Me and my blog  Follow me on Twitter @emma1hartley  Sunday, 20
November 2011  The BBC folk awards, raising the blood pressure
of folkies everywhere  So the nominations for the BBC Radio Two
folk awards 2012 were announced on Wednesday and there's already
been a scrap about it.  I was especially interested in all this
as I recently discovered that a good friend is a judge for them
and asked him to do an interview on the subject.  While being
generally helpful, my friend's main concern was that he was
under the impression that he wasn't supposed to tell anyone that
he was one of the judges, having signed a piece of paper seven
or eight years ago when first invited to take part, agreeing not
to nominate anyone with whom he has a business relationship and
also not - he thought - to broadcast the fact that he's on the
panel.  "I think there are somewhere between 150 and 180 of us
from all over the music business: PRs, festival organisers, that
kind of thing," he said, once we'd agreed that I wouldn't use
his name.