Nutty said: "In the 70's, when I started teaching in primary school, it seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth."

I'm 40-years-old (until a couple of weeks, at any rate) and I did 'country dancing' in both infants and junior school to the likes of 'All Around My Hat' &c. I live just outside Manchester and this would have covered most of the 1970s as I went to grammar school in 1979.

As for the general premise of the thread, I think there's something in it. Whilst folk and the 'working class' might have provided much fertile ground for academics, generally 'The Establishment' and the media was very middle/upper-class/Londoncentric in a much more pronounced way than even today. When has it not been a case of them being suspicious of the proles in their unsophisticated backwaters? I mean other than times when adjectives such as 'gritty', 'quaint' or 'fascinating' are used?