Tell me precisely how a morris man, dressing up in a tatter jacket, putting heavy boots and bell pads on, wearing a hat decorated with flowers and feathers, and painiting their face is in ANY WAY demeaning to someone of a different ethnic origin or skin colour? As I said, the face paint is just part of the kit! Perhaps putting feathers in their hat is also indicative of them having issues with pheasants!

I would have thought it was self-evident, BH.

Ultimately it's all about individuality, being what you are, being proud of what you are and living to engender a sense of pride in others and being proud of them too. Soon as you have to invent an excuse to black-up your face, you're entering the murky world of fakelore, in which all sorts of justifications are made as why some middle-class middle-aged morris person would want to black up their faces, none of which is of any immediate cultural or traditional relevance to that individual - unlike a chimney sweep, a coalman or a member of the SAS on night patrol, all of whom have clear, obvious and self-evidently non-racist reasons for having a black face. Just as your Aboriginal tribes-person has for painting their faces with white clay (though even if it was for racial reasons I'd think they more than justified in doing so).

The blacked-up morris person has none of these, all they have is a handy list of folksy excuses none of which are in any way relevant to their immediate situation which is, after all, simply one of a civilised 21st human being feeling somehow compelled to black up their face for reasons, ultimately, best known to themselves. Given that we live in an age of hieghtened sensitivity to issues of race and ethnicity in a country where these things matter a good deal, such behaviour is both suspect and puzzling. Historical and Traditional reasons prove utterly bogus; the reasons that emerge are invariable a reaction to Political Correctness Gone Mad which is somehow perceived as a threat to some wholly fictitious folk heritage (re-modelled circa 1975) which must be protected at all costs least we somehow lose our all-important national pride.

Still, never mind, eh, chaps? Under UKIP I dare say such practises will be compulsory.

Be afraid. Be VERY afraid.