I was speaking to Colin Dipper earlier today on a totally different matter and he put me onto watching the repeat of the first ep tonight. It's his band playing in the dance scene - in fact the serpent player is Colin himself.

He told me the dance was supposed to be the Dorset four hand reel, but the music was, of course, Brighton Camp. This was apparently because the choice of dance was down to the programme's choreographer. but she didn't know the dance as well as she thought she did, insisting that after each time through the men should end up in the middle. If you know the dance, you'll know this is wrong and you can't get the usual tune to fit the dance without severe mangling. So Colion and his band decided to play Brighton Camp instead as they thought they could do the requisite mangling more easily with that tune. Furthermore they were miming during the action, having recorded the tune earlier because the production only had one sound man. Finally during the dialogue bits no music was being played at all; both musicians and dancers were moving in total silence.

Of such things is greatness made ...

Chris