Another bit of the BBC heads north on Wednesday when the 13th annual Radio 2 Folk Awards take place in Salford – their first time outside London. Is that a good thing, I ask the man who has MC’ed the occasion all these years?

"Anywhere out of London is good as far as I’m concerned," growls Crumpsall-born Mike Harding.

Thinking of other music biz awards ceremonies, can we expect any Brit-style Gallagher-esque fighting talk, or possibly some sensation of the Madonna-snogs-Britney ilk?

"The occasional person may get a little over-emotional with a glass or two, and end up shouting too many huzzahs," says Harding. "But it’s not like the Oscars; it’s not a cut-throat, nail-biting exercise. It’s more a celebration of the music."

Lifetime achievement awards will be given to Don McLean and The Dubliners. But look down the list of nominees for other awards, and not a one would register with the X Factor-watching millions.

And therein lies the contradiction of folk music: it’s popular, yet it’s not part of any big national conversation.

"The total number of people going to folk festivals last year was in excess of 100,000. It’s enormous," says

Harding. "And the number of people who listen to my programme (Wednesdays from 7pm to 8pm on Radio 2) at last count was 860,000. It’s not a minority music any more. So the state of folk is incredibly healthy. What is unhealthy is the media attitude towards it, which is completely ridiculous.

"It’s almost as if we’re ashamed of our own culture in this country. We’ll laugh at something like morris dancing, which is actually over a thousand years old. We have a national dance, but everybody mocks it.

"They don’t understand folk music because you can’t package it and it can’t be sold like pop music can."

Though interest in folk music remains high, the folk club scene has seen better days. "But then the pub scene’s ****," says Harding. "You’ve got these pub companies running everything. And they wonder why people stop going to pubs. Well, why would you want to go? There’s nothing to attract you there any more, because they are run by managers; they are no

longer run by people who have them in their family for years. There’s no sense of continuity."

As for the fans of folk music, the stereotypes are wrong. "Richard Stilgoe once did a brilliant parody of everybody wearing Aran sweaters. It was very funny. The folk world can laugh at itself," says Harding. "But there are people who turn up at a folk club, like me, with a sweater and a banjo, and there are others who turn up with short-cropped hair and tattoos and grommets in their ears, or whatever you call those things in their lobes. Less people conform to an image in the folk world than if you went to Ibiza and looked at young people dancing to Djs."

Harding points also to the huge age span of people active in folk, from 70-year-old Martin Carthy to youngsters like trio Pilgrims’ Way from Stockport, shortlisted for an award on Wednesday.

At 67, Harding himself is rediscovering the joys of touring after a 15-year lay off in which he climbed mountains, travelled and wrote.

His CV looks like that of several people rolled into one: a rock ‘n’ roller in the beat boom of the early 1960s, sharing bills with the Beatles and the

Hollies, he did a variety of jobs, from dustman to teacher, before becoming established as a folk singer-cum-stand-up comedian in the 1970s.

But he is also a prolific author and broadcaster, and a former president of the Ramblers’ Association. Many know Harding only as the man behind that solitary 1975 hit Rochdale Cowboy... or "that silly hit single" as he refers to it. He doesn’t play the song these days.

"It was good fun, and I’d never denigrate it because it got my kids through university, but it was only done as a joke, and it exists at that level, which is absolutely fine," says Harding.

Those "kids" – two daughters now in their forties – are a doctor and a teacher. Now a grandfather twice over, the singer and wife, Pat, have homes in the Yorkshire Dales, Connemara in Ireland and at Castle Quay in Manchester city centre.

As a resident, he has his concerns about how Manchester has changed of late.

"I think the council have done some good stuff, but to give part of what was a public park, Piccadilly Gardens, and sell it off was disgusting. I don’t believe they had the right to do that, and they’ve done a great deal of damage to the city centre.

"I also think they have given people like (architect) Ian Simpson and that monstrous bloody Beetham Tower far too much of a go-ahead. They got into bed too much with the developers. They didn’t think enough about people, they thought too much about commerce and money."

As Harding’s complaints move on to new Labour, private finance initiatives and bankers’ pay, I ask whether he has ever thought of going into politics. Indeed, is there a political party which would fit his views. "Fidel Castro and Che Guevara," he replies, only half-jokingly, one suspects.

He is not mellowing with age, then. Is he slowing down? Does Mike Harding feel 67?

"No, I’m 17," insists Harding. "I’ve got a camper van now – an old VW – and I get out with my banjo and fishing rod... last of the hippies. You keep going until you drop, don’t you?"

» The BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards are held at the Lowry, Salford, on Wednesday at 7.15pm, broadcast live on Radio 2, online at www.bbc.co.uk/radio2

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