Happened to catch a fragment of "The Michael Ball Show" on ITV1 a couple of days ago (Wed. 1 Sept.) and was surprised to see Morris dancing...

So I went to the ITV website & found the programme so I could see the whole thing (should be available here until the end of the month). The "Morris Dancing Challenge" is ~26 min, 35 seconds along. (Warning: am not sure, but you may have to endure a number of adverts before you can view the bit you want; it seems to be set up so you can't skip the adverts.)

It's a team of/from the Ripley Morris Men. I thought they acquitted themselves extremely well and the audience reaction seemed pretty good. Unfortunately, I did get the impression that Mr Ball was trying to tread a fine line between making fun of Morris dancing yet not being too rude to invited guests...

For example, at one point Mr Ball said (something like) "There's nothing we like better than humiliating foreigners," (it was a couple of American women taking the "challenge"). However, the Ripley side's spokesman did not let him get away with this, and spoke up saying that they had not been in the least humiliated -- forcing Ball to backpedal a bit (guess he hesitated to make an issue of it on national television), so well done that man!

Perhaps they were only invited on as comic relief, but I think they ended up looking pretty good -- was pleased to see Morris dancing getting some (I thought) positive exposure -- what do others think?