I think it was John Peel who said he'd try anything once, except incest and morris dancing.

Orwell was a wonderful writer but he was ex-Etonian - and as such distrusted liberals. If you read the wonderful essay "A Hanging" - theres this episode where he tells about an episode when he's in the colonial police in India.

Some cops are roughing up some suspects in the police station. A vicar walks in and he is horrified at what's going on.

Orwell says, even some bloody fool of a vicar could see I had a rotten job. Else where (I think in The Road to Wigan Pier )- Orwell is equally dismissive of vegetarians.

I suppose we lost working class morris dancers when we lost the generation who perished in the trenches of WW1. Orwell and Peel saw Morris dancing as the preoccupation of Cecil Sharp, Ralph Vaughan Williams - whereas they saw working class music as being in the music halls, and in Peel's case, punk rock.

I sort of sympathise with the viewpoint. Perhaps the reason that Jim Carrol is so defensive is to do with the fact that hat his quarry has to be hunted in isolated traveller families and the like.