MORRIS dancers descended upon Barnard Castle at the weekend - tons of them.

I may anger a lot of morris dancers by saying this, but I hate morris dancing. I know I'm risking my life by saying this, because they are armed with sticks, but at least I'll be able to hear them coming up behind me. Plus of all the groups of the population I'd choose to criticise, it would be morris dancers. I would never criticise Ninjas, for instance.

What I don't get about morris dancing is... well... everything.

First things first - the name. Probably only Clive dancing, Eric dancing or Wayne dancing sounds more stupid than morris dancing. But at least it describes the dance quite well. I'd imagine there are a few Morris's that strap bells to their legs at the weekend and dance around looking like the deranged cast of a school production of The Tempest.

I'm not going to go into too much detail about the morris dancer's costume. Anybody who has seen morris dancers will know what I mean.

The dance itself isn't up to much either. Jumping, skipping, hitting sticks, banging knees... quite clumsy at times. I know a lot of middle aged people do it, and I suppose it's exactly how I would expect middle aged people to dance.

Perhaps what annoys me the most, is that in the world of dancing, the middle east has evocative belly dancing, the Spaniards have passionate salsa dancing and the French can boast ballet as their creation.. Even across the water in Ireland they have Riverdance-style tap dancing. We have morris dancing. Not sexy, not impressive, not elegant - I can't help but think the rest of the world is looking at us and sniggering.