IT was never going to be a normal folk gig, on a night when the show ended back at the beginning.

"Apologies now for cameras being everywhere," wrote Kate Rusby in her latest newsletter as prior warning that Saturday's concert was to be filmed.

The massed ranks of BBC trucks parked outside indicated as such, so too the profusion of film-crew black T-shirts and technical spaghetti, and indeed cameras were everywhere. Two bursts of practice clapping for sound levels, and the audience was ready for... Kate's nephews Jacob and Joshua to climb the music hall in mini-sized dinner jackets to welcome the band on stage.

Barnsley's fair folk queen was to play the pick of new album Underneath The Stars and earlier favourites underneath the lights in a concert recording for BBC4 and a DVD that will be released at the end of the year with additional footage of interviews, backstage badinage and studio recordings with special guests.

As much as possible, Kate and company treated the show as business as usual, albeit with occasional comments such as "They'll cut that" or "Oh, keep that in, that's good" when chit-chatting with the audience in her down-to-earth way. Glaswegian husband John McCusker was always on hand too with his stock of daft stories and gentle digs at Yorkshire.

Guitarist Ian Carr, the naughty school boy of the band, received a finger point or two from a cameraman to keep him in position, but as ever nothing could hold in check these players when the mood took them, particularly in a first-half instrumental sequence.

For this tour Kate has not only the remarkable McCusker on fiddle and ukelele, but Carr, tour chef Andy Cutting on accordion, whistling Michael McGoldrick and Ewen Vernal, crisp new shirt and all, on double bass. Her transcendent voice, the sweetest of melancholic nightingales, suits all settings, be it with all the band in the new Polly, Cruel and Let Me Be; a cappella in her first rendition of an old saucy gem, The Yorkshire Couple; singing Some Tyrant solo or being accompanied only by John for the beautifully sad Who Will Sing Me Lullabies?

And finally, I'll let you into a secret. When you see the DVD, the opening song was in fact the closing song. The Fairest Of All Yarrow had to be reprised for the right stage smoke levels, and no one would have complained if Kate had been asked to play the whole wonderful show again.

Kate Rusby plays Wetherby Festival, October 27.

Updated: 10:13 Tuesday, September 09, 2003