Who sends this pleasant breathy and lutey stuff – worthy of a Totnes Fayre or an Elizabeth I biopic – to the top of the charts? Vanessa-Mae campaigns aside, classical music is not sexy. “I suppose, to be honest, we had quite a big push when we started, but that doesn’t mean we were created by the record company. Much girlie cackling and hooting accompanied my questions, their answers, the drinking of hot beverages among cloistral arches, and our eventual chat upon the crypt steps.So all this Baebe stuff, all this medieval malarkey: are we being taken in? Despite the undoubtedly anti-Spice organic origins of the group, are they now victims (or beneficiaries) of a mightily clever marketing push, as specious as it is successful? “We were heavily marketed,” said Ruth. A bit like the Spice Girls, then? Ancient Spice? Mulled Spice? And how come 12 females of a youthful and glamorous bent have suddenly embraced baebedom and stumbled upon major mainstream success? “We were all friends or friends of friends. Twelve was as many people as you could fit into Katharine’s sitting-room,” said Ruth Galloway, who plays recorder and guitar.They have, in fact, caused something of a rumpus: church embargoes on grounds of paganism amid rumours of witchcraft, wholesale nudity, moon worship and other rather tasty, may one suggest marketable, mumbo jumbo. It seems that neo-plainsong is the jungle of the classical charts.These are highly successful cross-over artists, exponents of the original Middle English and Latin poem sung as medieval-influenced modern madrigal That sort of thing.

Through the throng undulated a couple of Baebes.With hoarse cackling and a delicately wasted air of sleeplessness and general Bohemian dissipation, my minstrels settled into the appropriately Gothic gloom of the crypt to drink cappuccino. Their first album, Salva Nos, stayed in the Classical Top Ten for three months last year; their second, Worldes Blysse, is released on Monday. My Baebes were due to meet me for a cup of coffee – nay, a flagon of mead – in the Crypt Cafe of London’s mighty St Martin-in-the-Fields Church, but they were late. It was not amusing loitering on the pavement for unpunctual Baebes to turn up However, Tony Blair suddenly arrived instead. Grinning like a medieval loon, he walked past me into the church for a newspaper grandee’s memorial service Thatcher and Hague joined the throng Peter Tatchell was busy organising a protest.

Hey-nonny-no, a medley of medieval characters to sup of my mead: Margaret Thatcher as the Wife of Bath, Tony Blair as a parfit gentil knight, perhaps? Had I, in fact, got the wrong interviewees?
But hark! A carillon of church bells. Will Tony Blair’s government ensure that the poor have incomes that will take them out of poverty?The writer is a visiting professor in the department of social policy at Glasgow University He lives in Easterhouse. The Mediaeval Baebes are an Early Music vocal group of 12 soi- disant “temptresses”. Ah yes, “Baebe”: that is the medieval spelling of “Babe”, then, that well-known term beloved of Chaucer that crops up along with words such as “crasse” and “marketynge” throughout the Middle Ages.

They possess an altruism and sense of service that should be admired by the rest of society. But they still lack decent incomes.As a member of the Labour Party for over 35 years, I wait to see whether New Labour will listen to these citizens as closely as it does to millionaires. The flat was near the school, and was also handy for the Salvation Army where Alistair could go to the clubs which he loved.”The other writers tell similar stories They are not an inadequate underclass. On the contrary, they are strong people who care for their children, who persist in horrible circumstances.It is a notable fact that I met most of these people at local projects in Easterhouse; they had settled down and were lending a hand themselves.

We had to be out for meals, eating bags of chips, sitting in laundrettes Alistair started being cheeky to me and running away. I felt I could not control him.In the end, Bob [Holman] phoned to the chief man in the housing and they rehoused me in Easterhouse. They put us into just one basement room, with a fire with one bar I was always telling the children to keep the noise down They had to change schools again. I phoned the police and the authorities took us to the homeless unit.”As there were no witnesses, the man was not prosecuted, but my daughter had to have 16 sessions of counselling, and the counsellor said that she had been sexually abused.”It was terrible in the homeless unit The children didn’t know if they were coming or going. She told me that one of the neighbours had put himself on top of her and done something down below He then threatened her with a knife.”I called the police.