the bastard is still only 65.

Someone should tell him that, even in Gordon Brown’s Britain, 65 no longer means a one way ticket to the crem. (Hell, in Gordon Brown’s Britain we can’t afford a one way ticket to the crem.)

On Saturday night, neither this nor the essentially teenage worthiness of Bogle’s anthems mattered one jot. On numbers like The Reason for it All, the two old geezers’ voices were augmented by 500 throats singing gently along – and in tune. For all his talk of packing it in, the old emigrant’s heart is still on his left sleeve.

Even the finale, inevitably And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda, was somehow carried off without cheesiness; Bogle spotlighted, guitar clutched to breast, ghosts marching by the billabong, and I wasn’t the only one blinking hard.

Opening, we had another bridge to history, from the concertina and Northumbrian pipes of the extraordinary Alistair Anderson. Lovely stuff, but not for the unprepared. My companion, who admits to being a fair-weather folkie and who had indulged heavily on Broadstairs hospitality all afternoon, was observed to pass out during Anderson’s mini-lecture on the 3:2 hornpipe.

And so on to the torchlight procession, down the high street and the sea front. As far as I recall, Folkingcool’s flaming torch was carried between the Offcumduns dance side and a troupe of pagan young ladies. If Nick Griffin was around, he was keeping a very low profile.