The Proms at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport suggested "that the Proms was one of several big cultural events that many people did not feel comfortable attending" and advocated an increase in multicultural works and an effort to broaden the audience. Her comments received wide criticism in the musical world and media as being a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Proms, with Gordon Brown even distancing himself from her remarks. In the 2009 season, which ran from 17 July to 12 September 2009, the total number of concerts reached 100 for the first time. The principal anniversary composers
The Last Month of the Year Years": "It wasn't your standard Christmas album. That's why we called it "The Last Month of the Year". It was a pretty complicated little album, some very intricate stuff. Dave (Guard) brought in a lot of the arrangements with stuff like bouzouki instrumentation; Buckwheat (David Wheat, the Trio's bassist) played some wonderful gut-string guitar. We really worked hard on that one, laying down a lot of the instrumental tracks before we did the vocals, working on harmonies over and over. David (Guard) was responsible for a lot of that album, but we all brought things in... Musically, it came off