I happen to believe that Morris dancing which I did for approximately thirty years for a side which was invited to festivals all over Europe and even visited South America for a festival, is a valid expression of a traditional folk art. Our reception abroad was often equivalent to that of national dance sides and sometimes people had difficulty believing we did this with no state support.

I happen to take it seriously and practised hard every Monday night to get it right so that when it was presented to the public we did not get the reaction of Fi Glover.

Frankly it is hard enough to stop people taking the mickey out of morris dancing. We do ourselves no favours with "come and dance even if you have never danced before" IF and I do stress IF - we are doing this in public. At the beginning we practised for a full year before going out in public.

If we are doing this in the confines of festival workshops then fine.

If we are teaching young people over the space of a week - like they did with a young rapper team at Sidmouth and are announced to the public as such that is also fine.

But if we are asking people to join in an ad hoc team to appear in front of the public with unrehearsed dancers and musicians frankly we deserve all the bad publicity and piss taking we get.